U.S. International Extended 2.0 Keyboard

US – International Extended v. 2.1
created by: Carly J. Born, Carleton College
copyright 2010

Download here

This installer will install a custom designed keyboard for use in English with additional support for inputting characters for Hungarian, Indic Transcription, and Pinyin input.  It is based on the US - International layout provided by Windows, which also allows for easy input of accented characters used in many European languages.  This installer is provided as is with no promise of support outside of Carleton College.  Install at your own risk.

This keyboard layout is tested on Windows XP.  It is untested on Windows 2000, Windows Vista or Windows 7, but I think it should work.  It will not work on Windows 98 or earlier.

Installation:

First, extract the ZIP file to an uncompressed folder:

• Right-click on the ZIP file and choose Extract All…

Install the input method:

• Open the IntlExtd2 folder
• Double-click the icon called setup.exe
• After you double-click it will appear that nothing is happening.  Be patient and you will soon see a dialog box telling you your installation is complete.  Click Close to complete the install process.

It is recommended that you log out of Windows or Restart before continuing.

After the necessary files are installed, you must activate the keyboard:

• Go to Start > Settings > Control Panels > Regional and Language Options
• Click on the Language tab
• Click on the Details button under Text Services
• Click the Add button in lower part of the window under Installed Services
• In the window that appears the Input Language should be English (United States) and the Keyboard layout/IME should be  United States – Intl Extended v2.1 .
• Click OK to all open windows

This will allow you to choose between the standard US input and the United States – Intl Extended v2.1 inputs from the language bar.  Because it is based on the US-International keyboard, it is possible to use the United States – Intl Extended v2.1 as your only input keyboard.  To do this, remove any other English inputs from the Text Services dialog box (Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages).

Using US – Intl Extended v. 2.1

In the list below, a comma (,) means to release the previous keys prior to striking the next keys; a plus sign (+) means to continue holding the previous keys while striking the next keys listed.

* Some key combinations will not work within Microsoft Word because of the standard keyboard shortcuts that Word employs. Below is a list of Word shortcut keys that you might want to disable in order to type some European characters

Disabling Word Shortcut Keys:

The way to disable shortcut keys varies depending on which version of Office you have.

:Instructions for Office 2010 or earlier:

• In Word, open the Tools menu > Customize
• Click on the button at the bottom that says Keyboard
• Highlight the Category and Command that you want to disable
• Under the Current Keys box, highlight the conflicting shortcut key and then click the Remove button at the bottom of the screen.
• Close all windows when you are finished

1) In order to type ß, disable the command called DocSplit in the Windows & Help category.

2) To type ¡, disable the command called ApplyHeading1 in the Format category.

3) To type ø, disabling the ListBullet does not work. The work around that I found was to assign the appropriate keystroke to the ø character. You can do this by going to the Insert menu > Symbol, then highlight the ø character in the table and click on the Shortcut Key button. Here you can assign a shortcut key combination much the same way you removed it from the other locations.

For Office 2013:

1. In Word, right-click anywhere on the Ribbon and choose Customize Ribbon
2. Find Keyboard Shortcuts at the bottom of the window that appears and click Customize
3. In the Categories menu on the left, scroll down and select All Commands
4. Highlight the command you want to disable in the left column (hit the first letter of the command to jump to that part of the list)
5. In the Current Keys box, highlight the conflicting shortcut key and click the Remove button at the bottom of the window.
6. Close all windows when finished.

• To type ß, disable the command called DocSplit
• To type ¡, disable the command called ApplyHeading1
• To type ø, use the keystroke alt+l (lowercase L).  It is not necessary to disable any Word shortcuts for this.

Screen Shots of Layout

Below are screen shots of this keyboard layout. Dark gray keys signify dead keys.

Shift

AltGr (Right side ALT key)

Shift + AltGr

A Word about Code Pages

In order for this input method to work, you must use fonts that contain the characters necessary for Hungarian, Indic transliteration or Pinyin. For example, most common fonts contain the vowels with macron (e.g. ā, ō), but the number of fonts that include the n with a dot below (ṇ) are few. Generally, a font will support certain code pages of Unicode, but not all.

To understand this fully, it helps to know which characters are part of which code pages in Unicode. Below is a short list of the code pages needed to use the diacritics supported by this keyboard, and the characters that below to each.

• Latin-1 Supplemental: vowels with accents grave, acute, circumflex, umlaut, etc.
• Latin Extended A: vowels with macron, œ ligature, e with pinyin 3^rd tone,  ő and ű, some consonants with cirucumflex
• Latin Extended B: other vowels with pinyin 3^rd tone, u with umlaut & tones
• Latin Extended Additional: consonants with dot below

Note that there are many other characters contained within these code pages, but they are not necessarily supported by this keyboard. For more information about Unicode code pages, see http://www.unicode.org/charts/

Most fonts contains some combination of the code pages listed above, but few contain the Latin Extended Additional code page which includes the consonants with the dot below. Below is a short list of fonts that contain these characters.

Serif Fonts: Gentium, GentiumAlt, Doulos SIL

Sans Serif Fonts: Tahoma, Arial Unicode MS, MS Reference Sans Serif