I use a keyboard with an american layout because I find it much much better for programming. However, since I’m portuguese, I want to use some characters that don’t exist in the american layout, such as á, é or ç. In windows I selected the US international layout with with dead keys and I could do everything.
'+a=á'+c=ç
The US International with dead keys on linux mostly works but has some weird problems, or different behavior:
-
'+s=ś, I expected it to be's. Ś doesn’t exist in my regional dictionary. It is a problem when typingIt's, which is transformed intoitś. I could perform a space after pressing'and it works, but I’m just not accustomed to do that. -
'+m=ḿ, same problem as before. -
'+c=ć, I expected it to beç -
'+t=´t, I expected it to be't
I found a workaround for the cedilla, that works on most apps but not on all. Is there a way to change this behavior system-wide? Maybe I can create my own “custom layout”?
EDIT: of course right after I post this I finally find a solution. I love that it’s just a dot file I can bring with me anywhere. Gonna leave the post up anyway, in case anyone ever has the same problem.
Another option – if you only care about a US English layout for programming, have you considered just using a programming editor that has an input method friendly to that?
I kind of go the other way – I’m in the US, and would like to have a way for inputting some things like Latin-1 stuff occasionally. Emacs has a lot of convenient input methods designed for this, inputting stuff on a US keyboard. And it seems almost certain to me – there is no single standardized keyboard layout spanning Europe, so any European programmers must run into this – that many programming editors must have application-level input support.
I actually have grown to hate the Portuguese layout, or ISO in general. Why is the enter key so damn big? I currently own a Happy Hacking Keyboard 2 and can’t imagine living without it.