Typing of the letter ß

[MatzeBob]

Hello Affinity team,

I use my Windows Laptop in a dual language setup with British English keyboard layout and English system, but secondary German language for occasional work in that language. Under normal conditions I am able to use almost exclusively the British layout, which is a huge time saver and comfort factor for my muscle memory, special characters like the Umlaute ä, ö, etc... can be written by "+vowel, and usually the sharp s, the ß, can be written by ctrl+alt+s, however this does not seem to work for publisher. Now I can either have the glyphes table open at all times, or manually switch to the German input layout via windows+space bar, both are less than optimal solutions. I was not able to find any function mapped to those keys and wonder, if it's possible to activate the standard British English keyboard hot key to give me back this letter while typing otherwise just fine.

On a side note: It would be favorable to have a complete list of all hot keys to scroll through, additional to the topic related overviews. This would make tracking down a certain key combination a bit easier

 

Thanks in advance for your time

 

Matze 

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

If you have a numeric keypad on your keyboard, then (with Numlock on?) you could also use Alt+0223 to get the lower-case sharp s.

Or you could type U+00df and press Alt+U (shortcut for Text > Toggle Unicode).

Other than that, I don't know how to do it other than via the Glyph Browser or the Windows International Keyboard, which you've already  mentioned.

[MatzeBob]

Thank you for your fast reply Walt! I am working on a laptop, and neither do I have a numpad, nor do I see this as an alternative. I am interested in understanding why the standard input I am used to from virtually any other software does not work in this case for no apparent reason. Maybe there is a hidden function preventing this for a (good?) reason, my brain needs clarification here   If this is an unnoticed or overlooked missing feature, I am happy to make Serif aware of it to ease the pain for other users facing the same big question marks in front of their inner eyes.

[Andy05]

On a German keyboard layout, the " ß" is the next key to the right of the "0" (zero) with no additional modifying keys (Shift/Crtl/alt) pressed. Might be worth a try.

[Alfred]

If you set up an autocorrect entry to replace ss with ß, pressing Ctrl+Z immediately after typing ss will undo the substitution where it isn’t wanted.

[Ali]

ALT+0223 on the numeric pad. Quick - been using it for well over 30 years.

[Andy05]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

If you set up an autocorrect entry to replace ss with ß, pressing Ctrl+Z immediately after typing ss will undo the substitution where it isn’t wanted.

Hm. That's not a good idea for a seamless workflow. There's a lot of "ss" to be found in German words. Far more than "ß".

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

Hm. That's not a good idea for a seamless workflow. There's a lot of "ss" to be found in German words. Far more than "ß".

Hmm. Not ideal, then. I only suggested it because the OP stated that manually switching to the German keyboard layout is less than optimal.

[Andy05]

2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

OP stated that manually switching to the German keyboard layout is less than optimal.

True. But depending on how much German text is needed for the design/layout, it still might be the best option. 

[Ali]

Just ignore me. I've only been typing in German for most if my life - what would I know?

[MatzeBob]

5 minutes ago, Ali said:

Just ignore me. I've only been typing in German for most if my life - what would I know?

I switched from German to British layout a few years ago working abroad, and now I'm stuck with it (also due to hardware layout). Actually used to painstakingly copy and paste individual characters or memorize the German layout "blind" on my keyboard for certain letters, till I discovered some of them by accident, and the special stuff like the € sign (ctrl+alt+5) by looking at my Surface virtual keyboard. I am grateful to all of you guys for your input, but everything exceeding three in a row pushed keys at my fingertips seems less than ideal. No hard feelings for Serif, just really wanna understand the reason why 🤔

[Alfred]

39 minutes ago, Ali said:

ALT+0223 on the numeric pad. Quick - been using it for well over 30 years.

 

9 minutes ago, Ali said:

Just ignore me. I've only been typing in German for most if my life - what would I know?

One teency weency problem with your suggestion in this particular case, Ali:

53 minutes ago, MatzeBob said:

Thank you for your fast reply Walt! I am working on a laptop, and neither do I have a numpad, nor do I see this as an alternative.

 

[kenmcd]

This depends on how the font is constructed.
Which short-cut keys work depends on what is in uni1E9E, and it may depend on OpenType features if the 1E9E is occupied by SS.

We had a long discussion about a similar issue here:

@MatzeBob What font are you using?

 

[MatzeBob]

8 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

This depends on how the font is constructed.
Which short-cut keys work depends on what is in uni1E9E, and it may depend on OpenType features if the 1E9E is occupied by SS.

We had a long discussion about a similar issue here:

@MatzeBob What font are you using?

 

Seems we get somewhere closer, tried it with Arial, Chalet, Avenir LT Std, Calibri, Century Gothic, Helvetica Neue, GeoSlab703 Md BT. Basically went through some random ones as I suspected missing characters in the fonts, but works by copy and paste or per glyph table.

[kenmcd]

4 minutes ago, MatzeBob said:

Seems we get somewhere closer, tried it with Arial, Chalet, Avenir LT Std, Calibri, Century Gothic, Helvetica Neue, GeoSlab703 Md BT. Basically went through some random ones as I suspected missing characters in the fonts, but works by copy and paste or per glyph table.

I just realized you are discussing the lowercase ß, not the uppercase as in the other discussion.
So give me a minute to look at those fonts ... but that may not be the issue.

[kenmcd]

After doing a better job of reading this entire thread, and doing some testing myself...
Not an issue with the fonts (as the lowercase is usually not an issue).
Could not get any keyboard combination to work on my laptop either.
Appears to be an Affinity issue.

A work-around which may work for you.
I made an Auto-Correct entry.
Replace: [b]
With: ß

Worked, and seems to be a simple work-around that can be typed quickly.

[MatzeBob]

This actually seems a very good workaround idea, thanks man, I will set it up tomorrow morning

[lacerto]

Yet another option would be using a free utility like AutoHotkey and create scripts to temporarily turn on key mappings:

The following script would map Alt+S to produce double s (Eszett):

#NoEnv
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%
!sc01F::Send, {ASC 0223} ; Alt+S, Eszett

The same utility can be used to make regular numeric keys behave as numpad numeric keys so that they can be used with the Alt key to produce special characters on computers that do not have physical numeric keypad.

!1::Numpad1
!2::Numpad2
!3::Numpad3
!4::Numpad4
!5::Numpad5
!6::Numpad6
!7::Numpad7
!8::Numpad8
!9::Numpad9
!0::Numpad0

Scripts can be turned on and off from within the Taskbar.

[joe_l]

8 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

the lowercase ß, not the uppercase

For my taste an uppercase ß is a miserable design failure, that I would never use, because any uppercase ß looks unnatural to me (yes, I am too old). Like writing the recommended Delfin instead of Delphin. You would agree if you have to write Dolfin instead of Dolphin.

[Ali]

9 hours ago, Alfred said:

One teency weency problem with your suggestion in this particular case, Ali:

10 hours ago, MatzeBob said:

Thank you for your fast reply Walt! I am working on a laptop, and neither do I have a numpad, nor do I see this as an alternative.

I missed that ... 🙄

[Dan C]

Hi @MatzeBob,

Thanks for your report! I've had a look online and most articles referring to this keyboard shortcut are when using the English US International'' keyboard layout.

I have followed the steps found below, and then used ALT GR + S, which correctly adds the 'ß' character both here in Chrome & within Affinity.

https://resources.german.lsa.umich.edu/schreiben/umlaute/#:~:text=Go to Settings,at SUNY Cortland

If you set this keyboard language on your laptop, does this now work as expected for you please?

[MatzeBob]

50 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Hi @MatzeBob,

Thanks for your report! I've had a look online and most articles referring to this keyboard shortcut are when using the English US International'' keyboard layout.

I have followed the steps found below, and then used ALT GR + S, which correctly adds the 'ß' character both here in Chrome & within Affinity.

https://resources.german.lsa.umich.edu/schreiben/umlaute/#:~:text=Go to Settings,at SUNY Cortland

If you set this keyboard language on your laptop, does this now work as expected for you please?

Hey Dan, this is not really an option, as it takes away a major set of different characters in my usage, including the euro sign, umlaute, and other stuff. At this moment I'm mostly covered by the autocorrect option of putting my s into brackets. [s] is an acceptable workaround for the time being.

[MatzeBob]

On 1/14/2022 at 1:30 PM, Dan C said:

Hi @MatzeBob,

Thanks for your report! I've had a look online and most articles referring to this keyboard shortcut are when using the English US International'' keyboard layout.

I have followed the steps found below, and then used ALT GR + S, which correctly adds the 'ß' character both here in Chrome & within Affinity.

https://resources.german.lsa.umich.edu/schreiben/umlaute/#:~:text=Go to Settings,at SUNY Cortland

If you set this keyboard language on your laptop, does this now work as expected for you please?

So, I got a little follow up, and maybe some clarification? for you Dan. I usually work on a Surface Book2 with its British layout, but Windows keeps adding occasional more keyboard layouts into my selection, sometimes pretty randomly (HK, Irish, US). Out of curiosity I connected a Logitech MX Keys which I usually use for 3D stuff with its NumPad, and Windows then decided upon British US International, which moved all my CTRL+Alt commands to Alt GR, but also enabled Alt GR+S=ß. Count me in as maximum confused, the moment I disconnect the MX Keys, the laptop switches back to CTRL+Alt scheme. Not sure this helps in any way for future questions along the way, but the way Windows handles layout choices with next to no notification seems to play into this.

 

Cheers

[Dan C]

Thanks for the clarification/further information here!

That's certainly strange behaviour, I've certainly seen Windows make some unexplained choices before and I can't see any exact documentation that covers when and why Windows would make these languages changes.

I'll absolutely bear this in mind for further reports of similar oddities with Windows keyboard languages, many thanks once again