The US International Keyboard

For those of us who are familiar with the standard US "qwerty" keyboard but who occasionally need to write in foreign (European) languages the keyboard of choice is the US International. It is easily selected when installing OS/2 or it can be selected later by changing a couple of entries in config.sys:

CODEPAGE=850,437
DEVINFO=KBD,UX,C:\OS2\KEYBOARD.DCP
The codepage change (to 850,437 from 437,850) isn't strictly necessary but it is helpful.

Assuming that the US International Keyboard has been selected then this document attempts to describe how it can be used to generate some of the extra characters used in foreign languages and other applications.

For diacritical marks and accented characters, much use is made of dead keys and the right Alt key. In some cases the right Alt key is needed to compose the dead key. The use of dead keys can be disconcerting because in order to generate the character represented by the dead key itself, it is necessary to follow it with a space. For example, to type ~ (tilde) you have to type a tilde followed by a space. It takes a while to become accustomed to it but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for in most cases it becomes unnecessary to remember lots of numeric sequences to be keyed in conjunction with the Alt key.

One thing which may cause further complication is the inability of some editors to distinguish between the right and left Alt keys. This may cause such editors to trap key sequences which you are trying to use to generate foreign characters. The number of such instances is likely to be small, and there are probably other workarounds for the problem.

Dead keys and their combinations:

` (grave accent) can be used with any vowel:

à è ì ò ù À È Ì Ò Ù
~ (tilde) works with just a few letters:
ã ñ õ Ã Ñ Õ
^ (caret) produces vowels with a circumflex:
â ê î ô û Â Ê Î Ô Û
' (apostrophe) generates vowels with an acute accent but it is necessary to chord the apostrophe with the right Alt key
á é í ó ú Á É Í Ó Ú
; (semicolon) chorded with right Alt is used as a dead key for vowels with an umlaut or diaresis:
ä ë ï ö ü Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü
(comma) plus right Alt is a dead key for two characters. When followed by a c it gives c-cedilla:
ç Ç
and when followed by a space it yields a thorn:
þ
Yet another dead key can be constructed with the right Alt key and the grave/tilde key. It works with just a few keys
Right Alt + grave
followed by
gives
space
&hibar;
macron
t T
þ Þ
thorn
o O
ø Ø
o-slash
a A
æ Æ
ae ligature
d D
ð Ð
eth

Direct chords with right Alt key:

Note that the Alt-8 (block) character won't display in HTML.

1
¹
 superscript 1
2
²
 superscript 2 (square)
3
³
 superscript 3 (cube)
4
£
 pound
5
¤
 generic currency symbol
6
°
 degree
7
¢
 cent
8
 block
=
±
 plus or minus
a
ª
 feminine ordinal
c
©
 copyright
d
÷
 division
e
€
 euro
f
ƒ
 fnof
l
¡
 inverted !
m
µ
 mu or micro
n
¬
 not
o
º
 masculine ordinal
p

pilcrow (paragraph mark)
q
¼
 quarter
r
®
 registered (trade mark)
s
ß
 ess-zett or beta
v
¾
 three quarters
w
½
 half
x
×
 multiplication
y
¥
 yen
z
§
 section mark
[
«
 left guillemet
]
»
 right guillemet
\
¦
 broken vertical line
.
·
 point
?
¿
 inverted ?

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Prepared: 31st October 2004
Updated same day thanks to Stephen Carter for helping with the names of some of the characters.
Updated again on 8th November 2004 with more discoveries.
Copyright ©2004, Triton Technologies International Ltd, all rights reserved.