French Accents on a QWERTY keyboard
Problem
As a computer old timer, I have always been annoyed by the existence of many
keyboard layouts. This, combined with a visceral hate of dead/compose keys,
and the need to write French (my native language), has prompted me to design a
usable solution to keep the programming-oriented QWERTY layout with the
availability of non-dead-key french accents.
My method is to use the numeric keypad for this: typing SHIFT + a
numeric keypad key will yield an accentuated letter. This is very convenient,
works under X or windows, and allows you to group the letters in a reasonably
logical way.
|
| ç |
ù |
« |
| ô |
î |
û |
» |
| ë |
ï |
ü |
|
| é |
è |
ê |
|
| à |
â |
|
|
Solution
Just mark your numeric keypads like on the photo, and use the software
provided below
Software
X Windows
Use xmodmap commands to rebind your keys. The
principle is to look what keycodes (raw key numbers, differring with
the OS / X server / keyboard used). Use xev to see what keycodes get
emitted when you press keys (87 for é on my keyboard), and map them to the appropriate keysyms
(logical character names, such as eacute for é). For é, this gives:
keycode 87 = KP_1 eacute
Meaning that pressing without shift still sends KP_1 ("1 on the numeric
KeyPad"), and with shift, é ("E with acute accent"). xmodmap and xev are a
standard part of the X distribution.
You can download the AccentsKeypad.sh
script I use to rebind keys on Linux, but it can be adapted to any other X
system by changing the keycodes
MS Windows
Use a Keyboard remapper, such as
You can also browse the
keyboard utilities page of winfiles.
Alas, I dont know of any freeware solution. Please mail me if you find some!
Psion
There are no keypad per se, but I apply the same strategy (PSION+key) to input
accents on a QWERTY keyboard. For me PSION-E is é, and nearby keys give other
accents: PSION-W is è, PSION-r is ê, etc... I use the freeware
remapper, but you can use most macro system facilities such as Macro5
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