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    Romanian ș and ț characters in Colemak

    • Started by DanJacobs
    • 2 Replies:
    • Reputation: 3
    • Registered: 24-Mar-2008
    • Posts: 32

    Hi folks,

    Having recently started working with some people in Romania, I need to be able to type Romanian words. I've come to learn that the “Romanian” characters supported by the standard Colemak layout aren't actually the right characters.

    Specifically, Romanian uses the letters s and t with commas under them: ș and ț.

    Colemak only allows you to type the supposedly “incorrect” versions of these letters s and t with cedilla: ş and ţ. (Apparently these forms used to be quite common as obsolete computer systems didn't support the “proper” comma-under versions.)

    Any chance of having ș and ț added to the official layout? I'd propose making AltGr + Shift + , a dead key for the comma-under diacritic.

    Thanks,
    Dan

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    • Shai
    • Administrator
    • Reputation: 36
    • Registered: 11-Dec-2005
    • Posts: 423

    Those letters were only added in Unicode 3.0. When Colemak was released, Windows, which had a near monopoly on operating systems, didn't have proper support for these letters. To this day, it seems font support hasn't completely caught up. But it's something that does need to be fixed. I'm surprised no one noticed it before.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,362

    I realize that I haven't documented my Colemak[eD] solution for Romanian, sorry.

    Here's what I did (xkb implementation, abbreviated):

        key <AD11> { [        abreve,        Abreve,         bracketleft,           braceleft ] };// from 'a'
        key <AD12> { [   icircumflex,   Icircumflex,        bracketright,          braceright ] };// from 'i'
        key <LSGT> { [   acircumflex,   Acircumflex,                  oe,                  OE ] };// from 'q'
        key <AC03> { [             s,             S,           0x1000219,           0x1000218 ] };// comma-s from 's'
        key <AC04> { [             t,             T,           0x100021b,           0x100021a ] };// comma-t from 't'
        key <AC05> { [             d,             D,             dstroke,             Dstroke ] };// from 'd'

    I have ș and ț on dead keys but the compose method uses comma for the cedilla so I chose to overload the ogonek dead key instead. That works in my Windows PKL files, but it's not a very convenient solution if you use these letters regularly! For someone only working with some Romanian people now and then it should be good enough. So, for Ș I'll type 'AltGr+8 S' for instance.

    In the PKL layout.ini file, it's done like this (under ogonek dead_key):

    83   =  536    ; S -> Ș
    115  =  537    ; s -> ș
    84   =  538    ; T -> Ț
    116  =  539    ; t -> ț

    I've noted that the cedilla letters ş and ţ are sometimes used. As commabelow is in practice used for only two letters it seems wasteful but who am I to argue with the Romanians about that... ;) (And yes, I'm also willing to change my own letter Ø to, say, Ō if it can make typing more logical.)

    Last edited by DreymaR (24-Oct-2014 15:20:18)

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