Latin Extended Text Input

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I use a customised keyboard for typing extended characters needed for Pāli words like Satipaṭḥāna. 

 

I designed it for PagePlus based on the UK International keyboard for Windows using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. 

 

The keyboard works just fine in PagePlus and all other Windows applications, including the Vivaldi browser that I am using to type this post.

 

When I try to use it in Affinity Designer for windows, it can type letters with dot below using the dead key (Ctrl + Alt + Period) followed by the consonant to type ḍḥḷṃṇṛṣṭ or ḌḶḤṂṆṢṚṬ. However, the first attempt does not always take. 

 

However, I am unable to use the dead key for typing vowels with macron accents (Underscore _) followed by the vowel to type āēīōū or ĀĒĪŌŪ and ṝ Ṝ 

 

If I attempt this in Affinity Designer for Windows, I only ever get an underscore character _ and further attempts lead to a crash. 

 

I did not see any crash reporter. AD just disappeared. 

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The same problem exists for typing letters with cedilla accent like çḑşţ or ÇḐŞŢ etc. Typing the dead key (Ctrl + Alt + Comma) does nothing, and typing the consonant just types the regular consonant.

 

The dead key for caron (hachek) works as expected: so I can use Ctrl + Alt + 6 to type ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ without difficulty.

 

However the dead key for circumflex (^) does not work. I cannot type â ê î ô û as I always get just the caret sign.

 

The dead key for diaeresis (Ctrl + Alt + 2) works fine so I can type ä ë ï ö ü or Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü and also ṅ and Ṅ, which make use of the same dead key. 

 

The dead key for tilde (~) works as expected to type ã õ ñ or Ã Õ Ñ 

 

The shortcut for the Euro sign (Ctrl + Alt + 4) also fails to produce anything at all. Likewise, the shortcuts for Lira ₤ (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + 3), and cent ¢ (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + 4) also do nothing, and the dead key for áééóú (Ctrl + Alt + Apostrophe) is also ineffectual. 

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Dead keys for grave (`)and acute (¬) also do not work, nor does the dead key for ring accent (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + @) for å Å 

[Sean P]

Thanks for that Pesala,

I've tried your keyboard and found for me that pretty much all Dead Keys were failing. The only ones that I could get to work was Ctrl+Alt+6 to display the hachek (but this then failed after 5-6 times). Unfortunately I wasn't able to reproduce the crash you were getting but hopefully when this gets fixed it will also stop the crashing.

I also noticed that symbols from ANSI code pages were also failing so using Alt+169 didn't display as ©. I've also reported this to the developers.

[Chris B]

 

 

When I try to use it in Affinity Designer for windows, it can type letters with dot below using the dead key (Ctrl + Alt + Period) followed by the consonant to type ḍḥḷṃṇṛṣṭ or ḌḶḤṂṆṢṚṬ. However, the first attempt does not always take. 

 

 

I've also noticed that the first attempt doesn't always work. Odd.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Thanks for the feedback guys. 

 

 

Is there any other easy method for inserting extended characters like the Insert Symbol dialogue of PagePlus? 

 

Windows Character Map is not very user-friendly. 

[Guest Arun Sarkar]

Plus Range works with IME for Indic language software (e.g Keyman) but Affinity Designer does not.