8 ms·

Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western

Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western European languages (we have many, many loan words and phrases from those in English—façade, résumé, áñ∂ §ò öñ), punctuation for French and Spanish (no, you don't strictly need these for English—but in practice, depending on the register you're writing in, actually you do), major world currency symbols ($, £, €, ¥, ¢), basic mathematical symbols and mathy Greek letters (≤, ∑) and so on. Look up how you do that on US English keyboard layouts in macOS, Linux, or Windows. Then check AltGr and US International alternative layouts for the latter two. Marvel at how macOS manages to crush all those options in usability with their default, without affecting the experience for someone who doesn't need those at all. Join me in wondering how no-one else has at least matched them on this, which is not some recently-added feature in macOS, but is practically ancient in computing terms.

boogies 6y ago
> Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western European languages No thanks! I already new how to type — (Compose - - -), and I was able to guess how to type the others simply by trial and error in less time than it would take to duck/google how to type them: Compose + . + - → · (close enough for me Edit: Compose + . + = → •) ┃ Compose + c + , → ç ┃ Compose + s + s → ß Compose + e + ` → è ┃ Compose + e + ' → é ┃ Compose + ` + e → è ┃ Compose + ' + e → é Bonus: Compose + - + > → → ┃ Compose + = + / → ≠ ┃ Compose + / + = → ≠ ┃ Compose + : + ) → ┃ Compose + L + L + A + P → (Edit: HN seems to have stripped out the last two, a smiley face emoji and the \\// / Star Trek/Live Long And Prosper hand. So I guess the compose key can type more characters than HN even allows.) ß°ηυ5 þē 5€¢•ηⅾ: Pressing the alt key reveals underlines under selectable gui elements. Press any letter that's underlined (while still holding alt) to activate the element (menu item, button, etc.). Try this in every GUI you use regularly and then race a macOS user stuck with reaching for a trackpad or mouse everytime they need to click something. Јоⅰη ⅿе ⅰɳ wօɳԁеrⅰηg Һօw ɳօ‐օɳе аt Аррⅼе tҺօυgҺt tо аⅾԁ tҺіѕ, wҺⅰϲҺ іѕ ɳօt ѕоⅿе rесеɳtⅼу‐аԁԁеԁ fеаtυrе ⅰɳ ԌΝU⁄Ⅼіɳυⅹ, Ьυt ⅰѕ рrасtіϲаⅼⅼУ аɳсіеηt ⅰη ϲоⅿρυtⅰɳg tеrⅿѕ (¡ΝаѕtУ Wⅰηԁоwѕ, рrеҺⅰѕtоrіс Wіηԁօwѕ 95, Һаⅾ tҺеѕе υηⅾеrⅼіɳеѕ аⅼwаУѕ ⌵іѕⅰЬⅼе!).
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Great! Linux, I assume? goes looking OK yep, I'll enable it and start re-training myself on that, for when I'm not on mac. It's not quite as quick for most of the things I need frequently, but seems tolerable. Remaining questions: 1) why would the default be bad? Like, why ever would one make a default bad if there are non-bad options? Especially for something everyone should want to be good on a computer, like composing text in the user's language, and 2) ugh of course even once enabled the default compose key is bad (there's a theme here) and both enabling it and configuring it depends on which WM/DE you're in, Wayland vs. Xorg, and so on, and from some googling it's even possible to run into inconsistent behavior between different friggin' GUI toolkits under the same DE. OK that second one is a comment, not a question. Still. I'd recently googled the problem of (specifically) typing an em-dash on Linux, and just tried it again, and sure enough this solution doesn't come up until the sixth hit, in an unassuming Google documentation style guide. "Just memorize a 4-digit number" is the overwhelming answer to that question, on search engines, for some reason, despite plainly being awful. Maybe the configuration hurdle and bad default behavior is why that's the go-to solution, I dunno. [EDIT] none of the above irritation aimed at you, I hope is clear, and sincerely, thanks for the pointer.
  - boogies 6y ago
    I imagine it defaults to off and the top results recommend the Control-Shift-U<Unicode codepoint> because otherwise people switching from Windows would complain. It’s my understanding that on Windows typing these characters involves holding down Alt while typing arbitrary Windows-specific numbers on your number pad (What happens if you don’t have one? I’ve no idea!) — or more intuitively, opening a new browser tab, Googling the name of the character, copying it with a keyboard shortcut or context menu (I hate leaving X11 and not being able to simply highlight text and middle click to paste!), and pasting. All distros I've seen allow you to choose a keyboard layout (and I think at least usually AltGr) at first boot, and I imagine this is how most people using primarily non-English type quickly, on any OS. I personally just use a little WM/DE agnostic script to make capslock useful and add a Compose key: #!/bin/sh setxkbmap -option caps:super xcape -e 'Super_L=Escape' setxkbmap -option compose:sclk ... and ‘xcape -e 'Shift_L=Multi_key'’ to make tapping Shift work as Compose (xcape is installed by a little bootstrapping script I run when I clone my dotfile repo). But this is better for me because I mostly use Compose for little things like curling my apostraphes (Compose + < or > + ' or " → ‘,’,“, or ”), not so many characters that it needs to be perfectly fast. I don’t have a monitor set-up that’s nonstandard in anything but aspect ratio, or use native apps I don’t trust (like Snaps), so I’ve never had a use for Wayland. [EDIT] No problem, you’re welcome!

boogies 6y ago

> Look up how you type: those • characters I used in my post, an m-dash (—), a c-cedilla (ç), a german double-S (ß), basic accented characters for various Western European languages No thanks! I already new how to type — (Compose - - -), and I was able to guess how to type the others simply by trial and error in less time than it would take to duck/google how to type them: Compose + . + - → · (close enough for me Edit: Compose + . + = → •) ┃ Compose + c + , → ç ┃ Compose + s + s → ß Compose + e + ` → è ┃ Compose + e + ' → é ┃ Compose + ` + e → è ┃ Compose + ' + e → é Bonus: Compose + - + > → → ┃ Compose + = + / → ≠ ┃ Compose + / + = → ≠ ┃ Compose + : + ) → ┃ Compose + L + L + A + P → (Edit: HN seems to have stripped out the last two, a smiley face emoji and the \\// / Star Trek/Live Long And Prosper hand. So I guess the compose key can type more characters than HN even allows.) ß°ηυ5 þē 5€¢•ηⅾ: Pressing the alt key reveals underlines under selectable gui elements. Press any letter that's underlined (while still holding alt) to activate the element (menu item, button, etc.). Try this in every GUI you use regularly and then race a macOS user stuck with reaching for a trackpad or mouse everytime they need to click something. Јоⅰη ⅿе ⅰɳ wօɳԁеrⅰηg Һօw ɳօ‐օɳе аt Аррⅼе tҺօυgҺt tо аⅾԁ tҺіѕ, wҺⅰϲҺ іѕ ɳօt ѕоⅿе rесеɳtⅼу‐аԁԁеԁ fеаtυrе ⅰɳ ԌΝU⁄Ⅼіɳυⅹ, Ьυt ⅰѕ рrасtіϲаⅼⅼУ аɳсіеηt ⅰη ϲоⅿρυtⅰɳg tеrⅿѕ (¡ΝаѕtУ Wⅰηԁоwѕ, рrеҺⅰѕtоrіс Wіηԁօwѕ 95, Һаⅾ tҺеѕе υηⅾеrⅼіɳеѕ аⅼwаУѕ ⌵іѕⅰЬⅼе!).

spanhandler 6y ago
Great! Linux, I assume? goes looking OK yep, I'll enable it and start re-training myself on that, for when I'm not on mac. It's not quite as quick for most of the things I need frequently, but seems tolerable. Remaining questions: 1) why would the default be bad? Like, why ever would one make a default bad if there are non-bad options? Especially for something everyone should want to be good on a computer, like composing text in the user's language, and 2) ugh of course even once enabled the default compose key is bad (there's a theme here) and both enabling it and configuring it depends on which WM/DE you're in, Wayland vs. Xorg, and so on, and from some googling it's even possible to run into inconsistent behavior between different friggin' GUI toolkits under the same DE. OK that second one is a comment, not a question. Still. I'd recently googled the problem of (specifically) typing an em-dash on Linux, and just tried it again, and sure enough this solution doesn't come up until the sixth hit, in an unassuming Google documentation style guide. "Just memorize a 4-digit number" is the overwhelming answer to that question, on search engines, for some reason, despite plainly being awful. Maybe the configuration hurdle and bad default behavior is why that's the go-to solution, I dunno. [EDIT] none of the above irritation aimed at you, I hope is clear, and sincerely, thanks for the pointer.
- boogies 6y ago
  I imagine it defaults to off and the top results recommend the Control-Shift-U<Unicode codepoint> because otherwise people switching from Windows would complain. It’s my understanding that on Windows typing these characters involves holding down Alt while typing arbitrary Windows-specific numbers on your number pad (What happens if you don’t have one? I’ve no idea!) — or more intuitively, opening a new browser tab, Googling the name of the character, copying it with a keyboard shortcut or context menu (I hate leaving X11 and not being able to simply highlight text and middle click to paste!), and pasting. All distros I've seen allow you to choose a keyboard layout (and I think at least usually AltGr) at first boot, and I imagine this is how most people using primarily non-English type quickly, on any OS. I personally just use a little WM/DE agnostic script to make capslock useful and add a Compose key: #!/bin/sh setxkbmap -option caps:super xcape -e 'Super_L=Escape' setxkbmap -option compose:sclk ... and ‘xcape -e 'Shift_L=Multi_key'’ to make tapping Shift work as Compose (xcape is installed by a little bootstrapping script I run when I clone my dotfile repo). But this is better for me because I mostly use Compose for little things like curling my apostraphes (Compose + < or > + ' or " → ‘,’,“, or ”), not so many characters that it needs to be perfectly fast. I don’t have a monitor set-up that’s nonstandard in anything but aspect ratio, or use native apps I don’t trust (like Snaps), so I’ve never had a use for Wayland. [EDIT] No problem, you’re welcome!