Typographic layout for the Belarusian language. Burman typographic layout. Insert special character button

The typographic layout allows you to enter all sorts of cool characters using AltGr (right Alt).

For ease of typing with both hands, you can use CapsLock instead of AltGr. In this layout, it is deprived of its usual functions (I HOPE YOU CAN DO WITHOUT THEM!!!).

Dead keys themselves do not enter anything, but change the meaning of the character that follows them. Press AltGr‑G (nothing appears), and then A - the symbol α will appear.

All key combinations, except for diacritics (“boogers” above and below letters, with the help of which all sorts of ḫ, ç, å, ӵ, etc. are obtained), are entered the same way in Russian and English layouts. That is, AltGr‑A is the same as AltGr‑F.

The archive contains installation files, instructions and diagrams.

About the layout

Why is it needed and how did it appear?

The standard keyboard layout has a number of disadvantages. There are no correct hyphens and dashes, spaces of different widths, currency signs, degrees and ppm, normal quotation marks (“ „ “ ), etc. You cannot enter letters with diacritics. In the Russian keyboard, you cannot enter square brackets ([ ]), ampersand (&) and some other characters. In the English layout, you cannot enter a serial number sign (No).

The Birman layout is popular among designers and layout designers. Unfortunately, on Windows it blocks the Ctrl‑Alt combination and prevents you from entering some useful characters. This inspired me to create my own layout, for now only for Windows (Berman's layout also exists for Mac). Write in the comments if you can provide any assistance in developing a similar layout for Mac and Linux, or are at least simply interested in its appearance.

Peculiarities

Unlike the Birman layout, the Ctrl‑Alt combination is not used in my layout. Thanks to this, hotkeys work correctly in all applications. The equivalent of AltGr on the left side of the keyboard is CapsLock. For the first time in the history of computing, this key has found a peaceful use!

Arrows (← → ↓), superscript numbers (¹ ² ³) and fractions (½ ⅓ ¼) are entered differently from the Birman layout. There are special dead keys for them (AltGr‑1, Shift‑AltGr‑\, Shift‑AltGr‑5). Arrows can also be entered from the numeric keypad.

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

The location of most typographic layout characters is easy to remember using mnemonic rules, or by external similarity. For example, the euro sign € is entered using the combination AltGr‑E (for Euro).

Installation

Run the installer as administrator. There is no need to change anything. I recommend installing both Russian and English typographic layouts.

After installation, a layout selection icon will appear in the system area next to the language selection icon: By default, the standard layout will work, the typographic layout will have to be selected manually each time. To remove this icon and always use the typographic layout, right-click on the keyboard icon, select “Settings...” from the menu and completely disable the standard layout:

1. First, at the top, select one of the installed Typography‑DS layouts from the drop-down list as the main one.
2. Then, in the main part of the window, we select and delete all standard layouts one by one using the “Delete” button.
3. In order for the typographic layout to work for all users from the moment the system boots, you need to go to the Control Panel, find “Regional Settings” and in the “Administration” tab, use the “Copy Settings” button.
4. You can remove the typographic layout and return to the standard one using the same dialog box.

Known Issues

• For mystical reasons, you cannot enter an interpoint (a period in the middle of a line: ·) using Shift‑CapsLock‑X. Use Right Alt.

Not all fonts contain the full set of characters. Sometimes, instead of the desired symbol, a square or question mark will appear. Microsoft Word does even worse - it automatically selects the ugliest font in the universe that contains the missing character (MS Mincho, Batang, or MS Gothic).

Good fonts that contain most special characters are standard ones from Microsoft (Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Times New Roman, etc.). The DejaVu line of fonts (DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif) is less attractive, but contains even more characters. The most complete fonts containing all the characters of this layout (and thousands of others) are Quivira (terrible), Code2000 (even worse), Unifont (hello from the terminals of the 70s with a character matrix of 8x8 pixels).

Punto Switcher does not work correctly with a typographic layout. Tested on version 3.4 under Windows 7 (x64) - with other versions of Punto and the operating system, the result may be different. Let us know your observations in the comments!

I myself use an analogue of Punto - the Comfort Typing Pro application, with which there are no problems. It does not have an automatic switching function: you can only manually change the language of the text you just entered or selected. But there are several features that are missing in Punto.

• In Windows 8, you may need to restart your computer after installation. In Windows 7, it is usually enough to log out and log in again.
• Non-standard layouts sometimes do not turn on normally when connecting via RDP. To avoid possible inconveniences, it is recommended to create a key in the registry on the server to which you are connecting:
  Folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
  Key: IgnoreRemoteKeyboardLayout
  Type: DWORD
  Value: 1 RDP will then stop attempting to use the client layout and will always use the server's default layout.

Special character input modes (dead keys)

Diacritics

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

Birman has training video according to the diacritics in its layout. In this layout everything works exactly the same.

There are two modes for entering diacritics.

1. The first method only works with real existing letters. The diacritic key is pressed before entering a letter:

   Shift‑AltGr‑/, E → é ,
   Shift‑AltGr‑Х, Х → ӵ .

   If there is no such letter in Unicode, the diacritic will appear as a separate character:

   Shift‑AltGr‑Z, Z → ¸z .

The second method works for any letters, but introduces “fake” characters, using the so-called combining diacritics. In fact, the diacritic “booger” will be a separate character, but this character will be displayed to the left than usual, “climbing” onto the previous letter. The essence of what is happening is easy to understand by pressing Backspace after entering: only the diacritic will disappear, but not the letter over which it stood.

Spell check will swear at such words, and search bots will not index them properly. It is advisable to use this method only when preparing documents intended for printing! To introduce a combining diacritic, you need after To enter a letter, hold down Shift‑AltGr and, without releasing it, press the key with the desired diacritic twice:

i, Shift‑AltGr‑// → í .

In this way you can, for example, place stress in words.

Greek symbols

Entered using the dead key AltGr‑G: AltGr‑G, A → α. Of course, you can’t type much using one letter. To fully type text in Greek, you just need to install the Greek layout. But it is convenient for entering individual letters (“γ‑radiation”, “number π”).

Most Greek letters are tied to their phonetic, or visual, English counterpart. The remaining 2-3 letters are arranged as necessary:

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

Roman numerals

Shift‑AltGr‑G . Numbers can also be entered from the numeric pad of the keyboard, but only small ones (since with Shift the numeric pad controls the text cursor and does not print characters).

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

Strange icons, which are not found in most fonts, indicate large numbers: - 5000, - 10000, - 50000 and - 100000. How did you ever live without them?!

Arrows

There are two input methods: a simple combination of AltGr with keys on the numeric block of the keyboard and the dead key AltGr‑1 followed by a number (either from the main block or from the numeric block). The correspondence of numbers to directions is the same in both cases:

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

Subscripts

AltGr‑\, symbol:

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

There are numbers in almost all fonts. Of the letters in most fonts, you can only find a, n, m.

Superscript characters

Shift‑AltGr‑\, symbol:

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

Spaces and hyphens

AltGr‑space → non-breaking space. This is the main space required in addition to the standard space.

The remaining spaces are probably only needed by professional layout designers. They are entered using the dead key Shift‑AltGr‑spacebar:

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

The width of spaces is clearly shown by the distance between lines.

• | | | | : Standard space.
• |  | | 
• | : Thin Space (on the THSP diagram) - Shift‑AltGr‑space, Shift‑AltGr‑space(press Shift‑AltGr and, without releasing it, double spacebar).
• |  | .
• |  | : Narrow Non-break Space (NNBSP) -.
• Shift‑AltGr‑space, space (after the first space, release Shift‑AltGr)..
• |  | .
• |  | : Hair Space (HSP) -.
• Shift‑AltGr‑space, 1 | . Words separated by such a space appear together, but can “spread” in paragraphs that are off-width, and will also be identified as separate words when searching.
• |‑|‑|‑| : Non-breaking Hyphen (NB-) - Shift‑AltGr‑space, hyphen. In Word, it is better to use the combination Ctrl‑Shift‑hyphen; it is processed correctly by the application, even if the current font does not have such a symbol.
• |‒|‒|‒| : Figure Dash - Shift‑AltGr‑space, =. A hyphen is exactly one digit wide. Used when dialing telephone numbers (212‒85‒06).
• |  | | 
• | : Figure Space -
  • Shift‑AltGr‑space, Shift‑= . A space one digit wide. The round and semicircular emoticons (Em‑Space and En‑Space) correspond in width to the long and en dashes (Em‑Dash and En‑Dash). The input method is a little tricky, but quite intuitive if you first get used to entering long and short dashes using AltGr‑hyphen and Shift‑AltGr‑hyphen.
  • |  | | 

| : Round embed -

Shift‑AltGr‑space, AltGr‑hyphen (release Shift before the second letter).| 
| 

Click on the image to view it in high resolution.

|  | : Semicircular embed - Shift‑AltGr‑space, Shift‑AltGr‑hyphen

(without releasing Shift‑AltGr, press first the space bar, then the hyphen).

Fractions

Fractions, which have separate Unicode icons, can be entered using

Shift‑AltGr‑5, numerator, denominator

: Shift‑AltGr‑5, 1, 8 → ⅛ .

Here are all the available fractions from the Unicode table:

An arbitrary fraction can be composed of superscript characters, a fractional slash (⁄) and subscript characters. The fractional slash is entered using the combination

Shift‑AltGr‑5, Shift‑AltGr‑5 (without releasing Shift‑AltGr, press 5 twice). Looks different in different fonts: In fact, of course, not for the first time: for example, in the Colemak layout, the CapsLock key functions as Backspace. For those who are not new to this page: For everyone else

This method is recommended when initially creating an article so as not to waste time inserting an accent mark over vowels. Later, one of the advanced authors will replace the emphasis through bold font with normal emphasis through the accent mark in one of the following ways.

Copying ready-made vowels with stress

Go to the variety page, click on the “Edit” tab to get into article editing mode

After this, one by one, change all the stressed vowels to stressed vowels. The sequence of actions for replacing one letter looks like this. Below, use your mouse to select the appropriate vowel with stress:

Latin: ÁÉÍÓÚÝ áéíóúý Russian: АЭИООУУИИУЯЯ aeeeeeeeeeeee

• press CTRL+C (Latin) on your keyboard at the same time to copy the highlighted stressed vowel to the clipboard
• go to the editing window for the article about the variety
• Use your mouse to highlight the vowel you are going to replace
• if it is already highlighted in bold, click the "F" button (second in the first row) to deselect it
• press the Delete key on your keyboard to delete the previous stressed vowel
• click the editor button "Insert text only" (the very last one in the first row of message editor buttons)
• a window will appear. Press CTRL+V (Latin) on your keyboard at the same time to paste the stressed vowel stored in the clipboard
• click "OK" button to complete the insertion process
• a stressed vowel should appear in the word.

Repeat these steps for the remaining stressed vowels.

It will look something like this:

SK-Áphrodite, A. Kuznetsov, semi-mini

Potential Difficulties

Inserting via the text insert button

Paste the copied stressed vowel only through the "Paste text only" button. Otherwise, paste together with the letter its design in the article from which you copied it.

Strictly adhere to only the Latin alphabet or only the Cyrillic alphabet

Make sure that Latin stressed vowels are replaced with stressed vowels from the Latin list, and Cyrillic vowels - from the list of Cyrillic vowels. Latin and Russian stressed "a" are completely different letters.

• the name "Oblachny Vostórg" with Latin accents will appear at the very beginning of the list of domestic varieties, since for the sorting program this Russian-language name begins with the Latin letter "O"
• search engines, when requesting the name "Cloud Delight", written entirely in Russian letters, will not find a registry entry where this variety begins with the Latin letter "O"
• when creating catalogs of varieties divided by the first letter, a domestic variety with the first Latin accent letter can only be found in the subdirectory dedicated to the Latin letter "O"
• The spell checker will highlight Russian words with stressed Latin vowels as incorrect
• when someone copies information from a registry entry, the erroneous Russian name with a Latin letter will continue to spread throughout the violet world

Insert special character button

In the message editor there is a button “Insert a special character” (to the left of the orange emoticon button in the first row). By clicking on this button, a window with special characters appears. There you can find and select the desired Latin vowel with an accent mark, large or small.

But this method is only suitable for Latin drums. I will repeat the above prohibition on inserting Latin stressed vowels into Russian names.

Accent using the Alt key

In this layout, you can easily enter an accent mark. It is enough to place the cursor after the stressed vowel and simultaneously press the combination Alt (graphic, on the right side of the keyboard) + Shift + "/" 2-3 times.

In addition to entering an accent, Ilya Birman’s layout allows you to enter many useful typographic design marks through a regular keyboard:

• "herringbone quotes"
• em dash -

However, all these characters are available in our message editor by clicking the "Insert special character" button, to the left of the orange emoticon button.

In futuristic films and forecasts of the 50s, in the vision of the future there were radio-video phones, but few could imagine that people would joyfully communicate in printed texts - tapping on the keyboard, typing letters and electronic diaries, arguing to the death in forums and even communicate with your spouse while sitting in adjacent rooms.

And only the “inventor of the Internet” Vinton Cerf believed in the power of printed communication, although he had reasons for this

He turned out to be a visionary or simply formatted reality for himself: personal computers, from desktops to smartphones, became primarily communication devices, and they managed to bring text communication to an unprecedented level.

Keyboard conversations and correspondence turned out to be really convenient - there is no need for synchronization and isolation, they can be combined with work or entertainment, the writer formulates thoughts at his own pace, switching to study the topic, and it is common knowledge that it is much easier and faster to read information than to listen.

And desktops themselves - no matter whether they are bulky boxes or ultra-mobile laptops with a real keyboard, have been and remain the main “terminals” in the world of blogs and forums, Facebook and Odnoklassniki, ASEC and other jabbers, not to mention the world of “electronic documents”.

Now, we communicate with a huge number of people, most of whom we will never meet in person, and often evaluate each other precisely by the quality of texts - as they say, “the medium is the message”©. This is especially important for professionals - journalists, bloggers, and simply “content editors”.

Yes, despite the fact that we often see illiterate messages (“don’t let schoolchildren on the Internet, they make them stupid”©), and perhaps precisely because of this, literacy is back in fashion, the “Albanian” fad has been forgotten. But if with spelling and punctuation everything is approximately clear - remember the rules, watch out for your favorite mistakes, then the next level of text culture is typography.

After all, before, texts were clearly divided into samizdat manuscripts and typewriters, and truly printed, bookish words that had been proofreaded, designed by layout designers, and typed by specially trained typographers and typesetters.

Now we have to do everything ourselves - and if spelling checkers can help us with spelling, standard blog and website templates can help us with layout, plus continuous layout in browsers or word processors, then with typography, alas, “everything is complicated.”

It so happened that only a small subset of printed characters settled on the standard keyboard, and we have to replace long and short dashes, hyphens → pathetic “minus”, typographic quotation marks in our texts, like Ostap Bender with his broken typewriter without the letter “e”. - an inch sign, significant ellipses “…” - a rough scattering of ordinary dots, not to mention the more rare, but still useful currency signs of degrees, copyright, etc. - they are all available in standard font sets, but alas, access to them is difficult.

For aesthetes of the printed word, ignoring typography is heartbreaking!

But for ordinary readers, even if they do not realize the difference, typographically formatted text will be easier to read and arouse more attention and trust.

What to do? One of the options for solving this problem is Compose mode, when holding down the modifier key you need to tap out a special sequence of keys, and if you are lucky and you remember and enter it correctly, you will get a prize - that very tricky typographic symbol. But. This is hellishly difficult, almost like typing text in TeX, and blindly. Moreover, this is difficult to learn - because nothing on the keyboard itself can remind you of these symbols, and in general, the use of modal modes and multi-character sequences is wildly inconvenient, disrupts the rhythm and thoughts, because to be effective it should be like this - “one hit - one symbol”, otherwise quick touch typing will not work. Not to mention that “Compose” and similar modes are implemented completely differently in the Linux and Windows worlds.

What to do, given that programmable keyboards with replaceable characters are not guaranteed to take off even in the distant future, and classic qwerty keyboards are the standard everywhere?

Yes, there is still the opportunity to use semi-automatic typography, using “auto-corrects” of word processors, all sorts of “online typographs”, but this is all wrong, pathetic crutches, instead of a natural and correct solution.

And the right decision is typographic layouts, i.e. entering additional typographic symbols in one press with a modifier key, and to make it easier to remember, and to smooth the learning curve, you need to put these additional symbols on keys that cause a graphic or semantic association with the additional symbol.

At one time there were several developed options, but now, at least in RuNet, there is only one, probably the most successful, standard left - “Typographic layout of Ilya Birman”.

It makes everything okay not only with dashes™ and quotation marks, but also gives you a ton of ways to enrich your text, even if it's a boring form for entering a simple comment

• Kosher format simple formulas 1¼ $ ≈ € ≈ ⅓£, i²=-1, 20°×Ѵ4≈40°±3°
• You can also mention ѣ-shame™, and in general, refer to any meme “it’s already clear that all this will be glitchy and slow down”©
• “I guessed the sign ∞”
• ¿ hablan más español

Oh, and what possibilities of “punctuation 2.0” do the arrows ←↓→ provide...

In any case, this layout contains the most useful typographic symbols, selected by leading dog designers, a well-known standard that has stood the test of time.

Of course, there were good people in the Linux world who implemented one of the very first versions of the layout, in KDE and GNOME.

But this was one of the first versions of the layout, without a bunch of useful symbols, for example, arrows... and the worst thing is that the sudden movements of the third gnome splashed out this child with water at the turn.