Tishness … An XKB map on Windows … Eine Art Brot 30th of March, 2006 POST·MERIDIEM 04:02

Tony Wilson, of 24 Hour Party People  infamy, is interviewed over at http://​film.​guardian.​co.​uk/​interview/​interviewpages/​0,6737,661059,00.​html . They pose him this question:

“Were you not, I persevere, embarrassed by the degree of prat tishness that Coogan bestows on you?” 

I swear, I read the thing three times; asking myself what exactly “tishness” was and if I had ever seen “prat” used adjectivally before. Ach, the Guardian.

If you’re anything like me in your keyboard usage, (and admittedly the chances are slim) none of the standard Windows or Macintosh national keyboards, for whatever country you happen to be in, have all the symbols you need to type every day.

Happily, on X11, Séamus Ó Ciardhuáin provided a layout that makes everything this Western European needs easily available, with a basic layout identical to the one I was weaned on. Thank you Séamus!

Unhappily, I don’t use X11 at work, I use Windows XP. However, our friends in Redmond have provided the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator; with this, I’ve cloned Séamus’ layout. It’s available in source form here; a Zip file with the installable MSI file is is here. Notable points are that AltGr + 8 is a dead umlaut, AltGR + \ a dead grave, and that the standard Irish-Windows-layout AltGr + vowel gives the acute. Not cool for the moment is that Ctrl \ doesn’t work, nor does Ctrl [ or Ctrl _. Comments and suggestions welcome.

Word of the day: Нон is Tajik for Naan bread. Mmm, Naan bread.