#keyboard layout

[yesthatsatumbler]

someone should make a keyboard layout where the first six letters of the top row are DVORAK

just for the sheer memetic confusion potential if it ever catches on

[kutyozh]

custom keyboards for polyglots

and polyglots in the making

I found this amazing resource of custom desktop keyboards collected by the university of cologne. go wild!!

[kiragecko]

IPA and More Keyboard

When I first got into linguistics, I decided I needed a keyboard that could support IPA¹. But I was studying Sanskrit, and switching to a completely different keyboard every time I wanted to add a dot below a character (the common Sanskrit transcription convention) was really annoying! Also, I hate the IPA character for a palatal nasal (ɲ), so I wanted to be able to use 'ñ' instead. And ... a thousand other tiny things, all requiring different keyboard layouts. Why wasn't there a keyboard that just let me type EVERYTHING?

Eventually, I designed my own. And that was fun enough that I expanded it. Over the last 15 years, I've been adding characters and streamlining it's use.

The current iteration is a monster. For an idea of what it can do:

this keyboard can type over 50 diacritics (accent marks)

it can rotate and flip any character that has a rotated/flipped Unicode counterpart, as well as replace them with smallcaps, superscript, and subscript versions

it can type most medieval ligatures and characters (though my research hasn't always been good enough to provide the most natural ways to do so)

it covers the whole IPA, of course, as well as historical symbols, extIPA, and uppercase forms when available

it can type any modern or historical click character available in Unicode (still waiting for Doke orthography support >:( )

it allows you to type Greek and Cyrillic characters (though it prioritizes IPA variants and isn't really streamlined for writing the language)

it allows you to transliterate Sanskrit, Ancient Egyptian, Chinese dialects, etc. that use discipline-specific characters/diacritics

it lets you add bars, tildes, slashes and curls to any character that has a matching Unicode counterpart

it can type most proofing and punctuation marks, modifier characters, as well as

alchemical, astrological, and gender/orientation symbols

and much more

For more detailed documentation on what this keyboard supports, and how to use it, here's the guide (PDF or Word Doc).

Here's the keyboard: IPAKeyboard dot kmp

Because it's designed to work for a LOT of characters, this keyboard is rarely going to be the simplest way to type a specific one. There are definitely IPA-only keyboards that will be more efficient for typing just IPA. And this keyboard isn't a font. There will be characters that don't show up - I've yet to find one that supports the entire range of characters this keyboard allows. Doulos SIL is my suggested font, especially if you use a lot of diacritics, but you might want to look around to find the one that supports you best.

But it's a powerful tool if you want to be able to switch between multiple transliteration and transcription systems in the same document, explore characters to use for non-human sounds, discuss the history of transcribing language, or quickly type special characters without opening 'insert symbols' dialogue boxes.

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This is a Keyman keyboard. You'll need to install Keyman before being able to use it. Keyman is a free program with some amazing keyboards, and a lot of supports for people designing them for underserved languages. I've been really happy with it for almost 20 years, now.

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For ideas about what else I could add, or suggestions for better key combos for specific characters, please contact me here, or at kiragecko at gmail dot com.

Things I'd love ideas for:

medieval ligatures (need to match them to logical character strings (words), but these are frequently NOT what unicode suggests)

mathematical, geometric, and/or scientific symbols (huge numbers of symbols, need a logical way of organizing them without too many key strokes)

Teuthonista symbols (very little English documentation, so I don't know what all of them MEAN)

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¹ The International Phonetic Alphabet, one of the main ways linguists indicate sounds.

[hexenmond]

madwoman

I am going to teach myself a different keyboard layout. Neo, which is very different from QWERTZ (which I am used to).

Why would I put myself through this? I can type pretty fast with QWERTZ, thanks to years of doing it a lot (never learned it properly though).

There's a few reasons, the latest that is currently tipping me over the ledge being that typing anything in Turkish with a bog standard German QWERTZ layout requires me to copypaste all the special characters from a character table, which is seriously no fun. And switching keyboard layouts just for a word or three – meh, no, uncool. Functional but uncool.

But learning a whole different keyboard layout that will enable me to write things in sooooo many languages? And generally type even more efficiently once I've mastered it?? Sign me up baby 🤩

…honestly I cannot resist the siren call of Optimisation™. Things could be better! I only need to put in a large amount of effort! 😆

But seriously, I'm giving this a go. I already installed the layout and the training programme, AND did my first lesson (two letters, did not pass). No risk no FUN!

(So if you don't hear from me for another while, it's because I cannot type quickly enough, and/or I got stuck entering my password because I can't do it with the new keyboard layout.)

[uwuraindragon]

there's something so raw about the qwerty keymash (ajdbhvaidlksjhabdils) that the dvorak keymash cannot compare to (aoeinaeohteuaxeoes).

that being said i'm keymashing in shavian from now on (𐑨𐑖𐑩𐑒𐑑𐑛𐑯𐑪𐑛𐑨𐑖𐑿𐑨𐑑𐑯𐑛𐑖𐑒𐑩𐑨𐑪𐑳)

[inkscape-official]

This is your daily reminder that "QWERTY" is only a standard because of physical limitations of mechanical typewriters (that no longer apply to modern keyboards) and the fact that ever since the decline of typewriters people in general have just been to cowardly to check out alternatives

[z0mbgender]

Thinking about the ending for saw x had Amanda and John opening a door and stepping out into the light VS every other movie ending with a door being closed and being left in darkness

[0x4468c7a6a728]

i should just add zero width space to my custom keyboard layout i use them enough

[serenpedac]

Getting To Know You Tag Game

I was tagged by the lovely @chroniclesinlacuna, @agentnatesewell and @l-llavellans to do this. Thank you all <3

Last Song: lemme check the radio's playlist... Eine Träne by Modest Mussorgsky (during work, I alternate between a classical music radio station and a local station with pop/slightly alternative music, depending on how busy my thoughts are. I like that radio has people talking in between songs, it feels like they're keeping me company)

Favorite Color: reds and blues, but there are so many nice colours. Rich shades are always a favourite

Last Book: the last one I finished was Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. After finishing it, I immediately ran to the library to get Babel by the same author. So far, I'm really liking this one as well!

Last Movie: ehm... I'm not sure, it's been a while

Last Game: Veilguard. And last weekend, I started BG3, which I got for my bday.

Last Show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We've almost finished the entire series and I already know I'm going to miss it.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: sweet, everything sweet!

Relationship: married ^^

Last Internet Search: "a umlaut" because I needed an a with an umlaut for the name of the song haha. I'm typing this on my laptop which has a US English keyboard, which might explain why typing " and then the letter also doesn't work :/ (my GPC and work laptop both have a German keyboard, so I have to code switch but with keyboards all the time)

I think a lot of people have already been tagged, probably, but tagging: @evilbunnyking, @ohmypawsandwhiskers, @nerdierholler, @thecryptidenthusiast, @nerdferatum and anyone else who'd like to do this!

[lesbianneopolitan]

just so you guys know, I actually sacrificed the spanish layout of my keyboard only so I could customize it, because I could only get the damn pink keyboard with the american layout

[lilietsblog]

so I told my mom abt isat yesterday and im sorry to report that i still dont know a russian translation of "cute/adorable" other than "kawaii nya" (кавайние няшечки). And my mom didn't correct me which implies she doesn't either.

(Potential alternatives include "уси-пуси" which is a babytalk onomatopoeia, and "милий" which correctly translates as "dear" which is a related but different meaning)

@gellavonhamster pls weigh in

[flowercrowngods]

scrivener why on earth would you not offer document-specific language settings. why do i have to change my entire laptop language setting for you to work properly. like. come on.

[hetyra]

As someone who is legally half-blind in one eye due to incomplete optic nerves, I feel for Jiaoqiu so much.

Like one of my biggest fears is something happening to my good eye and having to rely on my eye whose vision is full of holes. It can't make out detail well due to the holes, and that also makes reading impossible. Even billboards are difficult to read with that eye.

While Jiaoqiu's vision is most certainly even worse than that, the fact that I can actually imagine how bad it is due to my own personal experience just makes my heart hurt for him that much more.

[inkscape-official]

So my cat spilled tea on my keyboard today...

Normally an annoyance but at least it wasn't the computer right? The only issue is I have very specific keyboard preferences, so I was looking (again) for a 100% mechanical keyboard with linear key caps and a non-rgb backlight, already a near sisyphean task but the worst part is I type on a non-qwerty English layout...

So yeah new keyboard is on the way and I'm gonna spend an afternoon when it gets here pulling the key caps off and moving them around (hoping that they are all the same height)

[abalonemacaroni]

The problem with nerd4nerd content is that Brennan said everything I was going to post about Divergence in Cooldown lmao