How to reproduce the behavior of Mac OS X's dead keys on Windows 7?

Question

I'm French, but I've chosen to take a QWERTY keyboard for my MacBook Pro for many reasons:

• first of all, the AZERTY keyboard is not at all ergonomic because it has no numeric keypad, and I must use MAJ or CAPS LOCK to access to the numeric keys ;
• secondly, I've bought this mac for development ; and chars {, }, etc., are not directly accessible on the Apple AZERTY keyboard
• the last thing is that: the diacritics are VERY easy to produce on an Apple keyboard with Mac OS X : ⎇ + c for a ç, for example, and many dead keys easy to use (e.g. ⎇ + e, then e give you an é.

So, I have no difficulties to write in my native language with this keyboard under Mac OS X.

BUT, when I boot on Windows 7's Boot Camp partition, or when I use applications from it through VMware Unity, it is no longer the same comfort!

Without numeric keypad, it's impossible to use it for produce specials characters (e.g.: Alt + 0231 for the ç)

I've tried many solutions, like auto replacement in Microsoft Office (e.g.: ,,c being replaced by ç), but for all my diacritics, I must type a space, then a back space before the replacement work.
I've also tried third party software, as Texter, but it is very buggy and don't work properly (or don't work at all) in many case!

So, is there a solution somewhere, to have this Mac OS X's nice and comfortable way of producing diacritics for Windows 7?

Answer 1

The closest I've found this far is at http://rabbe.tumblr.com/post/23117297936/mac-us-keyboard-layout-for-windows.

EDIT: Disregard my comment about the missing modifiers for curly quotes. For some reason, I just had to reboot and then they worked.

Taken from the linked site…

No modifiers

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
q w e r t y u i o p [ ] \
a s d f g h j k l ; '
z x c v b n m , . /

Shift

~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ +
Q W E R T Y U I O P { } |
A S D F G H J K L : "
Z X C V B N M < > ?

Option

` ¡ ™ £ ¢ ∞ § ¶ • ª º – ≠
œ ∑ ´ ® † ¥ ¨ ˆ ø π “ ‘ «
å ß ∂ ƒ © ˙ ∆ ˚ ¬ … æ
Ω ≈ ç √ ∫ ˜ µ ≤ ≥ ÷

Option+Shift

` ⁄ € ‹ › fi fl ‡ ° · ‚ — ±
Œ „ ´ ‰ ˇ Á ¨ ˆ Ø ∏ ” ’ »
Å Í Î Ï ˝ Ó Ô  Ò Ú Æ
¸ ˛ Ç ◊ ı ˜ Â ¯ ˘ ¿

Answer 2

In the Region options in Control Panel, add the United States - International keyboard layout and enable the Language Bar. Select the keyboard layout using the button on the Language Bar, and you can then type 'c 'to produce a ç, for example. You may need to restart Windows (at minimum, you'll need to restart any running applications) for this to take effect.

There are other keyboard layouts that exhibit this behaviour, but I know the US-International layout does what you need.

Alternately, you can create/edit a keyboard layout using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator.