A little-known plugin of @Coises that's worth checking out !

guy038

I tested your valuable Compose plugin. This plugin is really easy to use :

First, define a Compose key ( Hit the Compose key twice in order to write the character itself )
Then, open the help file and choose any character to insert from the huge list of available characters !
Now, hit the Compose key, first
Hit the appropriate sequence of chars in order to display a specific character, which is not avalable, by default, on your keyboard !
You may define your own characters in a user definition file and also define blocks of text like "Mum Adr" : "8 Ashton Avenue\r\nLinden\r\nNJ 07036 USA"

@coises, I wrote all the interesting sequences to use, with a French keyboard, in the Main_Compose.txt file. You can download this file, just for information, from my Google Drive account :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_twecFVI_hkIPSg86_aNDE5NPE18fqyE/view?usp=sharing

Note that all the characters directly got, on a French keyboard, are not included this list, of course ! )

Best Regards

guy038

Coises

@guy038 said:

@coises, I wrote all the interesting sequences to use, with a French keyboard, in the Main_Compose.txt file. You can download this file, just for information, from my Google Drive account :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_twecFVI_hkIPSg86_aNDE5NPE18fqyE/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for checking this out. I’m glad you’re finding it useful!

Looking at your chart, it seems like the French keyboard might be a case where it would be worth redefining some of the implicit accent sequences, so you don’t have to use AltGr to get the circumflex, grave accent and tilde. You have to replace the entire set to replace any part of it, so to work from scratch you’d first need to find compose-default.jsonc in the plugins\Compose directory. You’d copy the entire block starting with "implicit combining rules" : { and extending to the matching }, then paste that after the opening { in a new user definitions file. You could replace the circumflex, grave accent and tilde with the base letters (since none of them are used in existing combinations), so your user definitions file would look like this (I think — I can’t really test without a French keyboard):

{
"implicit combining rules" : {
    "'" : ["\u0301", "\u030B", true    , "\u0317"],  // acute accent | double | same as plain | acute accent below
    ")" : ["\u0306", false   , true    , "\u032E"],  // breve        | -      | same as plain | breve below
    ">" : ["\u030C", false   , true    , "\u032C"],  // caron/hacek  | -      | same as plain | caron/hacek below
    "," : ["\u0327", false   , "\u0313", "\u0326"],  // cedilla      | -      | comma above   | comma below
    "ç" : ["\u0302", false   , true    , "\u032D"],  // circumflex   | -      | same as plain | circumflex below
    "\"": ["\u0308", false   , true    , "\u0324"],  // diaeresis    | -      | same as plain | diaeresis below
    "." : ["\u0307", false   , true    , "\u0323"],  // dot above    | -      | same as plain | dot below
    "è" : ["\u0300", "\u030F", true    , "\u0316"],  // grave accent | double | same as plain | grave accent below
    "?" : ["\u0309", false   , true    , false   ],  // hook above   | -      | same as plain | -
    "+" : ["\u031B", false   , true    , false   ],  // horn         | -      | same as plain | -
    "-" : ["\u0304", false   , true    , "\u0331"],  // macron       | -      | same as plain | macron below
    ";" : ["\u0328", false   , "\u1DCE", true    ],  // ogonek       | -      | ogonnek above | same as plain
    "*" : ["\u030A", false   , true    , "\u0325"],  // ring above   | -      | same as plain | ring below
    "é" : ["\u0303", false   , true    , "\u0330"],  // tilde        | -      | same as plain | tilde  below
    "_" : ["\u0332", "\u0333", "\u0305", true    ]   // underline    | double | overline      | same as plain
}
}

Then you could just use ç, è and é instead of having to use AltGr with them. Then again, maybe AltGr is so natural to people who use a French keyboard that it really doesn’t make it any more awkward to use it.

I am a little confused by why you are showing sequences like [AltGr] [é2~] [SP] [Letter] with the space in them; I would expect the space to break the sequence and show the accent as a separate, non-combining mark. Does it not work that way for you?

Edit to add: I’m sorry. I see: the grave accent and the tilde are dead keys (and the circumflex on the ç key is the ASCII circumflex, but there is also another one that is a dead key). So you probably rarely need to use those combinations anyway, since the dead key would create the character you need in most circumstances. If there are times when the dead keys don’t work, though, so that sometimes you still want the Compose combinations, the override suggested above would avoid the need for the space as well as the AltGr.