[Interest] Problem with ^ on a Macintosh with German keyboard layout

John Weeks john at wavemetrics.com
Wed Jun 15 00:38:27 CEST 2016


> On Jun 14, 2016, at 2:31 PM, Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:
> 
> On terça-feira, 14 de junho de 2016 13:58:47 PDT John Weeks wrote:
>> On a German keyboard on Macintosh, shift+6 is a combining (or dead key) ^
>> character. If you hit, for instance, shift+6 then "e", you get ê. In some
>> applications, but not in a Qt application, you can enter a non-combining ^
>> using control-shift-option-6. In Qt, the character doesn't make it through
>> because the QKeyEvent::text() function returns an empty string.
> 
> Try pressing ^ followed by space. That's how deadkeys are entered in all OSes 
> and have been since the late 1980s.

Thanks. On my keyboard and Macintosh and also on my (foul language) Dell keyboard on Windows this works.

> I can't reproduce your Control+Shift+Option+6 shortcut in Terminal.app either.

Nor can I consistently. I'm trying figure this out from my own US keyboard with a German layout selected. That's not a great way to do it... But I've always considered TextEdit to be the True Standard :)
> 
>> On Windows, the ^ dead key is where a US keyboard has ` and ~. If you hold
>> down Alt and hit that key twice, it enters a non-combining ^. And this
>> works in Qt.
> 
> I can't reproduce this. If I do that, I get "66" in some places and the 
> equivalent for Alt+6 in others. If you meant AltGr instead of Alt, then I get 
> ¼¼.

No AltGr on my Dell keyboard (also no Break key, but that's another story!).

I think the ^ dead key followed by space is what I'm looking for.

And the bottom line is that trying things on one keyboard doesn't even scratch the surface as far as international keyboards or text entry.

-John




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