eurokbuk 0.7

Pan-European keyboard layout

(UK base layout variant)

Simulated keyboard layout (requires JavaScript, some symbols may not display on all font settings):

The characters on the left of a key represent normal keypresses with and without Shift. The characters on the right are generated when pressed in combination with the AltGr key (the right-hand Alt key next to the spacebar, or Ctrl+left-Alt on a few old keyboards that don't have an AltGr key). Green characters represent ‘dead keys’, which have to be followed by a second keypress to generate a character.

Hover over a character for more details, click to simulate pressing the key with that combination of shift keys.

Changes from UK standard

The standard UK keyboard layout defines two AltGr combinations, AltGr+` for the broken bar ‘¦’ and AltGr+4 for the Euro currency symbol ‘€’. Because eurokb re-uses these key combinations for other purposes, they can instead be typed as AltGr+|,b for the broken bar and AltGr-e,$ for the Euro respectively (see the ‘Currencies’ section).

Holding down Shift and pressing space results in a ‘non-breaking space’. This looks like a normal space, but applications won't break a line of text on this character when word-wrapping.

Typographic features

The rest of eurokb's features are accessed through AltGr combinations. The square brackets, semicolon and comma/dot keys are used to input the various types of ‘smart quotes’, as single quotes, or double quotes when used with Shift:

The lower-and-upper quotation marks are common in Germanic languages; guillemets are used in French and a variety of other languages.

Some languages use guillemets pointing »inwards«, others «outwards»; traditional French typesetting includes smaller-than-normal spaces around the inside of the guillemets (see ‘thin space’ below).

The en-dash and em-dash, on the minus/underline key, should be used in preference to the normal minus/hyphen character in some cases. En-dashes are used in ranges, for example ‘2000–Vista’. Em-dashes are for separating clauses—for example like this—and in some typographical traditions may be surrounded by thin spaces. The middle dot is sometimes used in lining numerals such as currency amounts, as well as an assortment of separating and decorational purposes in various languages.

All remaining characters are implemented on ‘dead keys’: first a base key is pressed with the AltGr button, then a second key is pressed to alter it.

For example the ‘thin space’ can be obtained by typing AltGr+Space, then pressing ‘t’ for ‘thin’. (A number of other typographical variants of the space are available: click the AltGr+Space dead-key on the simulator above to see the full range.)

Diacritics

Accented letters and other diacritical marks can be obtained by pressing AltGr with a letter key, then one of the accent keys. Some of the more obscure accents are obtained using AltGr+accent key as the second keypress too.

The common second-keys are as follows:

The superscript/etc. key isn't exactly a diacritic, but it alters the base letter in a similar way. The rest map to the Unicode character designations for ‘Base-letter with accent-name’, except for the following gotchas:

• There are many characters having Unicode names ‘...with stroke’ that actually have horizontal strokes, for example ‘t’ (ŧ) or ‘d’ (đ). These are categorised in eurokb along with the ‘...with bar’ characters on the minus key; only the real diagonally stroked characters are kept on the slash key.
• The African ‘Capital D with bar’ is actually the uppercase of ‘Small D with tail’ and is typed as such (AltGr+D,AltGr+{). The bar accent on D normally gives ‘Capital D with stroke’ as above, which renders similarly but is a different character.
• The Azerbaijan ‘Capital O with middle tilde’ is a misnomer: it is the uppercase of ‘Small barred O’ and is rendered with a straight horizontal bar through it. eurokb treats it as a capital O with bar, to be obtained with AltGr+O,-.
• There are some characters that Unicode describes as ‘...with cedilla’ that actually have comma diacritics. (Unicode originally tried to treat the cedilla and comma-below as the same diacritic. This approach was abandoned later but the old character names remain.) The eastern European comma diacritic on the comma key types the accented letters D, G, K, L, N and R which are now-erroneously described as being ‘...with cedilla’, as well as the S and T ‘...with comma’ letters. The real with-cedilla letters C, E, H, S and T remain on the semicolon accent key.
• ‘Caron’ is a term of question provenance Unicode uses for the diacritic known eg. in Czech as a háček. On most letters it looks like an inverted circumflex (hence the placement on the < key) but occasionally is rendered more like an apostrophe. ‘Diaeresis’ also represents the German Umlaut.

To type an accent on its own, type AltGr+Space, then the accent key (ie. adding the accent to an empty space). You can also get a ‘combining’ version of an accent by typing AltGr+Shift+Space then the accent key. This should place the desired accent on top of the preceding letter. However the application and the font in use have to support combining diacritics for this to work well, otherwise the results can be quite ugly. There are lots of extra combining characters that aren't typical accents, mostly for phonetic purposes. Click AltGr+Shift+Space on the simulated keyboard above for a full list.

Ligatures

Ligatures and digraphs, along with a few obscure Latin letters which are based on ligatures, can be obtained by pressing AltGr+first-letter then the other letter. For a capital letter ligature/digraph where available, use AltGr+Shift+first letter than the other. Where a mixed-case digraph is also available, use Shift on both keys to get the fully-upper-case version.

There are also some ligatures sprinkled about the keyboard for some of the obsolete and non-IPA-standard phonetic ligatures. For example AltGr+t,S gives the tesh ligature (ʧ), which is now written as a separate t and esh (optionally with a combining tie).

Finally there are the ‘compatibility’ ligatures, such as ‘fi’ (AltGr+f,i) and ‘ffl’ (AltGr+f,L) and others. Unicode recommends just typing the component letters (to which the ligatures are semantically equivalent) and letting OpenType automatic glyph substitution handle it, but not all applications and fonts support it, so if a ligature is essential it would need to be inserted using this method.

Extra Latin letters

Some of the less-common Latin-derived letters are available on the ‘h’ second-key.

Other letters used by IPA phonetics are also to be found on the ‘h’ second-key, as well as ‘r’. In many (but not all) cases the combination relates to an English spelling of the sounds.

The letter ‘ɛ’ is named an ‘open E’ by Unicode, but is really a Latinised Greek epsilon. The ‘ɔ’ is named ‘open O’ but is really a turned ‘c’ and so is duplicated on the AltGr+C,| combination.

Other characters used by IPA include Latin, Greek, smallcap, turned and accented letters accessed through through the other combinations. Additionally, the smallcap OE ligature ‘ɶ’ (Open front rounded vowel) is available under AltGr+o,E.

Letter marks

Assorted letter-based symbols.

Currencies

Various world currencies are available using ‘$’ as the second key.

Extra alphabets

Phonetic ‘modifier letters’ are available by pressing AltGr+\ then the letter. Other symbols are present, notably the length indicator ‘ː’ on AltGr+\,: and stress marks on AltGr+\,1 and 2. See the simulated keyboard for the full range.

The Greek alphabet is available by pressing AltGr+`. The layout is a ‘phonetic layout’ mirroring the Greek analogues of the letters in the QWERTY layout. For example, pi is AltGr+`,p.

A variety of pictorial symbols such as arrows and icons is available on AltGr+¬.

Miscellaneous

Vulgar fractions can be typed using AltGr+number combinations, for example AltGr+1,4 for a quarter.

As well as the Latinised Greek letters in the phonetics section, a few others are available, most commonly AltGr+m,u for the SI ‘micro’ unit mu, AltGr+o,m for the Ohm unit omega and AltGr+m,o for the inverted omega Mho unit, plus AltGr+i,o for iota and AltGr+p,h for phi.

A few mathematical symbols are available on the AltGr+= and + deadkeys. Phonetic click symbols are available on the AltGr+! deadkey, the double vertical bar on AltGr+|,2, and glottal stops on the AltGr+' deadkey. Note that Unicode's ‘inverted glottal stop with stroke’ character is misnamed; this is actually a merged t and s glyph accessible as AltGr+t,z.

Not included in eurokb 0.7

Unicode has an enormous repertoire and not everything can fit on one keyboard. Notably missing:

• Greek accents, Coptic, Cyrillic and non-Latin writing systems in general.
• Letters with more than one different accent, such as the Pinyin combinations and the Vietnamese accent-and-tone letters (these are problematic even on native Vietnamese keyboards). Combining accents (AltGr+Shift+Space) can sometimes help here.
• Other combinations used in extended phonetics, eg. turned-and-altered letters, and more non-Latin modifier letters/symbols. It may be possible to add more of these in later versions of the software, if there is demand for particular characters.
• More mathematical characters may be introduced in future versions.