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    Questions about composition for tildes in spanish and moving keys

    • Started by javix
    • 9 Replies:
    • Reputation: 1
    • Registered: 24-Dec-2012
    • Posts: 20

    Dear all,

    after more than a year of switching to colemak I don't regret it at all, this has been a great decission to make.

    I have stopped playing with different layouts to try to adapt for my locale, spanish, though. I have get used to the standard colemak layout. It slows you down a bit, when I have to press altgr+e for é, but, it works.
    As the english layout is best for programming, it does not make sense to switch the whole layout to keep the local symbols, when the position of those local symbols does not make any sense at all or give any advantage compared to the us layout.
    But I have not given up...

    It becomes hard to try to convince people to use it not having a direct key for building tildes éáí as in the spanish version. So I am still trying to get a spanish version with only a minor change, just one key.

    One of the possibilites that I have been considering is benefitting from the extra key that european keyboards have, that in colemak US results in a double key "-_"; so if we move that key around, maybe we could solve that issue.
    So I could use that for dead_acute, as it is now in spanish qwerty.
    But we still have the ñ.
    I recently upgraded my ipad to iOS7 because of colemak support using an external keyboard. This has been a great improvement, my ipad has become very useful since.
    The interesting thing about this is: iOS7 solves this is by composition:
    ´ + e = é
    ´ + a = á
    etc
    ´ + n = ñ --> That is what I want!

    So the first question is: how could I achive that in linux/windows? Is that even possible? In a standard setup dead_tilde I get ń, which is not the same.

    Second question:

    Also the best place to put such a tilde/composition key due to finger distance and alternation, after many tests should be using the left or right index (has no vowels associated) or the right middle finger (is a very fast finger for repetition).
    All other options make that key very difficult to use (left pinky below "a" makes it very difficult to type á).

    If we have the extra "-_" key at the bottom left, I have thought of two possibilities (using standard US layout)
    * Shifting the letters z,x,c,v to the left and leaving the dead_acute where now the "v" is (imitating what DreymaR has done with his angle wide modifications)/
    Problems: changing keyboards can be confusing and frustrating.

    * Shifting the , .  to the right and moving /  to the bottom left -_ extra key.
    Problems: changing to qwerty or any other keyboard can be confusing, too.

    Any ideas? Does any spanish speaking member have any opinion on this? Do you think if we could get a full working spanish layout just by adding this dead_acute compose key for both tildes and ñ, could we make an "official" spanish colemak layout that could be included with major distributions (as now it is with colemak us and colemak uk)?
    If it would become a standard, it would be very easy to solve the confusion and frustration. Just change the layout, no extra custom scripts or software modifications to make...

    Thank you very much for your help and comments.
    Kind regards

    Last edited by javix (04-Jul-2014 12:23:59)
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    • From: Belgium
    • Registered: 26-Feb-2008
    • Posts: 480
    javix said:

    ´ + n = ñ --> That is what I want!

    On Linux, you can do this by modifying the Compose sequence table.  You can override it in your homedir: ~/.XCompose, or alter the system wide table (/usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose or similar) and add:

    <dead_acute> <n> : "ñ"   ntilde

    On Windows, it will depend on your implementation.  With PKL, you can simply modify the [deadkey*] sections of the layout.  For other implementations, I don't know, but there are experts on this forum.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,343

    Cmk-X-eD-es-usym+latam-awide-sl_crop.png

    This is what I came up with in my locale thread: Ññ on the VK_102 key and an acute dead key on the left bracket (which on my ergo mod is in the middle). Should work fine for Spanish where there's only one letter with a tilde? Maybe not if you're using the brackets extremely often for coding; then a single accent dead key on VK_102 is probably a better solution.

    Changing the dead key tables can be a bit daunting when you're doing it on several platforms, but it isn't that hard. On Windows MSKLC it's a bit clunky but easy enough to do. For PKL it's a bit ugly but also doable.

    I heartily recommend shifting ZXCVB to the left on your keyboard! Once you're used to it you'll wonder why you didn't do it before.

    By the way: Keep in mind that in international usage the acute accent is *not* a 'tilde'; that's special for Spanish. So please refer to the acute as 'acute' or at least 'accent' and not a 'tilde' if you wish to avoid confusion. :)

    Last edited by DreymaR (04-Jul-2014 13:16:16)

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    • From: Belgium
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    DreymaR: I don't think javix confused the acute accent and tilde.  He wants the acute dead key followed by "n" to produce a n+tilde (ñ) instead of n+acute (ń), because the former is very common (in Spanish) while the latter is not.  That way he needs to occupy only one physical key (the VK_102 or another) as a single dead key for all relevant accented letters in Spanish.

    Last edited by ghen (04-Jul-2014 14:15:25)
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    • Registered: 24-Dec-2012
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    Thank you so much!

    @ghen Yes, that is exactly what I need. I will test it asap.

    @DreymaR I will follow your advice and shift it, I'll let you know.

    Thanks!!!

    Kind regards!

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    It's both a confusion and not. I realize that he wants what you say – but at the same time he used the term 'tilde' about other accents which gave me pause. Turns out the term is used like that in Spanish tradition, which is a bit confusing to the rest of us hence my warning. :)

    javix said:

    not having a direct key for building tildes éáí as in the spanish version [etc]

    The idea of letting one "Spanish tilde" dead key handle both the accent and the proper tilde is a good one for standard Spanish. It wouldn't work so well in broader terms, as for instance Portuguese needs the distinction with its tilde vowels and Catalan uses the grave accent too.

    I mentioned the single-"tilde" key idea in my locale layout topic, with credit to javix for coming up with it!

    Last edited by DreymaR (04-Jul-2014 16:07:42)

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    DreymaR is right, my spanish did betray me on that sentence. Sorry for the confusion.

    I have tested ghen's proposal and it works perfectly on the terminal and in other applications (libreoffice), but not in firefox. In firefox still ń. Maybe I'll have to restart X again? Maybe switching layouts confused the firefox, have to test further.

    I was also wondering whether this could be something easily implementable on a keyboard layout for "standard" layout switch or if they would require further modifications (as with a patch like DreymaR's installation script) to several files, and that would hurt adoption.

    Also I have shifted keys to the left and for the time now (just a couple of hours and 15min of ktouch) and I am suffering a lot :-S
    I still don't know if this could get to a standardarised spanish layout, it may be too weird for average people to switch to.

    I am reconsidering to leave the <LSGT> key where it originally was and let the á suffer (would have to do that either with pinky repetition or with finger shift (pinky dead_acute + ring finger a), the latter I do not know how good or bad can be for speed - ). And words with "ár" will extend the suffering... luckily there aren't so many there (árbol, árabe...  around ~23 words). Any usability expert here? How bad does this look?
    I'll try both options for a while and let you know my findings. I will try to propose that to non-geek humans, and see what they think of either option.
    For the catalanian friends, maybe a good compromise would be just to make the grave key a dead key, so they could have that (not as convenient as the other one, though). That or that shift+acute=dead_grave. Any catalanian here to express his/her opinion on this?

    So in the search of a minimal colemak_es (no wide layout, no local symbols) just those changes would do to make it easy for spanish speaking people to change, or at least that is what I imagine.

    Initially I thought of keeping the symbols, but as they don't make any sense either, it is best you don't look at the keyboard at all, even for those.
    So if DreymaR finally submits his variants to X.Org, there would be all his locale variants for people wanting to keep local symbols, the wide layouts and this minimal change spanish colemak version (this is becoming something like a dream now, being able to install this layout first thing after or even during debian/ubuntu installation...).

    By the way, any progress on submitting your variants, @DreymaR? How difficult is that? Have you considered submitting to Apple, too?

    Thanks a lot for all your help, kind regards.

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    javix said:

    I was also wondering whether this could be something easily implementable on a keyboard layout for "standard" layout switch or if they would require further modifications (as with a patch like DreymaR's installation script) to several files, and that would hurt adoption.

    X compose sequences are layout independent.  So with your change, dead_acute + n would yield ñ in any layout.  So yes, it will be a separate change from your colemak mods.

    it works perfectly on the terminal and in other applications (libreoffice), but not in firefox.

    Firefox by default uses the GTK+ input method rather than the default X11 input method.  To make it use the X11 compose keys, start Firefox with GTK_IM_MODULE=xim in the environment (eg. from a terminal).  Not sure how to modify compose sequences for the GTK+ IM.

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    Ugh, the XIM vs GTK mess is why Linux dead keys have been a disappointment for me so far. I don't enjoy the idea of dead keys that works in some situations and require special app settings in others. It's not just Firefox, is it?

    The idea of ñ on the acute key cannot be generalized, as other languages need the ń and/or a proper tilde key. I don't feel like using it myself as it's illogical and inflexible. So it'll have to be a special trick for Spanish users who are specially interested. It'll be a bit tricky to implement as you can see, and certainly involves changing several files. That said, it'd be possible to write a script that makes all the changes so that you may run it easily.

    If I recall correctly, GTK and QT apps can be told to use the XIM by adding the following to your ~/.xsessionrc or ~/.xinitrc file (QT apps should use XIM already but just in case):

    export DISABLE_IMSETTINGS=yes
    export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
    export QT_IM_MODULE=xim

    I'm not sure what DISABLE_IMSETTINGS does, but I've seen it in use elsewhere.

    Last edited by DreymaR (07-Jul-2014 15:42:20)

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    Hi all,

    I have abandoned the composition idea, though it wasn't that bad, but very complicated and not practical, at least with the intended goal (easy to set up).

    I will try the angle mod for some time (shifting z to the left) and propose a spanish variant soon (in my spanish variant thread https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1607) for discussion.

    Thank you for all your help!!

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