Author Topic: Best layout for Spanish/English (Read 4302 times)

Zet · « **on:** Thu, 02 June 2011, 22:04:34 »

Greetings Lady's and Gentleman's,

Well I come here in the seek of your help.

I'm from South America, and my mother language is Spanish, yeah. I don't know if one of you if from South America, or Spain here, and also has Spanish as his/her main language, anyways. At my work, I mostly write on English, since all my company's clients are on the US, but the communications between me and the development team is on Spanish, so I have to be ready to write in both languages.

On a side note, I also do a quite a few programing, mainly on html.

Now, that some of the restrictions have been placed, I want to let you all know, that I have a 104 key US layout keyboard, I was used to the 105 key Spanish traditional layout, but recently got my first mechanical keyboard with that layout. So it's a bit of a change there as for the layout goes.

Now to the main frame.

Since I'm changing layouts, partially, from the QWERTY Spanish traditional layout (105keys) to the QWERTY US layout (104keys), I thought it would be better instead of doing a little jump from one layout, do a bigger one, and pick another layout for me.
I type what I consider decent (66 WPM~) now, but I want to learn to touch type(currently I don't use my pinky or thumb fingers on neither hands), and change my layout to Dvorak or Colemak, or if theres a more adequate layout for this situation (spanish/english), have it a look.

I've already tried using AutoHotKey to make a few things easier, I know the basics, remapping keys and such...

If you feel you have an advice, or something, please, feel free to post here and let me know your thoughts.

Regards,
Zet

PS: I already tried out the http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/ since I got an advice here to try it out, but sadly, it doesn't recognize áéíóú or ñ (and I doubt it does ¿ also) which are totally vital for Spanish, since I like and do write with good orthography.

Tony · « **Reply #1 on:** Thu, 02 June 2011, 23:38:24 »

My language also have áéíóú àèìòù but we use a keyboard hook software and type as ->á for example. To turn to English typing it uses a hotkey. Does Spanish have any similar software?

Zet · « **Reply #2 on:** Thu, 02 June 2011, 23:55:49 »

Hi Tony,

Well on the spanish layout you have the ñ beside the l and beside it you have the ´ mod, which you press before a to get á and the others, and if you press lets say p after it, you get ´p

Right now I'm using the US-International layout, which allows you to get the ¿ making alt gr+/ and the á and others by pressing the ' before the vocals and almost forgot about the ¡ which looks like an i but it's a upside down !(with alt gr +1)

Tony · « **Reply #3 on:** Fri, 03 June 2011, 02:31:46 »

For worst cases when you don't want to change your keyboard config to Spanish, you can always type Spanish accents with Alt-numpad numbers

* á = Alt + 0225
* é = Alt + 0233
* í = Alt + 0237
* ó = Alt + 0243
* ú = Alt + 0250
* ñ = Alt + 0241
* ü = Alt + 0252

* ¡ = Alt + 0161
* ¿ Alt + 0191

Zet · « **Reply #4 on:** Fri, 03 June 2011, 08:08:57 »

Yes but that would be totally a waste of time don't you think dear Tony? ;( instead of that I rather stay with spanish layout and make a script with AHK to make the symbols I can't due the missing key.

Tony · « **Reply #5 on:** Fri, 03 June 2011, 09:24:33 »

That's a viable solution.

My experience is that AHK scripts cannot work when you type fast enough, around 50-60wpm.

hemflit · « **Reply #6 on:** Mon, 11 July 2011, 13:56:37 »

Why are you simply not turning on the Spanish layout in the OS while using the US-layout keyboard? By now you know by heart where all the keys are, it's not like you need to read from the keycaps to know where the Ñ is?

(Does the Spanish layout let you type <> without the left-corner key? Maybe AltGr+period, AltGr+comma?)

theferenc · « **Reply #7 on:** Mon, 11 July 2011, 14:59:53 »

What about US International? You mentioned that you're currently using it, but other than a desire to completely switch layouts, is there anything particularly wrong with it?

You could use something like AHK to add another layer to your keyboard, I think.

Though, one question I do have, why not just install both layouts, and switch between them with Control-Space. That's what I do with Chinese. It works pretty well.

The Solutor · « **Reply #8 on:** Mon, 11 July 2011, 15:17:07 »

Quote from: theferenc;378302

What about US International? You mentioned that you're currently using it, but other than a desire to completely switch layouts, is there anything particularly wrong with it?

US-international is hideous (not just for americans), at least in windows.

I did the UK like Ansi layout to overcome the problem

http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=The+Solutors+UK+like+ANSI+Keymap+easy+diacritical+with+the+ANSI+keyboards&highlight=uk-ansi

And someone else made a similar solution, following a different path

http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?6325-ANSI-Keyboard-with-US-International-Layout-OK&p=98337&viewfull=1#post98337

zareliman · « **Reply #9 on:** Sat, 15 October 2011, 23:51:07 »

I'm from latin america and I use an US layout keyboard with the US-Intl setting and it works perfectly. Básicamente se pueden escribir todos los acentos usando la tecla ' y con Alt Gr+n puedes escribir la ñ.

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Author Topic: Best layout for Spanish/English (Read 4302 times)