Keyboard layouts for Windows: pan-iberian.

This keyboard layout has been designed to make it easy to type in any of the languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula (aragonese, aranese, asturian, basque, catalan, extremaduran, galician, leonese, mirandese, portuguese and spanish); also, it procures that characters often used by programmers are reasonably easy to type (and that all of them are available...).

This is an intended replacement for 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 ~.

This layout can also be used to type in other european languages, but is not as complete or as comfortable as the latin american extended one: in it, a compromise is established between the needs of a pan-iberian and a pan-european layout; in this one the needs of the former always outrank the needs of the latter (for example, in said layout the characters Ḥ and Ḷ [used in asturian] must be typed using dead keys [AltGr‑period+H and AltGr‑period+L]; here, they have direct keystrokes [AltGr‑H and AltGr‑L] (the latter displaces the £ character)).

The layout.

This is the pan-iberian layout:

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).

  For the same reason, the ¤ character can also be typed with the combinations AltGr‑4+4 and AltGr‑4+space.

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

  1. To use the two-char sequence L· (a regular L followed by an interpunct (punt volat).

  2. To use the single character Ŀ, assigned to the AltGr‑· keystroke.

  Catalan-language recommendations state that the first method is the preferred one, because, among other reasons, the interpunct must be replaced by a dash if the word is split at that point between two lines; for example, the phrase "Jaume va col·locar la seva col·lecció de roques paral·lela al col·legi." formatted at 17 characters per line, must be written like this:

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

  Obviously, this can't be correctly done using the Ŀ/ŀ characters. They have been included in this layout anyway to ease the handling and correction of any text files that use them. As a general rule, they should be considered only as compatibility characters for the old ISO/IEC 6937 standard.

• 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 character 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. In the author's opinion, this is extremely comfortable.

• The character µ (micro, U+00b5) is not the same one as the greek letter μ (lowercase mu, U+03bc).

• The character ␢ (U+2422) is the "blank" symbol, not the letter ƀ (b with stroke, U+0180).

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 details each of the defined diacritic signs (do notice that all the character combinations defined in Unicode are included, even if they aren't necessary). 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 red.

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 letters.

As a design requirement, 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 and Ŀ –also Æ and Œ– have them, and the rest must be typed in with the AltGr‑Z dead key.

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.

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

Greek alphabet.

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

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

Currency.

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

Notes:

• No combination is defined for the $ character, as it's deemed unnecessary.
• The J, U and X keystroke combinations are reserved for other potential currency symbols.
• The combinations AltGr‑4+Ç and AltGr‑4+ç aren't used to avoid problems when using a 101/104-key keyboard (see the note about this in the section below).
• The frequently used currency symbols (peseta, euro, yen and sterling pound have direct keystrokes (AltGr‑W, AltGr‑E, AltGr‑Y and AltGr‑U, respectively).

Version history.

The current version of this layout is 1.2, dated july/2009. The differences from the previous version (1.1) are:

• 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 guillemets 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 postions AltGr‑8, AltGr‑9 and AltGr‑0.

Version 1.1 of this layout, dated april/2009, has the following differences from the previous version (1.0, dated february/2009) are:

• 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 dead key combinations that produced them have been removed (do notice that AltGr‑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.

• 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 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).

Two separate pages contain versions 1.0 and 1.1 of this layout.

The installer.

This layout can be installed on Windows operating systems (2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista) using the pan-iberian layout installer.

All rights reserved by Miguel Farah. Last update: 22/07/2009.

[castellano] - [english]

Keyboard layouts for Windows.