Question on deadkey combination

[Aldo_Rojas_Velasco]

Hi. I have a really simple question. I would like to know if it is possible to create a computer keyboard layout that combines several deadkeys together. I mean, the language that I want to write uses letters with overlaping diacritics like a diaeresis and a macron below at the same time. The way I would like it to work is that, when you press the diaresis deadkey, then the macron deadkey and then the vowel, the letter with two diacritics gets typed. I reviewed the tutorials I could find and I didn’t hear or read anything about this. So I decided to ask here. Sorry for the bother. Thank you very much.

[Marc]

Yes, this is certainly possible with Keyman; in this example, I’m using : and _ to produce the diacritic deadkeys:

+ ':' > deadkey(diaeresis)
+ '_' > deadkey(macron-below)
deadkey(diaeresis) deadkey(macron-below) + 'a' > 'ä̱'
deadkey(macron-below) deadkey(diaeresis) + 'a' > 'ä̱'

Note that I have included two rules to allow typing the diacritic deadkeys in either order. There are other ways to solve this; this is just the simplest to demonstrate.

This is a very basic solution; you will probably want to use index and any statements to reduce the complexity of handling multiple diacritic combinations.

You will also want to consider issues around normalization – I have written this example with decomposed combining diacritics.

[Aldo_Rojas_Velasco]

Thatꞌs great to read. Thank you so much for the explanation

[Dan_Em]

All things are permitted for me, but not all things are of benefit.

Just because Keyman allows you to do a double deadkey, it doesn’t mean you should. For the user to press two keys and not see any change on the screen might not be the best keyboard design. Deadkeys were an early keyboarding technique used by primitive keyboarding systems that couldn’t change characters once they’d been sent, but Keyman offers much better options. You might consider revamping your keyboard so that the user first types the base letter, and then types one or more diacritics to modify it. Keyboarding in the same order as writing makes for a more intuitive system, as does seeing a change on the screen every time you press a key. But I understand that sometimes a community is so accustomed to using deadkeys that any change is unwanted, and you may be stuck with that.