geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: jawwwwsh on Thu, 26 September 2013, 15:26:31
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So for my 2nd mechanical keyboard I want a nice TKL board, and I'm looking at a Keycool 87 US layout online. It's MUCH cheaper for me to buy a US layout board than a UK one, and was wondering if anyone knows if it would be possible to re map keys, replace keycaps, change to a different language setting within Win7 and turn the US layout board into a UK one??
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Not really sure why you'd want to do this, I find it much better to use / switch to the traditional US layout than convert it and what not.
But I'm assuming you just want the @ to be where the " are and vice versa? I'm sure there are a few other symbols that are in different places such as the ~ and # but I'll let you sort that out.
To do it within Windows 7 it's rather simple, do the following:
Control Panel > Regions and Languages > Keyboards and Languages > Change Keyboards > General tab and just add / remove keyboards there and what not.
Pretty straight forward from there, good luck.
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You can plug an ansi board in and pretty much just type. The " will be on the 2 key...The legends on the keys will be wrong, but i doubt that'll be much of an issue. You'll lose the \ though, which is harder to deal with - I'd suggest using autohot key to remap the hash or something like that.
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The main reasons being the lack of a £ sign, and for something to do! The loss of \ wouldn't be acceptable though, I spent a lot of time in cmd & powershell so I guess I'll just buy the american one and not care about the layout :)
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You can easily autohotkey the £ and \ to other keys or combinations.
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Moving symbols around is easy enough - just use the UK layout option on a US keyboard (in Windows).
The real problem is you are going to be one key short - by having " and £ on 2 and 3 you're going to need a key with # on it. These are normally next to return which is double height and the US |\ key going down next to Z.
The simplest option is to go with a US keyboard, set it to US and use autohotkey to put £ on 3 with right Alt key instead of shift. The config line for that is:
RAlt & 3::Send {£}
Hardware options involve cutting a hole, modifying the left shift stabilizer and figuring out a way to wire it up to the controller chip possibly replacing that with a Teensy. Which is crazy and assumes you can live with the wide return instead of the tall return...
[)amien
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There is a topic of people who have converted a keyboard from ISO to ANSI, if you want to do the hardware as well. It's not impossible, but it does take some effort. Of course, some keyboards have mounting holes for ISO keys, you will just have to modify the plate to account for this.
http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/iso-to-ansi-t155.html
@OP: I would recommend sticking with the (much better, in my opinion) ANSI layout, just remap some keys in software to get your pound sign, etc. You should be able to map right alt + 2 to be the pound sign if you need it, There are other tweaks as well. Autohotkey is a program for windows that looks good for this.
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The simplest option is to go with a US keyboard, set it to US and use autohotkey to put £ on 3 with right Alt key instead of shift. The config line for that is:
RAlt & 3::Send {£}
I've just tried this, but every time I try to use it, I keep getting £ instead of just £
Any ideas? I'm using a HHKB Pro 2 on Windows 8
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It's probably the text config file being ANSI and not Unicode. You could change that or just instead use this encoding-safe version:
RAlt & 3::Send, {U+00a3}
Oh, and if you need the Euro alt-gr on 4:
RAlt & 4::Send, {U+20ac}
[)amien
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It's probably the text config file being ANSI and not Unicode. You could change that or just instead use this encoding-safe version:
RAlt & 3::Send, {U+00a3}
Oh, and if you need the Euro alt-gr on 4:
RAlt & 4::Send, {U+20ac}
[)amien
You are a genius! Thank you! £€£€£€£€£€£€£€£
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Nice! Thanks for the replies, I'll try the key maps when I get home tonight! I'm going to be buying an ISO layout board later on today, and an torn between the CM Storm Quickfire Rapid with MX blacks (TKL version, if there is a non TKL) and the DK2108 Zero with MX Browns, anyone got personal experience/advice on either board? I'm going to be getting custom keycaps etc, so if one or the other uses unusual caps, then it's out :)
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Technically the browns are supposed to be more tactile but I can't feel it myself. The only difference I feel between the two is that brown is light and black are heavy.
[)amien
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There is a topic of people who have converted a keyboard from ISO to ANSI.
For me it was the opposite - my keyboards (specifically, a Filco TKL and a Model F) converted me to ANSI.
The simplest option is to go with a US keyboard, set it to US and use autohotkey to put £ on 3 with right Alt key instead of shift.
Under Linux, there's the US International (Alt Gr Dead Keys) layout which allows me to enter € and $. There are also some unofficial Windows versions, a quick googling showed up the following but there are others around -
Link (https://code.google.com/p/usialtgr/)