If forced to write German on an English keyboard I'd simply do as follows:-

ä=ae
ö=oe
ü=ue
ß=ss

It can be done, but I think it would be faster just to do that. Also keyboards are cheap. Have you considered trying a German one (for here it would be a Swiss French keyboard, but be aware the the Swiss French keyboard does not have the ß in easy reach). It didn't take long at all for me to get used to a Swiss French keyboard - in fact I swap between them without problems all the time.

What operating system / environment are you using?

One possibility is adding a German keyboard layout, and switching to that when you need it. You can do that in pretty much any environment from the last two decades, and you don't need to physically change keyboards (unless you insist on markings on the keys).

I however dislike the Swiss and German layouts (or in general having to get used to yet another special layout), and rather avoid switching (as I already have two other non-Latin-based layouts to juggle among every once in a while), so I prefer to use the standard English QWERTY layout also when typing in other Latin script based languages, and use Compose sequences/combos for the special characters (accents and the like) - so for instance, an O-Umlaut ("Ö"), is typed as Compose+"+U, an Esszett ("ß") is typed as Compose+S+S.

In languages like German where these are not too abundant (i.e. not every second letter is accented), or when occasionally typing a foreign word, it's fast enough. And it's fully compatible with English layout, same layout works for all (or most; Vietnamese might be a bit difficult) languages based on Latin/Roman characters, and most sequences are rather intuitive so you don't need to remember much ({'e} for é, {`u} for ù, {"a} for ä, {,c} for ç, {ss} for ß, {/l} for ł, {^o} for ô, {-L} for £, {/L} for Ł, {/O} for ø, {oa} for å, {<<} for « and so on).

On Unix with X11 that's easy enough to set up (just map the Compose key to something you don't normally use for other things, such as the right Menu key on PC104 keyboards, the Windows keys, right Alt, Scroll Lock, or whatever, and any Roman xmodmap or Xkb layout will work with it). For Windows I once created such a layout which a few friends also started using, with the right Alt (AltGr) key acting as compose combo for characters in some European languages - I could dig it up for you if you're interested.

In Mac OS X, I haven't gotten a Compose layout to work yet (not that I tried too long, but all four different Mac keyboard layout definition formats are quite archaic and don't really work as documented), but the default English layouts there give you some ad-hoc combinations with the Option key, which are not compatible with Compose and often non-obvious, but relatively usable in German at least (Option+S for ß, Option+U for Umlaut, etc.)

Another option in many environments is some "English/international" keyboard layout setting, where some punctuation keys act as "dead keys" - when hit once they don't input anything, but possibly modify the behaviour of the next key hit. Many of the combinations are the same as in Compose sequences then, just without the Compose key prefix. But obviously the set of combinations or characters is more limited, so as to not make every key a dead key. And to get the actual punctuation characters on those dead keys you then need to hit them twice, which can be annoying if you're used to typing fast and find yourself typing single punctuation characters, looking back seeing them lost or replaced together the following character by some special character, and actually less efficient if most of your typing is not in a language with accented letters so that you need punctuation more often than special characters.

-- Tom

It is actually easier on a Mac, as such sequences are already embedded in the standard layout. To have a letter with an Umlaut you have to press [alt] and [u] simultaneously, and then the desired letter (u, a, o). ß is simply [alt + s].

Cheers!

Thanks for this simple solution. As I type German very infrequently, this is a good option. In the paste, I have often copied and pasted from a German document; a rather tedious way of doing it.



It works on here as well. I now have the ALT functions stuck on the corner of my screen.

Thanks for the tip. At home, I use Linux/Gnome and at work Windows.

The alt codes are my most often used hack as well. One can use the "Character Map" in windows to find out the Alt codes for other characters.

The Swiss never use ß. We always write ss like in dass not daß. Swiss keyboards do not haveß .

Alright. For those cases, in case you (or anyone else reading this) wants the Compose sequence method (I assume you know how to switch layouts otherwise):

On X11/Unix:

As you mentioned Linux/Gnome you probably have a relatively recent (read: less than a decade old) X11 supporting Xkb, so you can set in XkbOptions (either in xorg.conf/XF86Config/whatever, or using the setxkbmap command) your compose key using the "compose:" parameter. Some options available include: "compose:ralt" for the right Alt key, "compose:rwin" for the right Windows key on PC104 keyboards or "compose:menu" for the Menu key next to it. You can see the options in your system in the Xkb definition files (try locate rules/base.lst to find them). For example:
setxkbmap -option 'compose:menu' will set the right Menu key to Compose
or in your XF86Config/xorg.conf (if you control the X server configuration):
Option "XkbOptions" "compose:rwin"
I don't use GNOME, but it may actually have that setting in own interface for input/keyboard configuration which you'd rather use so that your settings don't get overridden, look for Compose settings there. Of course if you have a keyboard with an actual key labeled Compose on it that would be the most appropriate choice, but these are not very common today.

Alternatively, or where Xkb is not supported, you can map any key to be the compose key using xmodmap. The keysym name for compose would be Multi_key. So for instance you could set Scroll Lock to be your compose key using:
xmodmap -e "keysym Scroll_Lock = Multi_key"
or any other key whose keysym you know, or otherwise replace by its keycode (you can find those out using xev(1), check the man page), replacing keysym with keycode in the above command.

Now to type the combinations, just hit your chosen compose key and the two combination keys in a row (one after the other) to get your characters. To see the supported combinations, the full definition of all Compose combinations for your system can be found in X11/locale/<locale>/Compose somewhere (locate Compose should find it), but most are quite intuitive and easy to guess. Since X.Org version 7 I think there's also some way to define your own in files and load them, but I never used that.


On Windows:

I dug up the keyboard layout I created for Windows a couple of years ago, and put it up at ftp://ftp.cs.huji.ac.il/users/alsbergt/mswin-kl. The installers (for i386/AMD64/IA64 Windows, whichever you use) are the .msi files under us-comp, one of them is all you need to install, but you also have the individual layout/DLL files there.

Unlike the "real" Compose sequences, the best I got was to assign Right Alt/AltGr/Control+Alt to act as a modifier, so that you press it in conjunction with the first key and then the second key. It is also not as complete as the X11 definition - I just defined a list sequences manually there, but the ones defined should be mostly compatible and at least sufficient for German and some other European languages. at least all you need for German. These were created using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, and the source is also there (uscomp02.klc) so you can use it to edit and build the layout yourself if you are missing some combinations, or want to change AltGr to something else (or just don't trust the installer I put up not to do bad stuff to your computer ).

Once installed, enable that layout in the Keyboard/Input Languages/Regional Options/whatever settings in control panel, switch to it (or make it the default), and then the combinations should work - for example, hitting Right Alt+" (or Control+Alt+") followed by U, should produce Ü.

This is not too highly tested, but it works for me (Windows XP) and worked for a couple of friends (XP & 2000). Let me know if it doesn't work for you or if you had to fix something. Also, it's based on US English layout, whereas you said UK keyboard, so you may want to edit for the differences.

Thanks for the clarification. That's what I meant by those ad-hoc Option combinations (the Alt key is traditionally called Option on Macs).

It works alright for German, but in general when you need to type some special character you pretty much need to search for the combination - there's no really intuitive scheme, and you can't find all European/Roman characters there. Also it's annoying because for instance in Terminal windows you need to disable it if you want Alt/Meta combos to be passed to the program in the terminal (many Unix shell or ncurses-based programs use them, especially annoying if you often telnet/ssh to other hosts).

True. So a Swiss keyboard layout won't work for the original poster if he wants to type ß. Also not for me if I were to type my homework -- in the German lessons I take we actually do learn with ß (the teacher is German and so are our textbooks).

I think if already learning standard/high German it's a good thing, as it's more useful also outside Switzerland. It's always easy to turn every ß to ss when writing stuff here, but there's no real easy way in the other direction if I'd want to write something not to be read odd in (say) Germany or Austria - you need to know whether that word has an ß or whether to leave it as ss. (I know there are some rules and guidelines since the German orthography reform of the '90s, but it's easier if you already know how the word's spelled, and as I understand it using pre-Rechtschreibreform spelling for a word raises no eyebrows in all but the most formal contexts either).

Quick update: In the course of having to use Windows again for a while, I did some updates to the keyboard layout, to fix an issue with the ^[, ^], and ^\ combinations in Windows 7 (Microsoft gave them special codes), and add a shortcut for the Euro sign € as AltGr+= E (or (Control+Alt+= E).

I replaced the layout source and installer files there with the updated ones called uscomp07. The installer is bundled in a Zip archive this time to make it easier to fetch.

ftp://ftp.cs.huji.ac.il/users/alsbergt/mswin-kl/

Cheers,
-- Tom

The Swiss German keyboard easily allows for Ü, Ä and Ö. Just use the ¨ key followed by U, A or O.

... all these years of cussing at my Swiss keyboard and now you're telling me ...

Thanks!

The Mac solution to foreign language keys is the most elegant - it's built-in and it's pretty easy to remember and it's very consistent.

You say there's no Compose sequence and then give examples of such.

The 'dead'-keys description is no longer true: when you press Option-e (for the accent aigu), the accent appears and waits for the vowel over which it will go. Same for all the others: `ˆ¨´˜ç øå

Furthermore, Mac OS X has a "Show Keyboard Viewer" for those characters that you don't use all the time and/or to learn new characters, like ©®¥ £ ™and so on.

__________________
-David
Computer Problems? I can help.
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"U "A "O ???

I use a Swiss German keyboard (Mac) and tried " followed by U, A or O but it did not produce Ü, Ä or Ö. What does work is using the cap lock key (not shift) whenever typing ü, ä or ö.

I found this Firefox addon very useful for my UK keyboard lappy.

https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/7169/

To get the capitalised A with an umlaut, I press Ctrl, the colon : and a normal small or large A producing ä / Ä, which can be copied and paste to any editor.

with windows it is possible to change the keyboard setting from
US -=> international US

thenfor example typing
'e will give you è
may be it is also possible for German characters.

Well, it works with Windows, when I've set the keyboard layout in the OS, to Swiss German... The caps-lock solution works as well.

You mixed up " (the sign above the 2) with ¨(the sign underneath the ! key on a Swiss German Mac keyboard). The latter works für capital umlauts using a Mac keyboard: Ä, Ü, Ö

if you are on a mac computer, you don't even need to change the language preferences you can simply hold down the OPTION button, and then press U twice, first comes the umlauts then the U For ü, or ä is option+u+a, option+e is é option+s is ß

pretty valuable shortcuts to know!

Have you ever used a real Compose key layout? How's the Mac layout elegant compared to that?

You reckon so? Now open a Mac and type «¡Niño Fårr à 25¢ łŭşī in §3.4 ≠ ¶5⁰!».

Sure, if you just need a few accented characters all of the time, then you'll remember the combinations for them no matter how incoherent they. But trying to type a character you don't use regularly, or a name in a foreign language? Gotta look it up, if you're lucky to have it in the layout at all.

in what way?

These are not Compose sequences.

The point of Compose sequences are that they should be easy to guess by combining with intuitively similar punctuation or modifiers whenever possible.

The Mac sequences are totally ad hoc and in no way intuitive. How is one to guess that the Latvian O-macron (ō) is supposed to be typed as Option+A, O?

(technically, a real Compose key should also not require pressing multiple keys at once -- hence the reservation I mentioned that I couldn't get it quite all the way when putting up the uscomp layout for Windows; but I find that to be no big deal)

The mention of dead keys was in reference to the "US International" layout on other non-Mac systems.

Right, and you find yourself having to consult it pretty much whenever you want to type a character you don't use regularly.

At least for German, the Mac layout is fairly usable as I said. I do get along with it when I have to use a Mac, but it is obviously less convenient, and distracting that it's different from the standard compose sequences. I'd much rather have the latter work on Macs too, so if anyone finds a way to get such a layout in Mac OS, or (as I provided for Windows) something resembling it, I'd love to know.

Cheers,
-- Tom