A better way of typing

4 minute read

I’m happy! I’m happy because I just found out how to get a Compose key on my shiny MacBook. I want you to be happy too, so I’ll show you how you can get one, too. I’ll even show you how to do it on Windows and Ubuntu. But first, I will explain why this makes me so happy. (If you don’t care about the why, just click here and go straight to the how. But you’ll miss a perfectly good geek-out.)

Why?

I’m a language geek. I like to spell words correctly. Words such as naïveté. Actually, I’m also Dutch, so I have to deal with words like coëfficiënt and of course and (which, really, are two very distinct words). I speak French (or should I say: français) and I live in a country where we pay with . And if that’s not enough, I like to spell people’s names correctly. I’m a software engineer; we’re a pretty international bunch. I’ve worked with people called René, Radovanović, and even Enikő. Yes, that’s an o with a double accent aigu. It’s Hungarian. Try finding that key on your keyboard.

I want it to be easy to type these special characters. I also want it to not get in the way.

Windows has this nifty trick. If you use the US International keyboard layout, you can press a " followed by an e and you automatically get an ë. Sounds nice in theory, but for me, it gets in the way. I’m a programmer; I need to be able to type things like String vowel = "e";. And when I do, I don’t want that to show up like String vowel = ë";. That’s just annoying. On a day to day basis, I have to type "e much more often than I have to type ë.

Of course, if I type a space after I type ", I get my precious ", and I can then type an e and it won’t turn into an ë anymore. I know people, programmers like me even, who have this extra key stroke ingrained in their muscle memory. If they work on a computer where this option is disabled, they type things like String vowel = " e";. Notice the extra space? Now I have nothing against these people, but this is just plain stupid. It’s like hitting your face every five minutes hoping to catch a fly.

OS X has something slightly smarter. To get a special character, you press a special key combination. For example, to get an é, you press ⌥E, followed by e. If you want an ë, you press ⌥U, followed by e. The problem with those combinations is that they’re pretty arbitrary: e for ´, u for ¨, and i for ˆ. In fact, I can never remember what key corresponds to what symbol. It’s not easy.

Also, both methods only support a very limited set of special symbols. Enikő is out of luck; she has to hunt through the Character Map program to spell her name on a non-Hungarian keyboard. If you think that’s too exotic, then you should realise that isn’t directly supported on many systems, either.

I’m not even going to mention Alt codes.

Surprisingly, Linux, for all its usability-issues, has an easy and elegant solution to this mess: the Compose key. You pick a key you don’t use often (I like the Menu key: nobody uses that button anyway) which becomes the Compose key. If you want to enter a special symbol, you hit this button, followed by the two (or more) symbols that you want to ‘compose’. For example, Compose followed by " followed by e becomes ë. Compose followed by = followed by o becomes ő, and Compose followed by = followed by e becomes . Easy!

And it goes even further than that. Combine - and >, and you get an arrow: , T and M become , < and 3 become , and, I was surprised to find out while researching this article, Compose-C-C-C-P becomes . Seriously.

I like this. It doesn’t get in the way at all. I’m free to type String vowel = "e"; without any ë’s showing up. Also, it’s super easy. In fact, it’s so easy that sometimes when I’m bored, I amuse myself by trying out various combinations of keys to see what comes out. How would you type Æ, ¿ or ©?

By now, I have probably convinced you that you want to have a Compose key, too. So how do you get one? It’s easy.

How?

  • OS X: Install the US custom keyboard layout: download and installation instructions are here.
    Note that MacBooks don’t have a Menu key. This tool uses the § key instead, which is fine, because who uses it anyway? And even if you do, it’s a Compose-s-o away.

    See my follow-up post, An even better way of typing.
  • Windows: Install this nifty little program.
  • Ubuntu: Go to System Settings → Keyboard Layout → Options → Compose key position.
  • Any other Linux? Then you probably already know how to do this.

Enjoy a better way of typing! ☺