Proposing changes to the international keyboard

[Enno Nagel]

It is already a lot more consistent and convenient than the original 
international keyboard layout. Here are some sensible refinements:

1. Replace © (=AltGr+x) by ß, so that

     - ß stays close to s
     - is common in German (120 Mio native speakers)
     - ¢ is still reachable by AltGr+Shift+X, as in the original
       us(altgr-intl) keyboard layout.

     This is a perfect match because there is no upper case version of ß.

2. Replace ® (=AltGr+V) by â because

     - â is common in Portuguese and occurs French ( 250 + 338 Mio
      speakers), but
     - ® is only common in Redmont.

3. Replace æ (=AltGr+f) by ê because

     - ê stays close to e
     - ê is common in Portuguese and French (250 + 338 Mio speakers), but
     - æ is only common in Danish and Icelandic ( 5.6 + 0.3 Mio
       speakers) by http://en.wikipedia.org
       /wiki/Letter_frequency.

=> replace ß (=Alt+b) by æ

4. Replace ¶ (=AltGr+;) by ô because
      - ô stays close to o
      - is common in Portuguese (250 Mio speakers), whereas
      - ¶ appears for some formatting problems in MS Word, or in
        government documents, like on WikiLeaks (see the explanation
        on http://fsymbols.com/computer/paragraph/).

4. Replace ì (=AltGr+j) by ı because
      - ı stays close to i
      - ı is common (>5%) in Turkisch (63 Mio native speakers)
      - ì is less common in Czech (10 Mio native speakers) and easily
        reachable by AltGr+`+i.

6. Perhaps replace µ = Alt+M by ł because
     - not too far off from i,
     - it is very common in Polish (40 Mio speakers), whereas
     - µ is perhaps not so common in Greek and as a symbol also little
       little employed in everyday writing.

Best wishes

   Enno

Le 08/01/2015 17:37, Adriaan van Nijendaal a écrit :
 > A few years ago, I proposed to add a 'new' international keyboard
 > layout: altgr-intl, which hides dead keys behind the right Alt key (aka
 > AltGr). It is based on the International Keyboard layout, which in turn
 > follows an example set by a company in Redmond. The map was accepted and
 > is now used by quite a few people who use a standard US keyboard to type
 > multiple languages. They type á (a-acute) with altgr-a.
 >
 > Some people (and myself) would like to have more accented letters
 > readily available through the altgr modifier. When Microsoft defined the
 > international keyboard, they must have been thinking of a certain set of
 > languages (including Icelandic?!?). The resulting keyboard does not suit
 > all languages well (and it never will). But one could think of maps that
 > would suit a few languages a little better.
 >
 > For French (and Portugese and Italian), à (agrave) would be handy (about
 > 0.5% frequency in those languages). For Portugese, ã (atilde) would be
 > nice (0.7%). Currently, ã is only available through a shifted dead key
 > (which in altgr-intl becomes altgr-shift-tilde followed by a).
 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency
 >
 > We would like to propose a modified International Keyboard map, keeping
 > the dead keys where they are, but adding all diaeresis and grave
 > versions of all vowels on altgr-keys close to the vowel. This would
 > require moving some others around or dropping them (like ð (eth) used in
 > Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese - languages with fewer
 > speakers).
 >
 > How do you feel about 'breaking' the (Microsoft) International Keyboard
 > map in favor of one that suits some languages better?
 >
 > Regards,
 >
 > Adriaan
 >
 > The layout could look like this (qwerty etc with the altgr key held
 > down):
 >
 > ã å é è ø ù ú í ó ò
 >   á à ë æ œ ì ü ï ö
 >    ä © ç ® ß ñ µ
 >
 > removed: þ, ð.
 >