Comments on: Why You Should Be Using the US International Keyboard Layout

By: Peter Carroll: Software Developer » Blog Archive » Esperanto Support Plugin for Anki

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:10:36 +0000

[...] characters (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ) into my flash cards, which can’t easily be typed with the US International keyboard layout, or I could deal with the ugly “x method” workaround (cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux). At [...]

By: david

david — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:47:18 +0000

At least for Windows you can make your own layout

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964665.aspx

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:31:20 +0000

@David: It doesn’t take long to get used to it. I still have all those stickers I put on my keyboards. They’re a hassle to remove!

By: David

David — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:43:45 +0000

For about a year, I’ve been using a US keyboard, with German stickers, in my efforts to learn German. I have recently swapped to using only the US International keymap. I’m not comfortable with it yet, but I already like it better than swapping between two keymaps.

By: GeoffB

GeoffB — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:27:59 +0000

I have the keyboard set to US-International on every computer I use. I can’t imagine fussing with switching keyboards or alt-codes when such a simple solution is so close to hand.

By: peter

peter — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:33:42 +0000

When I tried “it’s” in Word using the space bar after the apostrophe, it worked as should. I’m using Word 2003 on WinXP though. It may different in other versions. Thanks for the tip about Vista, I’ll keep an eye out for that one.

By: M. Laplante

M. Laplante — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:51:27 +0000

With most editors, for instance Microsoft Word or WordPad or even Notepad, you don’t even need the space bar. Try typing “it’s” normally with the US International keyboard. I had to do three times and concentrate, because the first two times my thumb hit the space bar unbidden; my thumb has been doing this for over a decade.

You also have to actually delete that Spanish keyboard definition if you’re using Vista. The overly helpful Vista sometimes switches the keyboard layout to the one for the language I am using at that moment. Very annoying.

By: Ramses

Ramses — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:08:14 +0000

Many software developers use the US International Keyboard Layout, and none of them see it as a problem to have to hit the space bar to get ‘ or ” or ~. I grew up with this just like any computing Dutchman and it really goes automatically after a while.

Good to see you switched, it really makes live easier I think :-).