Dvorak Extended

[roadrunnertwice]

Mac OS X ships with two QWERTY keyboard layouts meant for American-style keyboards: U.S. and U.S. Extended. U.S. can generate some accented and extended characters using the Option key, but is careful not to output anything not contained in the old-skool MacRoman character set; U.S. Extended can make a crazy amount of accented characters (including ō, Ǽ, and Ž), but most of them are only safe to use if you're in a Unicode document of some kind. (As in, they're usually fine, but it's going to be really confusing to you if they aren't.)

The OS also ships with a Dvorak layout (which I use) that can generate the exact same set of extended-ASCII characters as the U.S. layout. If you need any of the even-more-extended Unicode characters, though, you have to switch your keyboard and brain back into QWERTY mode, which blows.

So on the extremely off chance that you type Dvorak and occasionally find yourself needing to spell "shōnen" correctly, you are now covered, courtesy me and Ukelele.

(Confidential to boopsce: Finite-state automatons are crazy. I was actually able to get this done using only the "Swap Key..." command, so I didn't have to mess with the actual chains of dead keys, but the amount of stuff that was possible in there blows my little mind.)

Comments

[boopsce.livejournal.com]

I am highly amused by the image of a stark raving mad FSA. I'm tempted to draw an automaton that accepts Ia+! but, alas, I am far too lazy.

[boopsce.livejournal.com]

[roadrunnertwice]

Now, see, I didn't learn the basics well enough to know what the hell I'm looking at here. But I did see a way to make a keyboard that functioned exactly like a normal one except that the Q key takes you down a rabbit hole containing the entirety of Unicode.

Just by way of an example. (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

[i-i-i-stutter.livejournal.com]

Found this when Googling for "Dvorak Extended" and I'm extremely thankful that you have made this layout. I was getting Ukelele and was about to start hacking together my own Dvorak Extended :D In short, thank you very much!

[roadrunnertwice]

Yaaay, I was hoping I'd meet someone else who could use this.

[i-i-i-stutter.livejournal.com]

Well, now you have :) By the way, do you know what it is that causes Ukelele-made keyboard layouts not work with certain applications properly (mainly in the keyboard shortcuts area, I've found)? And it seems like I cannot only use Dvorak Extended, but must have a "system" layout as well (Dvorak).

Perhaps the answer is in the manual, but I haven't delved that deeply into it. I just move the keys around :D

[roadrunnertwice]

No, no clue. It may just be that the added XML layouts are somehow given second-class status in the way they're loaded or interpreted; the built-in ones don't seem to exist as XML files anywhere on the disk, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're a slightly different thing.

Thank you

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for creating this. I just got my Mac two days ago (brand-new mac user here) and I was pretty annoyed when I found the U.S. Extended layout, but no Dvorak Extended... You saved me lots of grief by creating this. Hopefully Apple will put this in a future release.

Thanks again.
- Eric

Re: Thank you

[roadrunnertwice]

Hey, you're welcome!