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If I use the quote key, nothing shows up until I hit it a second time or press space. If I hit it a second time, it types two quotes.

I want to be able to use Swedish letters with the AltGr key, and I need US international keyboard on to do that, but I also need to type single quotes for programming. I can switch between keyboards using Ctr+Shift, but that's a silly way to do things, isn't it?

Ideas?

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  • '+" " should do it... (single quote then space)
    – soandos
    Aug 10, 2011 at 4:15

3 Answers 3

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As an American programmer living in Sweden, I've encountered pretty much exactly the same problem when I got this laptop. The issue is called "dead keys" and is intended to allow you to type, e.g., ä by pressing "a rather than AltGr-q. Fortunately, I was able to find some quick and simple instructions online for how to create a US International Keyboard Layout without Dead Keys for Microsoft Windows. It works great for pretty much everything. (The one exception is gaming, but, then, the DirectX input layer seems to have issues with anything other than plain US English keyboards, so this is no surprise. Switching keyboard layout to US English helps some with this, but it's still far from perfect.)

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The alternative -- depending on how often you use diacritics -- is to print out and tape up a list of alt characters, and then switch to the US default keyboard layout. This solution is massively cumbersome if you frequently use Swedish, but is good enough for people who work mostly in English but use the occasional diacritic character.

See: http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/ALTchrc.html ..although this is a comprehensive list that you'd want to pare down.

More expensively, you could buy a gaming keyboard with a macro pad or a standalone macro pad, something like:

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/sidewinder-x6-keyboard or ht(REMOVE)tp://www.xkeys.com/xkeys.php

(have never used either of those myself, though I know gamers tend to like the sidewinder well enough.)

...and assign all the macros keys to the alt-key combinations you use (that is, assign G1 to alt+160 = á, shift+G1 to alt+0193 = Á, ctrl/alt+G1 to something else, etc). Then buy an international keyboard sticker set, and stick the appropriate stickers onto the macro keys to remind you what key does what. Then you can use the US default keyboard layout with the correct quote key functioning, while still typing your Swedish letters through the macro keys.

Probably easier to train yourself to hit the spacebar or continue using your keyboard swap workaround.

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You can make Ctrl-Shift a lot less annoying by replacing it with Left Alt-Shift, which is much less likely to be accidentally pressed.

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  • L_Alt + Shift is also used to switch between input languages. So people with multiple languages can't do this.
    – jiggunjer
    Jun 21, 2016 at 7:33

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