Keyboard layouts for Windows: Pan-Iberian.

This keyboard layout has been designed with the following goals in mind:

1. To allow and optimize writing in any of the languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula (Aragonese, Aranese, Asturian, Basque, Catalan, Extremaduran, Galician, Leonese, Mirandese, Portuguese and Spanish).

2. To ensure the characters that are routinely used by programmers are reasonably easy to type (and to ensure all of them are available...).

3. To allow but not necessarily optimize writing in the rest of the European languages that use a Latin-derived alphabet; the needs of the Peninsular languages have higher priority than the needs of the rest of the European languages.

4. To include characters and symbols that are (or should be) frequently used, but aren't available in any highly used keyboard layout.

This is an intended replacement of the "Spanish" and "Spanish variation" layouts that are bundled in Windows. In the author's opinion, these were constructed mainly to type in Spanish, with some concessions for the Catalan language (facilitating, but not optimizing, the act of typing in it), and forgetting to take into account other languages and the needs of programmers, making it difficult to type characters as ^ and `, and even omitting some as ~.

The layout.

This is the Pan-Iberian layout:

ATTENTION: the keystrokes AltGr‑Shift‑F/AltGr‑Shift‑f, AltGr‑Shift‑G/AltGr‑Shift‑g and AltGr‑Shift‑Y/AltGr‑Shift‑y are clipped in the last image. These correspond to the smileys ಠ_ಠ (unamused), ಥ﹏ಥ (crying) and ◉_◉ (surprised). Note they all include a space (' ') at the beginning, for the user's convenience.

General notes.

• The letter C with cedilla (Ç/ç) is immediately to the left of the Z key. It's also assigned to the AltGr‑C and AltGr‑c keystrokes, to avoid problems if the user has a 101/104-key keyboard (such as the ones used in the United States of America).

  The ¤ character suffers the same issue; to solve it, the currency symbols dead key provides several alternate mechanisms to type it.

• There are two different ways of typing Catalan's geminate L (L geminada):

  1. With a two-char sequence L· or l· (a regular L/l followed by an interpunct [punt volat]).

  2. With a single character Ŀ or ŀ.

  Catalan-language recommendations state the first method is the preferred one, because, among other reasons, the interpunct must be replaced by a dash should the word be split at that point between two lines; for example, the phrase "Guifré va col·locar la seva col·lecció de roques paral·lela al col·legi." formatted at 18 characters per line, must be written like this:

      Guifré va col-
      locar la seva col-
      lecció de roques
      paral·lela al col-
      legi.

  Obviously, this can't be correctly done with the second method, so the first one must be used. In spite of that, to allow handling (and correcting) preexisting text files (coded with the old ISO/IEC 6937 standard) that use the Ŀ/ŀ characters, they've been included in the extended Latin alphabet dead key.

• The keystrokes AltGr‑J/AltGr‑j and AltGr‑K/AltGr‑k are assigned, respectively, to the characters Æ/æ and Œ/œ, used in French (and other languages as well). They're included, even though they aren't used in any Peninsular language, so Catalan-speakers from Catalunya Nord will be able to type in French as comfortably as in Catalan.

• All the characters assigned correspond to the precomposed Unicode code points. If a particular combination doesn't have a precomposed character, this layout doesn't include it and must be typed with two characters (for example, n̈ [n with diaeresis] must be composed with U+004e and U+0308).

• Some needed characters aren't defined (yet) in Unicode, so they can't be included:

  • c trencada (NO A LA CEDILLA! Tranqueu la c.).
  • ą̊ [a with ring and ogonek, used in Elfdalian.
  • a̋ [a with double acute accent], used in Slovak.
  • n̈ [n with diaeresis], used in Malagasy (and by the band Spin̈al Tap).
  • y̨ [y with ogonek], used in Elfdalian.

• Several dead key combinations are paired with the resulting character, to avoid bothersome typing mistakes. For example, if the user mistakenly types AltGr‑4+AltGr‑E instead of AltGr‑4+E, the result will be € instead of ¤€. In the same fashion, ~+Ñ will deliver Ñ, et cetera.

• The character ␢ (U+2422) is the "blank" symbol, not the letter ƀ (lowercase b with stroke, U+0180). NOTE: the latter letter is not included in this keyboard layout, as no current European language uses it.

• Don't confuse the † typographic symbol (dagger, U+2020, available at AltGr‑D) with the symbol ✝ (latin cross, U+271d, available at AltGr‑Shift‑T).

  Also, don't confuse the × symbol (multiplication sign, U+00d7, available at AltGr‑8) with the letter x (lowercase x).

  Finally, don't confuse the ° symbol (degree, available at AltGr‑G) with the º symbol (masculine ordinal indicator, available at AltGr‑O and AltGr‑Shift‑O), as they mean different things: "3°" is "three degrees", while "3º" means "third".

Dead keys.

Dead keys are used mainly to type diacritic signs. The ones used in Peninsular languages have base keys assigned to them (except for the diaeresis, which had to be displaced in favor of the apostrophe sign ('), as it's used with higher frequency [specially in Catalan]).

Diacritic signs.

This table lists each of the defined diacritic signs (do notice that all the character combinations defined in Unicode are included, even if they aren't necessary in any Peninsular language). The diacritic signs and characters that are already defined in the "Latin American", "Portuguese", "Portuguese (Brazilian ABNT)", "Spanish" and "Spanish variation" layouts are marked in brown.

Notes:

1. Unicode does not define the uppercase forms of the letters ǰ, ẗ, ẘ and ẙ.

2. The tilde sign is not defined in the Latin American layout (but is on the other four).

3. The "Spanish variation" layout doesn't define the Ý character, but the other four do so, including its direct predecessor, the "Spanish" layout.

The alert reader will notice that two diacritic signs in the Latin American Extended layout aren't present here:

• The underdot is not included because it's used only in one European language: Asturian, which has the letters Ḥ and Ḷ; these have their own direct keystrokes.
• The bar or stroke sign actually corresponds to a collection of different barred letters that aren't necessarily related; the ones used in European languages have been added to the AltGr‑Z dead key (details on the section below).

Extended Latin alphabet.

By design, no extended letter almost none of the extended letters have a direct AltGr keystroke if they're not used in a Peninsular language - due to this, only the letters Ç, Ḥ, Ḷ, Æ and Œ have them; the rest (including Ŀ) must be typed in with the AltGr‑Z and AltGr‑Shift‑Z dead keys.

Notes:

• It's not possible to use two dead keys one after the other; this makes it necessary to assign combinations for Ǻ/ǻ, Ǿ/ǿ and Ǯ/ǯ. This also means that this layout can't be used to type properly in Lithuanian, as the language makes heavy use of letters with two diacritics (even three, in a few cases).

• The German letter eszett (ß) [not to be confused with the Greek letter beta (β)] has, since Unicode version 5.1, an uppercase form (ẞ).

• Do not confuse the letters eth (Ð/ð) [used in Icelandic] and D with stroke (Đ/đ) [used in South Slavic languages]. The former is typed in with AltGr‑Z+V, while the latter is assigned to AltGr‑Z+D.

• The Turkish alphabet and its derivatives have two distinct i letters: dotted (İ/i) and dotless (I/ı). In this layout, ı is typed in using AltGr‑Z+i, and İ is typed in using AltGr‑Z+I.

• The "long s" letter (ſ ) is located, for want of a better place, at AltGr‑Z+f. Since it doesn't (and never will) have an uppercase form, the keystroke combination AltGr‑Z+F will return a plain S.

• The dead key AltGr‑Z defines three sets of opening and closing quotation marks [unlike "  (U+0022) and ' (U+0027), which are directionless].

  • The combinations AltGr‑Z+1, AltGr‑Z+2, AltGr‑Z+3 and AltGr‑Z+4 define, respectively, the characters ‟  (U+201f), „  (U+201e), “  (U+201c) and ”  (U+201d), which correspond to double quotes. These are used in distinct ways, according to the customs of different countries or domains:

    • ‟reflex” (U+201f and U+201d)
    • „German“ (U+201e and U+201c)
    • „Polish” (U+201e and U+201d)
    • “English” (U+201c and U+201d)
    • ”Finnish” (U+201d and U+201d)

  • The combinations AltGr‑Z+6 and AltGr‑Z+7 define, respectively, the characters ‹  (U+2039) and ›  (U+203a), corresponding to single angular quotes (as opposed to double angular quotes: «  and » , located at AltGr‑6 and AltGr‑7, respectively). Those two shouldn't be confused with the characters <  and >  ("less than" and "greater than", respectively).

  • The combinations AltGr‑Z+9, AltGr‑Z+0, AltGr‑Z+? and AltGr‑Z+! define, respectively, the characters ‛  (U+201b), ‚  (U+201a), ‘  (U+2018) and ’  (U+2019), which correspond to single quotes. These are used in distinct ways, according to the customs of different countries or domains:

    • ‛reflex’ (U+201b and U+2019)
    • ‚German‘ (U+201a and U+2018)
    • ‚Polish’ (U+201a and U+2019)
    • ‘English’ (U+2018 and U+2019)
    • ’Finnish’ (U+2019 and U+2019)

    Note: don't confuse the single quote (U+201a: ‚ ) with the comma (U+002c: , ).

Greek alphabet.

The dead key AltGr‑X can be used to type the letters of the Greek alphabet (both upper and lowercase forms), although neither monotonic nor polytonic diacritic signs are supported. The available keystrokes follow the regular Greek layout.

Do not confuse the character Σ (Greek letter uppercase sigma, U+03a3) with the n-ary summation symbol (∑, U+2211), available at AltGr‑Shift‑S.

Note: the AltGr‑Shift‑X keystroke is not assigned; it's reserved for a possible future expansion.

Currency symbols.

The AltGr‑4 dead key is used to type several currency symbols.

The following table contains detailed information for each of these symbols.

Notes:

• No combination is defined for the $ character, as it's deemed entirely unnecessary. No, seriously.

• It's not a good idea to assign a currency symbol to the keystroke combinations AltGr‑4+Ç and AltGr‑4+ç, because they won't be accessible on a 101/104-key keyboard; for comfort, they're (redundantly) assigned the generic currency symbol.

• The frequently used currency symbols (peseta, euro, yen, pound sterling and generic currency symbol) have direct keystrokes of their own (AltGr‑W, AltGr‑E, AltGr‑Y, AltGr‑U and AltGr‑Ç, respectively). Keystroke combinations are assigned to each of them to avoid annoying typing errors like ¤£.

• This dead key's capacity is almost exhausted. If new currency symbols keep being added to Unicode (the nordic mark sign, U+20BB, is rather advanced in Unicode's Proposed New Characters: Pipeline Table; it's possible the Azerbaijani manat will follow), it'll be necessary to partition it in two.

Miscellaneous symbols.

The dead key AltGr‑M allows typing certain graphic, mathematical and typographic symbols.

Notes:

• The symbols ツ and Я are actually letters (the letter TU from the katakana alphabet and the uppercase letter YA from the Cyrillic one, respectively). They're included here due to their usage as symbols because of their looks.

• Some of the characters and symbols in this dead key look like other ones available elsewhere in this keyboard layout, and should not be confused:

  The character or symbol...	... might be confused with...	... which is located at...
  µ (micro, U+00b5)	μ (Greek letter lowercase mu, U+03bc)	AltGr‑X+m.
  • (bullet [item], U+2022)	· (interpunct or punt volat, U+00b7)	base key immediately to the left of the 1 key.
  ∅ (empty set, U+2205)	Ø (Latin letter uppercase O with stroke, U+00d8)	AltGr‑Z+O.
  ∆ (increment, U+2206)	Δ (Greek letter uppercase delta, U+0394)	AltGr‑X+D.
  ♥ (black heart suit, U+2665)	❤ (heavy black heart, U+2764)	AltGr‑Shift‑I/AltGr‑Shift‑i.

Version history.

• Version 1.0, dated february 2009: initial version.

• Version 1.1, dated april 2009. Contains the following changes:

  • The single-character geminate L has been added (it had been left out in version 1.0).

  • Direct keystrokes are assigned for the letters Æ and Œ; the AltGr‑Z dead key combinations that produced them have been removed (do notice that AltGr‑Z+space now produces Ƶ instead of æ).

  • The "blank" symbol and the currency symbols corresponding to the ECU, the pfennig and the austral have been added (those three had also been left out in version 1.0).

  • The character ¤ can be typed with AltGr‑Shift‑Ç in addition to AltGr‑Ç (just like in the Latin American extended layout).

  • The characters ∆, •, ♂ and ♀ have been removed (they would be reinstated in version 2.0).

  • Some keystroke assignments have been modified to accommodate these changes and to improve the accessibility of several frequently used characters:

    • The parentheses are now located only in Shift‑9 and Shift‑0 (they used to be also in AltGr‑9 and AltGr‑0).
    • The angular quotes (guillemets) have been moved from AltGr‑? and AltGr‑! to AltGr‑9 and AltGr‑0.
    • The square brackets have been moved from AltGr‑. and AltGr‑' to AltGr‑? and AltGr‑!.
    • The underscore (_) has been moved from AltGr‑, to AltGr‑'.
    • The hash sign (#) has been moved from AltGr‑· and AltGr‑K to AltGr‑..
    • The number sign (№) has been moved from AltGr‑Shift‑· to AltGr‑N.
    • The micro sign (µ) has been moved from AltGr‑N to AltGr‑,.
    • The characters ♪ y ♫ have been moved from AltGr‑Shift‑J and AltGr‑Shift‑K to AltGr‑Shift‑N and AltGr‑Shift‑M, respectively.
    • The letters Ǻ (a with ring and acute accent), Ʒ (ezh) and Ǯ (ezh with caron) have been moved, respectively, from AltGr‑Z+X, AltGr‑Z+Y and AltGr‑Z+U to AltGr‑Z+Q (previously used for the letter Æ), AltGr‑Z+X and AltGr‑Z+C (previously used for the letter Œ).

• Version 1.2, dated july 2009. Contains the following changes:

  • Use tests showed that Iberian and Latin American users are so used to having the parentheses at the positions Shift‑8 and Shift‑9 that it's not worth the effort of having assigned them to their primitive location (Shift‑9 and Shift‑0). Having assigned the = character to Shift‑8, to the left of the parentheses, makes things worse: in the Spanish, Latin American and Portuguese keyboard layouts, it's located at their right. It was decided to follow the usage of these three layouts, assigning the three characters to the same locations they all have.

  • Use tests also showed that it's better to move the angular quotes to the AltGr‑6 and AltGr‑7 positions, since they'll now reside in the same keys as the less than (<) and greater than (>) symbols (located at Shift‑6 and Shift‑7).

  • Due to the previous change, the ×, ÷ and ¬ characters are moved, respectively, to the positions AltGr‑8, AltGr‑9 and AltGr‑0.

• Version 2.0, dated november 2012. Contains the following changes:

  • The AltGr‑0 key now contains the symbol ≠, displacing ¬.

  • The AltGr‑· and AltGr‑Shift‑· keys now contain, respectively, ¬ and №, displacing ŀ/Ŀ (with this change, № returns to the location it had in version 1.0 of this keyboard layout).

  • AltGr‑M now is a dead key, dedicated to miscellaneous symbols (most of those it contains are new). Displaces the character ± (plus/minus, U+00b1) to the keystroke combination AltGr‑,, which in turn displaces the character µ (micro, U+00b5), which ends up within the AltGr‑M dead key.

    With this in mind, and to avoid typing problems, the keystroke AltGr‑Shift‑M now is entirely unassigned.

  • AltGr‑N and AltGr‑Shift‑N are now assigned to the superscript n letter (ⁿ, U+207f).

  • Several currency symbols have been added to the AltGr‑4 dead key; a few of the preexisting ones have been moved around, to give them a better location and/or accomodate the new ones:

    • AltGr‑4+A/AltGr‑4+a now contains the Armenian dram (֏) [new]; displaces the Iranian rial, (﷼) which is now located at AltGr‑4+1.
    • AltGr‑4+T/AltGr‑4+t now contains the Turkish lira (₺) [new], which displaces the Mongolian tugrik.
      AltGr‑4+V/AltGr‑4+v now contains the Mongolian tugrik (₮), which displaces the Ghanaian cedi.
      AltGr‑4+C/AltGr‑4+c now contains the Ghanaian cedi (₵), which displaces the (American) dollar cent.
      AltGr‑4+4 now contains the (American) dollar cent (¢).
    • Several other currency symbols are added for the first time:
      AltGr‑4+J/AltGr‑4+j now contains the Kazakhstani tenge (₸).
      AltGr‑4+U/AltGr‑4+u now contains the Indian rupee (₹).
      AltGr‑4+X/AltGr‑4+x now contains the Cambodian riel (៛).
      AltGr‑4+2 now contains the Afghan afghani (؋).
      AltGr‑4+6 now contains the spesmilo (₷).
      AltGr‑4+7 now contains the Bangladeshi taka (৳).
      
    • For the user's convenience, the generic currency symbol (¤) is assigned to several other keystroke combinations: AltGr‑4+Ç, AltGr‑4+ç, AltGr‑4+,, AltGr‑Shift‑4+,, AltGr‑4+., AltGr‑Shift‑4+., AltGr‑4+', AltGr‑Shift‑4+', AltGr‑4+· and AltGr‑Shift‑4+·.

  • Several letters and opening and closing quotation mark sets have been added to the AltGr‑Z (extended Latin alphabet) dead key:

    • To ease the writing of certain texts written in old germanic languages, the letters wynn (Ƿ/ƿ) and yogh (Ȝ/ȝ) have been assigned, respectively, to AltGr‑Z+W/AltGr‑Z+w and AltGr‑Z+Y/AltGr‑Z+y.
    • To ease the writing of certain texts written in old Spanish (and other languages as well), the long s letter (ſ ) has been assigned to AltGr‑Z+f. To compensate the nonexistence of an "uppercase long S", the keystroke combination AltGr‑Z+F will return a plain S.
    • Three quotation mark sets: double (‟ „ “ ”), single (‛ ‚ ‘ ’) and single angular (‹ ›) have been added to combinations in the keyboard's first row.

  • Besides the previous changes, the characters Ŀ/ŀ have been moved from AltGr‑Shift‑·/AltGr‑· to AltGr‑Z+Ñ/AltGr‑Z+ñ.

    The characters Å/å, available at AltGr‑Shift‑~+A/AltGr‑Shift‑~+a, were assigned (in an unnecesarily redundant fashion) to AltGr‑Z+A/AltGr‑Z+a. Said characters have been eliminated from the latter combinations, which now have the related characters Ǻ/ǻ; the previous combinations for those two (AltGr‑Z+Q/AltGr‑Z+q) are now unassigned.

  • AltGr‑Shift‑Z is a new dead key, dedicated to digraphs in the extended Latin alphabet; it contains the digraphs IJ/ij (used in Dutch) and DZ/Dz/dz, DŽ/Dž/dž, LJ/Lj/lj and NJ/Nj/nj (used in several South Slavic languages).

  • Several of the symbols previously available at AltGr‑Shift (♠, ♡, ♢, ♣, ♤, ♥, ♦, ♧, ⇐, ⇑, ⇒, ⇓, ♪ and ♫) are moved to the AltGr‑M dead key. The vacated keystrokes are now occupied by several new symbols (░, ▒, ▓, █, ✝, ℆, ❤, ∑ and ∂) and three smileys (ಠ_ಠ, ಥ﹏ಥ and ◉_◉), also new.

The installer.

This layout can be installed on Windows operating systems (2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, 7 and 8) using the Pan-Iberian layout installer.

All rights reserved by Miguel Farah. Last update: 19/12/2012.

[castellano] - [english]

Keyboard layouts for Windows.