So down I went through the rabbit hole of keyboard layout design. Here's the end result. I designed versions for both Windows and Mac, both for standard US ANSI keyboards and for standard UK ISO keyboards. Here's the US version:
Edit: I've replaced this image. BTW, US keyboards are the same in both Windows and macOS, which makes life easier:
Edit: Here's the UK macOS version. Thankfully, changes from the US version are minimal. The main change is swapping £ and #.
Edit: And of course I can't forget about our friends using Windows in the UK:
Edit: You can get the layout from this web page:
https://www.spanishinput.com/keyboard.html
- You can use it to type in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Turkish, Guaraní, Pinyin and many more.
- The layout is 100% free and the download page contains no ads or popups. I created it mainly to solve a problem I had, I now use it every day and now I want to share it with other language learners.
- There are installers for both US and UK versions, for both Windows and Mac. Sorry, but no Linux version is in the works. It's been a while since the last time I used Linux.
- The download page also has videos with instructions on how to use it in Windows and Mac. The video for the Windows version goes into deep detail about the design decisions behind this layout and goes over every single key. The video for the Mac video is shorter and focuses only on the most popular languages.
Edit: How to use it
- Characters in blue are typed by holding down any of the "option" keys. Your caps lock key is also an "option" key in this layout.
- Characters in green are typed by holding down both option and shift at the same time.
- If the character you want does not appear here, you might be able to type it by using a "dead key". "Dead keys" are used mainly to add diacritics and work this way: You first activate the dead key and then type the letter you want accented. For example, if you want to type ã, first press Option + P (the dead key for the nasal tilde ˜) and then type "a".
- If you're using Google Docs on a Mac please use Firefox. Google Docs has keyboard shortcuts that conflict with any Mac keyboard layout, not just this one, but Firefox is smart enough to give priority to typed text instead of Google Docs's shortcuts.
Edit: Basic shortcuts for Spanish
- Á = option + A
- É = option + E
- Í = option + I
- Ó = option + O
- Ú = option + U
- Ü = option + 7
- Ñ = option + N
- ¿ = option + ?
- ¡ = option + !
The layout had certain design goals:
-Use the caps lock key as a modifier key, both to solve the problem of accidentally pressing caps lock and to have a comfortable positioned modifier key to activate most of the dead keys. Also because caps lock, unlike option/alt, has the exact same position on both Windows and Mac. On the Windows version this happens automatically. There are instructions for implementing this on the macOS side.
-Place all of the dead keys are on the right side of the keyboard. At the end I had to place two dead keys on the left side, but all the most popular ones are on the right side in a nice cluster.
-Place dead keys and keyboard shortcuts in places that are easy to remember (well, easy to remember for me, at least).
-Cover all official EU languages that use the Latin alphabet, almost all Duolingo languages that use the Latin alphabet (Vietnamese was the exception) and all languages covered by the Colemak layout.
-Do not interfere with every day English typing needs. This meant the apostrophe and the quotation mark must be undisturbed.
-Keep the same physical position of dead keys and shortcuts across Windows and Mac, and across US and UK keyboards. This meant avoiding the three keys that change positions between systems: The grave key, the \ key and the extra key on ISO keyboards right next to left shift. This way you can use this layout on any physical keyboard and any computer, including non-English keyboards, without having things moving around.
-Make it dead easy to type in Spanish.
-On Windows, avoid Ctrl + Alt conflicts. This was achieved by using the Kana modifier instead of the Alt Graph modifier. The Kana modifier is used on the right Ctrl key on the Canadian Multilingual Standard layout, and it's also used in Japanese keyboards. Using kana meant I could not use caps lock, so caps lock is disabled on all versions. Civilized people don't use caps lock, after all.
Something I could not achieve:
-Avoid conflicts with Google Docs shortcuts on macOS. Unfortunately this applies to all macOS keyboard layouts, not just to mine. The only solution is to use Firefox instead of Safari or Chrome for Google Docs.
EDIT: I've edited this post because when I first wrote it I was not in my best mood. The original title was "An unnecesary, unoriginal and naïve keyboard layout for language learners". The text below this line was part of the original post. Please ignore my moodiness and thank you for the warm welcome to this forum.
"If you are already able to type your TL in your computer, please ignore this post. There's nothing to see here and this post is not worth your valuable time."
"The name of the layout has been redacted and there will be no links in this post so as not to break forum rules."
"Feel free to copy the layout and assemble it with the keyboard layout design software of your choice. If you want it bre-built for Windows and Mac, you'll have to use your Google skills. I'm not risking a ban by posting links here."
"------Criticism-------
I'll save you time and write all the criticism I can think of myself:
-You know multilingual keyboard layouts have existed for a long time, right? There's the German T2 and T3, and also Bepo and Colemak, and ABC extended on the mac.
-Yes, but I'm not leaving Qwerty anytime soon, there's no ABC extended on Windows and the ABC extended shortcuts are uncomfortable and difficult to remember for me.
-You're not a linguist or a computer scientist, so it's naïve of you to pretend you can create a keyboard layout. You should have asked experts before attempting this.
-Feel free to create your own layout, or modify this one. No one is forcing you to use this.
-You're overselling this. There are easier ways to type accents on a computer.
-Then keep doing so.
-This is an old idea. Such and such software is the easiest way to type in Spanish.
-Cool.
-I'm angry that you have already written the criticism I was going to write.
-Feel free to expand on it. The Argument Clinic is one of my favorite Monty Python sketches."