Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Roger Mills <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> An OT but related question-- is there some magic (but simple!!) way to write IPA in Yahoo mail??? As mentioned before, I have to
>> compose msgs. in OO or MSWord, then C&P to the email box. Tests have shown that that works...usually.
> 
> It's not the app, it's the OS.  If you're on Windows, then you have a
> few options.  The easiest to use is to install a custom keyboard
> layout.  Surely someone on here has created an IPA keyboard for
> Windows?

Yes I have one but it still needs some work and there's no decent 
documentation to explain it.  I tried as much as possible to make 
deadkey combinations that resemble inputting XSAMPA.  I may someday 
document it to share with others.  I'm pretty sure I'm not the only 
one here because others have mentioned doing similar things.


> The US/International keyboard layout, which includes several
> characters accessible via the AltGr key (right-hand Alt), is
> annoyingly limited, and redundant - several AltGr combinations are
> wasted on characters that are already available via the dead keys
> (e.g. ~ + N vs AltGr+N, both of which generate ñ).  Heck, it doesn't
> even have any way to generate an œ!

I've made a kitchen sink Roman keyboard for my default.  I do use 
AltGr+N for Ñ because it's convenient. Even though there's the 
deadkey AltGR+~, it saves a couple of keystrokes which I need 
because I do use Spanish quite a bit.  Likewise I have other symbols 
on AltGr combinations for convenience:
	
	A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
	æ β ç ð ə ɸ ɣ ɦ ı ʝ ɬ ł ŋ ñ œ ¶ ø ʀ ß þ ʊ ʌ ƿ ʃ ȝ ʒ


> The most general, but not universally available, method requires you
> to know the Unicode code point of the character you want: hold down
> alt, press the plus key on the numeric keypad, type the hexadecimal
> code point value, and then release Alt.  For instance, to get an ŋ
> (U+014B LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG):

Works great if you have the Unicode chart memorized (I had enough 
trouble using this with CP437 in the DOS days).  A custom layout 
with dead keys is much more intutive.  I also have a Cyrillic that I 
made to avoid using the standard Russian layout because I never 
could get used to it without a chart handy.  I've found I can type 
faster using something resembling QWERTY like ЧШЕРТЫ, and I can add 
additional letters to cover other languages like Ukrainian, 
Byellorussian, Bulgarian or Serbian.


> ...

Now I have a question that someone may know the answer to.  Does 
anyone know of a utility that will take the .klc files from MSKLC 
and convert them for use with Linux? (preferrably Ubuntu/Debian)