I use a Linux distro with kde, so I have a lot of customization available. I like trying other distros in VMs, but stuff like windows (no need to copy really kde is similar by default) and Mac is a pain in the ass to use that way. so, I want to know what your os does that you think I should copy using kde’s customization. I’m looking for Mac in particular (bc I haven’t used it before) but any OS or desktop environment is fair game.
Caps Lock remapped to compose. Much more useful, especially for those of us who sometimes need to type “other” letters, but prefer US dvorak keyboard layout.
While I agree with the general premise that Caps Lock is in a terrible place on standard US English keyboards – that’s prime real estate and people just don’t use it that much – I swap Caps Lock and Control and have Menu remapped to Compose. If you’re typing in English, you’re gonna use Control a lot more than Compose. If you use emacs, that’s doubly true. And that’s about where Compose has been on some keyboards.
what’s the compose key? never heard of it but any excuse to not waste a key on caps lock sounds great.
Allows you to do umlauts, accents on letters etc.
E.g., öšéå
to make é (as in pokémon) I do alt + 0233
That’s a Windows system, requires a numeric keypad, has been around for a long time. I don’t know what its coverage is, though, whether it can do any Unicode character.
kagis
Sounds like not, that Microsoft has its own mapping:
https://www.alt-codes.net/how_to_use_alt_codes/
Problem with the numeric entry systems is that they’re kind of a pain to remember. They work all right if you have a small number of symbols that you need to use frequently and can memorize them. But they’re less-handy if you’ve got a wider variety.
GTK-based apps (like, a bunch of Linux GUI apps) will let you do numeric entry of Unicode codepoints if you hit Control-Shift-U and then enter a Unicode codepoint.
Honestly, I’m kind of surprised that the open-source Android onscreen keyboards that I’ve seen don’t support user-configurable popup menus on keys with arbitary characters and text snippets, as it seems like an obvious thing to want to configure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
Works in X11 and Wayland.
Not as powerful as Emacs’s input methods, but it covers a lot of common cases.
Basically, hitting compose causes the next two keystrokes to “combine”. For example, / + o = ø, as well as the other letters that are useful to us with extra letters in the alphabet. In addition to that it provides a myriad of other characters such as copyright, trademark, just to name a few.