Chrysalis - How to generate umlauts like 'ä' and 'ö'

Is there, in Chrysalis, a way to map a key-tap to generate the letter ‘ä’ (umlaut a with a pair of dots) without leaving the US english layout. Also the letter ‘ö’ would be of interest.
Is this what the ‘Custom key code’ is meant for?

/David

I use “English US” variant “English (intl., with AltGr dead keys)”. This makes the right Alt key AltGr. With that and Q, Y, P, S I get ä, ü, ö, ß.

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hm, maybe there is a lot of information hidden in your reply that I dont get.

When I tap q, y, p, S while holding altgr I get œ, , π, ß.
You mention ‘intl’ and ‘dead keys’ and this where I suspect I only got part of your message. Are you refering to the ‘Language / International’ section in Chrysalis? And what about ‘dead keys’, is this common lingo to the initiated Chrysalis user?

I have only been an owner of the Keyboardio model 100 for a couple of days so this is all new stuff to me.

Hi David_s,

I’m in the sam situation like you :slight_smile: - it’s my first day with the model 100 and the same problem.
As far as I understand you can only map characters e.g. ä, ü, ö, ß if they are part of the selected keyboard layout selected in the operating system.
Up to now it think that it is not possible to map “Alt Codes” (e.g. Alt + 0228 for ä, or any other unicode character directly). By this you would’t be dependend on the keyboard layout in the operating system.

So from a german point of view we first have to choose a keyboard layout in the operating system that contains ä, ü, ö, ß.
Usually this is German QWERTZ or alternatively English international.
After that you can start to map German QWERTZ to your physical English QWERTY layout. That’s a bit work. Maybe there are Kaleidoscope templates - I haven’t found them yet.
After that you can e.g. map ä to a new layer ->Layer 3 Key + a and so one - similar to the keyboard layout English international but with a more intutive position.

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That is a problem.

Then I am putting all my hope to that Kaleidoscope does not suffer the same limitions.

I got it! I got it!!! …sort of, at least.

Tapping ‘u’ while holding ‘alt’ produces ‘¨’, next typed character, for example ‘a’ will be placed on the same spot, resulting in an ‘ä’. So I simply made a ‘dynamic macro’.

This does not, however, play nicely with a ‘secondary action’ and I very recently got addicted the concept of homerow modifiers. So I reduced the macro to just holding ‘alt’, taping ‘u’ and releasing ‘alt’ which makes entering umlauts a two-tap process, which is not ideal.

But for now I can keep kicking the can of learning Kaleidoscope further down the street. (if that is the correct use of the expression).

You are using a mac then with a US layout. The mentioned AltGr + Q Y P shortcuts are for the non-mac US International keyboard layout. On apple US you have to use the ‘dead key’ Alt + u to produce the diacritics which will wait for the next symbol to be typed (thus ‘dead key’ as it doesn’t produce output by itself).
So if you want to type them by a single keypress you will have to put macros on some keys that type the full sequence.

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Sorry, I wasn’t looking at this forum again until now. “English (intl., with AltGr dead keys)” is a layout variant of US English querty in Linux - so an option in the OS, yes.

I personally use the German layout to be able to type umlauts like normal. To access {}|@ and a few other chars as well as moving and editing keys (arrows, backspace, Page up/down) I use a custom assignment where CapsLock serves as a new modifier key. It takes a bit of time, but not that much, getting used to it. I use that now for 14 years and think this is a great way to come around the shortcomings of the german keyboard layout. I will write an article series in the future explaining that in more detail. I have setup a blog for that, but not finalized the text yet. When you are interested you can drop me a PM and I will send you the draft article version.

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On Macbook select English and use ABC as input source. Then you can use the following steps to type Umlauts:

  1. press “option” + “u”
  2. release both buttons
  3. simply press the letter you want to become Umlaut. (“a”, “o”, or “u”)

for “ß” simply press “option” + “s”

I hope this helps!