Windows includes a keyboard layout called "United States (International)", which allows typing many special characters easily.
The layout defines several keys as "dead keys", such as the apostrophe ('
) and double quotes ("
).
This means that to enter a single '
, you have to press '
followed by a space.
This can be annoying when you need to enter a lot of these characters, since each now requires two keys to be pressed.
In Linux, there is a keyboard layout named "USA International (AltGr dead keys)" that solves this problem and still allows typing special characters.
If you want to type '
, you just press '
.
If you want to use '
as a dead key, you use AltGr (right alt): e.g. AltGr+' a
will produce á
.
This repo is a modified version of the default Windows "United States (International)" keyboard layout that mimics the behaviour found in Linux.
All five dead keys (`
, ~
, ^
, '
and "
) are now only dead when AltGr is pressed, otherwise they function as normal keys.
Note that the original layout already defines several AltGr combinations, e.g. AltGr+'
becomes ´
.
If you want to type these characters in the modified layout, you should follow the old keycombination with a space: e.g. AltGr+' <SPACE>
will produce ´
.
You can download the latest installer from the releases tab of this repo (https://github.com/thomasfaingnaert/win-us-intl-altgr/releases).
If you prefer to build from source, you can open the .KLC source file in Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. After opening the file, choose Project > Build DLL and Setup Package in the menu to create an installer.