this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
231 points (85.1% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26679 readers
1473 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I was just reading this thread... https://sh.itjust.works/post/23476261

...and it got me thinking about something that I've wanted for a long time. Why is it that keyboards have not evolved to have dedicated copy/paste keys left of the main board? I'd love to see an additional column of keys left of Esc->Ctrl configurable as macros at least. I do a lot of copy/paste for work. The current shortcuts arent terrible or anything but they're not exactly comfortable. I'd rather move my whole hand to the left for a macro key than contort to hit the current shortcut.

What do you think?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Meh, Ctrl+C Ctrl+V works well.

What I really would like is a Compose key.

The concept is brilliant, you use it with a special key combination to "draw" a special character or symbol.

If you wanted to type a copyright symbol you would hold the Compose key and press O and C in order, then release the compose key.

Here is a list of a few characters with their compose key combinations, every combo is pressed in order while holding the compose key.

To get the letter Ä use " and A

To get the letter Å use o and A

To get the letter Ö use " and O

To get the letter Æ use A and E

To get the symbol ¿ use ? and ?

To get the symbol ¡ use ! and !

To get the symbol ® use O and R

To get the symbol ™ use T and M

To get the symbol € use C and =

To get the symbol £ use L and -

There are plenty more combinations....

I have never used a computer with a compose key, but I love the concept of drawing other characters like this.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Yes! 100% this. The closest thing I've seen is Quick Accent in Power Toys for Windows. But something like what you've described is what I've always wanted.

I also thought about mapping this to Auto Hotkey, but didn't bother after finding Quick Accent.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Most linux distros allow you to set a compose key through a gui. For Windows there's (or at least was) WinCompose. I know fuck all about MacOS, so I can't help you there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Other than already working like that for accents in spanish keyboards, what is with the euro combination??? C + =?? What kind of unhinged British person are you, not to think it would be like the pound, E + - ??

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

To be fair, you can use E= to get a euro symbol as well, I just found that C= demonstrated the whole drawing characters from other characters very well.

As for the L- for £ that came from a different page titled "Compose Key Sequences" at a personal website, but when I look at the main page of the site it seems like mostly refer to HTML, with little explanation.

The Swedish keyboard works the same as the Spannish kayboard with regards to accent modifiers.

Fun fact, at one of my earlier jobs we aquired several international offices and didn't have any corporate laptops with a Spannish keyboard, so I was asked to modify a laptop and make a spannish keyboard using Dymotape.

It worked well enough, but we never ended up using the concept.

At the same job, I got to type on the following keyboard layouts:

Swedish/Finnish

Danish

Norwegian

UK

US

German

French

Turkish

Japanese

Dutch

Spannish

I am probably forgetting one, it was almost ten years ago...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

On windows at least, that sort of already exists. You can hold down Alt and use 3 numpad numbers to "compose" any ASCII character you like. It's fun!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I do know about that, but that is just picking a number from a list, the clever part of a compose key is that you can sort of figure it out on your own; if you are on a US keyboard and need to type the letter/word "Å" it makes sense to try with compose+Ao but when that didn't work you tried compose+oA and got it.

No need to look it up in a big table.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yes, finally someone else who appretiates compose key!

I use Linux, so I remap it on every PC I use, when I have right context key, I remap that, otherwise I remap right Ctrl to compose.

It's so good, specially for using US keymap to write in other european languages. At first it takes a bit, then it's second nature.