Windows 10: reset keyboard layouts possible? - windows-10

Solved, see below!
Is there a way to reset keyboard layouts in general in Windows 10?
I messed up using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator some time ago, and I'm not able to fix it.
This is NOT something that can be fixed through anything in Language preferences, btw.
Last year, I was stupid enough to try to fix my keyboards on a "lower level".
I use the Norwegian and Korean keyboard a lot, sometimes also Japanese and Canadian French.
I have a hard time using symbols, like ";" - "'" - "~" etc, since these are placed differently on the various keyboards.
I looked for a solution, and found "Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator". I tried to fix the keyboards, but it didn't work that well since it had problems with the Korean keyboard. I thus tried to change the Norwegian keyboard somewhat, so that I would be able to write more efficiently, without always checking what keyboard I was using (the Korean one also has the American one ingrained, with a simple push of Alt-Gr).
I also have tried to make a shortcut to go from Norwegian to Korean and back seamlessly, without scrolling through other keyboards as well (Win+Shift scrolls through all available ones).
I don't remember exactly what I did, but it didn't really work out, so I thought I deleted the customized keyboards, and went back to the regular ones.
But there was a problem: one of the keys, VK_OEM_3, the one to the left of "L" to be exact, (";" on a regular US kezboard) no longer worked in Norwegian when used in a regular way. At first, it changed keyboard every time I used it to write regularly. I had set it up to do this when pushed WITH another key (probably AltGr), but something was not right.
I managed to delete the customized keyboards, deleted and reinstalled the Norwegian keyboard from Microsoft, but lo and behold, the key no longer worked. I.e, it works when I push it down for a long time, maybe half a second, and then I get a lot of "øøøø". When using TeamViewer, it dosn't even help to hold the key in for a long time. And the digital keyboard certainly does not work.
I have tried to download other keyboards, and the key works well for A-Z and symbols that exist on a US keyboard.
Thus, the French keyboard, where it is an "M", works well. As does US and Korean keyboard layouts where it is an ";".
But it works as badly for Danish layout, where it is an "Æ" or German layout, where it is an "Ö". Both of these layouts were downloaded for the first time after I had messed up.
I have tried kbdEdit, that made me end up with a German keyboard layout I had a hard time to get rid of, even though I deleted it multiple times from "Langauge preferences".
I haven't learned kbdEdit well though, so it might work out.
But I'm afraid that it might not work, and that I
But what has happened here? I used a Microsoft program, and thought that would be safe enough, even though I was warned it might not work, since it's old. But messing up one key completely...
I have deleted all the new keyboards from the Registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Keyboard Layouts), btw. But it's apparently on a lower level than this, since there are problems with all kinds of keyboards that have "extended Latin" letters on that place.)
What I wonder, is if there is a file that can be replaced with a standard file. I don't really want to reinstall Windows and my hundreds of programs, but I can hardly work in Norwegian the way things are now.
I have to check the phrases for eventual missing "ø", and when I remember the problem, it stops my flow since I have to push down for a long time and then delete the extra "øøø"s.

I finally managed to fix the problem:
Under registry keys, in my case in multiple locations, there is a map called SYSTEM\KeyboardLayout\Substitutes.
I deleted everything but the default one in all of these, and now it works!

Related

unwanted: APL keyboard overlay enabled?

I've been trying out APL. I'm running Windows 10 and I've installed Dyalog 18.0, and the APL Language and APL Backtick Symbols extentions for VS Code.
But even though I'm not running any of these programs, sometimes suddenly my keyboard is hyjacked! All my ctrl commands are replaced by APL symbols.
E.g. ctrl-Z (undo) becomes ⊂ and ctrl-A (select all) becomes ⍺. I have no idea why and how to disable this again. This makes it very hard to do my work!!!
I've been googling for this, but haven't found an answer so far. I've looked at the Windows keyboard settings, but it looks normal. The locale settings are also correct.
I'm now just de-installing everything, but that way I need to reinstall every time I want to try out APL.
Can somebody tell me what is happening and how to fix it? (And tell me who to complain to that this is a very hostile feature)
I am sorry that our Unicode IME is causing you confusion.
I do like using it, but there are some Windows settings which I set to make things easier.
Start button->Settings
In the "Find a setting" edit field, type Advanced keyboard settings
Click on the icon with that text on it
Under Switching input methods:
Tick the “Let me set a different input method for each app window”
Tick the "Use the desktop language bar when it's available". This option will show the orange D icon when our Dyalog Unicode IME is active.
On this same dialog, there is a Input language hot keys.
I find it convenient to select a hot key combination to activate our Unicode IME, and another one to go back to the default Windows keyboard layout.
Close this dialog with the X button in the top right.
If you have further problems or questions, you can always ask us at support#dyalog.com
By the way, we put links to advice pages about keyboards on our website under Resources->Fonts and Keyboards.
Regards,
Vince
When installing the standard Dyalog IME, there is a new keyboard input method on Windows. Have you checked WinKey+Space? This should cycle through available keyboard layouts and you should find your previous/default layout available there.
I personally agree that this is not a good way to handle keyboarding and causes many issues for newcomers to APL. Dyalog is aware and are looking into alternatives that can be comfortable for both new and existing users.
You can uninstall the standard IME without uninstalling the entire interpreter by running the Dyalog uninstaller (search "uninstall Dyalog" in your start menu) and selecting just the IME.
For now, I recommend the APL Wiki article on Typing Glyphs for some ideas for alternatives to the standard IME: https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Typing_glyphs#Windows
I personally use the abrudz keyboard with Alt Gr as the switching key.
I just wanted to add that your complaint has reached the people who need to be complained to. This is a difficult problem space, between changing technologies, multiple platforms, new or casual users of APL and the folks who use APL all the time and want to type APL symbols into e-mail messages, etc. It is most definitely time for an overhaul of the keyboard technologies that we use and this will be on the to do list for the next development cycle. Until then, I hope you manage to get by with the advice that has been offered so far!
Thanks for the shout,
Morten Kromberg, CTO, Dyalog

Can I replace Tab key as the trigger key in autokey?

I have recently started using Autokey on a Raspberry Pi. I have it installed and operating as expected. The one issue I have encountered for which I cannot find a solution is that I would like to use the backtick key to trigger text expansion.
I have used back tick key previously with other text expansion/hotkey utilities (namely I used it with AutoHotkey on a Windows machine for years). I prefer to have a trigger key to avoid any unexpected triggers. I am so used to using the backtick key that I hit it instead of Tab. I chose the back tick key a decade or more ago for this purpose because I seldom use it (whereas Tab I use constantly). That muscle memory is a hard thing to go against.
I cannot find this discussed anywhere in the documentation and had no luck searching for an answer around the webs. I dug around in the Autokey program files, but didn't find anything so far. Seems like choosing a custom trigger key should be doable.
I haven't been able to solve this in the way I mentioned in my question (setting the backtick key as the trigger rather than the Tab key). I have however come up with a simple work around.
In all of my abbreviations I include the backtick as the last character. Doing this in combination with using the 'trigger immediately (don't require a trigger character)' accomplishes what I was seeking to do.
I am still interested to hear if anyone knows how to do this more directly (changing a setting, rewriting part of the program, etc.).
AutoKey has an option to trigger expansions on all non-word characters. The problem is that it does not consider the backtick a non-word character. To change that, you would have to edit the source code and add the backtick to that list.
I'm not sure where that is in the source code, but if you ask on our Gitter page https://gitter.im/autokey/autokey , one of our developers or advanced users may be able to help you.
This still isn't exactly what you want, but it's closer.
You could also replace the tab key with the backtick key in the source code, but that sounds a bit more dicey and might have other side effects.

Creating a floating menu that pops like normal menu but appears at mouse position

Some context
I've recently switched to ubuntu budgie (from unity), and I am really tired of the Plank/panel menu combo. I cannot find a setting that suits me, because depending on my screen setup, there's always something in the wrong place.
I am literally unable to show the menu on certain edges if I activate auto-hide, and if I don't activate it, it's not nice at all, to the point that I have removed the plank thing altogether. (Am I having strange bugs on this OS, or is it really messy?)
My idea
With great frustrations come new ideas. I thought again about one I had in the past. I would like to have a circle menu that pops around my mouse cursor when I press a given key combination (very much the kind of thing you would find in some games).
The main use case is to get "pined" application shortcuts easily when I need them, but perhaps other things would fit well with them (commands ...).
Questions
So my questions are:
Does such a thing already exist?
If it doesn't, is it difficult to realize? (How much time, complexity, ...)
What tools/libraries are needed for such a project? I know I'll find plenty of explanations on the gnome developer website but I could really use some more help.
Since you mention a buggy behaviour on Plank, depending on the screen configuration, I suspect you are suffering from this bug. In short: Plank's returned values for the space it needs are not always correct in multi monitor setup.
A neat option to replace at least part of the functionality is Ulauncher, by default called from a shortcut, but you could trigger it from anything that is capable of running its command.
Since Ulauncher's window simply identifies in the window list, you can easily write a script to move it to the current mouse position.
In case you'd need any help in that, just leave a comment.
Not sure if you are also referring to quick access of the window list, but for that you could use the Window Previews applet, or even the Workspace Overview applet, so life without Plank is possible.

Apostrophe/Quotation Not Working

This is kind of silly, but the answer is eluding me and the issue is driving me a bit bonkers. Every now and then Excel decides to not let me use ' and " properly, forcing me to press another key before it appears. The thing is, the only solution I can ever find to this problem is changing the keyboard layout. For this very reason, I only have US English as a keyboard option and yet Excel still pulls this prank on me. It's also only Excel doing it, I can type totally normally in web browsers as well as Word.
Is it possible I accidentally hit some setting or something? Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Eventually it just sort of goes away, but it might be days before that happens, so I'm thinking there must be a button I'm bumping on accident that is toggling this setting.

I can't input certain characters on the PHPStorm Terminal

I'm currently using JetBrains' PHPStorm IDE and I'm having problems using the embedded terminal with a Portuguese Keyboard (correctly set up on Windows). I can't input certain characters like "[", "{" or "]", which I can only access using the "Alt Gr" key, despite characters common too all keyboard layouts working just fine.
Is there any way to fix this? I'm forced to use the windows console to perform certain tasks because of this problem, which makes the IDE terminal a bit useless to me.
It's a known issue that is fixed already.
You will have to wait till next update (v2016.1.1) will be publicly available -- it's expected to be somewhere in a week time (no precise date for the moment, unfortunately).
In meantime you can either use English keyboard layout ... or keep using external console app.

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