Superb international input on Mac with extended keyboard

[robinpokorny]

I've been using the US layout for several years now. It's great for writing in English (duh.) and coding.

Occasionally, I write in Czech, which uses some special characters like ářýčů and others. Some of these are typable on the US layout with modifier keys. But not all which makes it unusable.

There is, of course, the Czech layout with all those characters. The big BUT is that it also changes the position of almost all special characters like !?()[];. And switching between those has had a significant mental overhead for me.

If only the US layout supported all those Czech letters…

It turns out, it does!

There is a keyboard called ABC Extended keyboard which is almost identical to the US one, but allows for input of all special modifiers (see orange keys bellow).

Here is how I would now input those chars mention before:

char	keys
á	⌥ + E, A
ř	⌥ + V, R
ý	⌥ + E, Y
č	⌥ + V, C
ů	⌥ + K, U

Sure, now I need to learn to type on it plus typing Czech special letters is usually 3 key presses instead of 1, but I think it's worth it for me!

Links:

• Enter characters with accent marks on Mac on apple.com