United States (International) with AltGr dead keys - French

Credits

All due credits go to

• Windows: Thomas Faingnaert
• Mac: xv0x7c0

Introduction

Windows includes a keyboard layout called "United States (International)", which allows typing many special characters easily. The layout defines several keys as "dead keys", such as the apostrophe (') and double quotes ("). This means that to enter a single ', you have to press ' followed by a space. This can be annoying when you need to enter a lot of these characters, since each now requires two keys to be pressed.

In Linux, there is a keyboard layout named "USA International (AltGr dead keys)" that solves this problem and still allows typing special characters. If you want to type ', you just press '. If you want to use ' as a dead key, you use AltGr (right alt): e.g. AltGr+' a will produce à.

All five dead keys (`, ~, ^, ' and ") are now only dead when AltGr is pressed, otherwise they function as normal keys. Note that the original layout already defines several AltGr combinations, e.g. AltGr+' becomes ´. If you want to type these characters in the modified layout, you should follow the old keycombination with a space: e.g. AltGr+' <SPACE> will produce ´.

This layout provides an easier access to French characters using the following mapping:

• AltGr + a: à
• AltGr + s: â
• AltGr + q: ä
• AltGr + w: è
• AltGr + e: é
• AltGr + r: ê
• AltGr + t: ë
• AltGr + y: ù
• AltGr + u: û
• AltGr + i: î
• AltGr + j: ï
• AltGr + o: ô
• AltGr + p: ö
• AltGr + c: ç

How to Build or Install

Linux

To install the layout on Linux, run the install_bogue_layout.sh script located in the linux/ directory. This script needs to be run with root privileges:

sudo ./linux/install_bogue_layout.sh

After running the script, you will need to log out and log back in for the changes to take effect. You should then be able to select "English (US, intl., with AltGr FR by Bogue)" from your system's keyboard layout settings.

Windows

You can download the latest installer from the releases tab of this repo (https://github.com/bogue/win-us-intl-altgr-fr/releases).

If you prefer to build from source, you can open the .KLC source file in Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. After opening the file, choose Project > Build DLL and Setup Package in the menu to create an installer.