The Alt-Latin keyboard layout (Windows version)
A separate version of this post for macOS users is available here.
Introduction
Researchers in Near Eastern Studies often need to include diacritics and special characters, when they write in Latin script while referring to names and ideas that originate in non-Latin-script languages like Arabic and Persian. We might, for example, be discussing the historical figure ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib; and, in an academic context, it could be desirable to write the name in a way that reflects that ʿAlī begins with the Arabic letter ʿayn (ع). Similarly, ʿAlī contains the long vowel ī (ي), as does the subsequent word Abī. Ṭālib contains the long vowel ā (ا), in addition to the letter ṭ (ط), which can be distinguished from t (ت).
This is just a reality of formal academic writing in our field; we deal with a fair amount of transliteration. It may be worth noting that some scholars make extensive use of diacritics and special characters, while others try to limit the complication that they introduce. (One compromise option is to use the macron to distinguish long vowels from short, but otherwise to stick with the basic Latin alphabet.) And there are some who think that technical transliteration is senseless outside of certain peculiar contexts. It is often pointed out that a specialist in the field will already recognize a name like ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and know exactly how it is written in Arabic; whereas a non-specialist will gain nothing, and may in fact be confused, from reading words with unfamiliar characters. Why not just write ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib? What could be more fatuous than a practice that takes extra time to benefit no one?
Such questions are above my pay grade, and if you are a fellow researcher-peon, they may be above yours, too. (Here I should pause to clarify that many groups of people may need to type with special characters for a variety of reasons, and the solution offered below—the Alt-Latin keyboard layout by Kino—is quite versatile. I am discussing the matter from the perspective of Near Eastern Studies scholarship because that is what I know.) Perhaps you have a colleague or professor who insists on the use of a certain transliteration system, e.g., that of the Library of Congress, or the widely popular standard laid out by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Or perhaps you have to follow a given publisher’s style guide for a book or article. The result is that you will need to use some special characters.
While there are different ways of accomplishing this, including Unicode “character pickers” available online, the most efficient method by far is to use an advanced keyboard layout. Ideally, you would want a layout that is identical on the surface to what you use for everyday purposes—in this case, US English QWERTY—but gives you access to a larger set of characters via modifier keys. (If the layout that you normally use is something different, I apologize for my Americentrism.) Then you could pretty much “set it and forget it.” You would have what you need at your fingertips, without any impediment the rest of the time. This is what is offered by the Alt-Latin layout, developed by someone called Kino all the way back in 2004. Below, I will go over how to download the necessary files (which I now host myself), install the layout, set it up for use in Windows, and type with it.
Who is Kino? I don’t know. Why am I writing this post? Well, for the longest time, the Alt-Latin layout was available through a web page of the University of Chicago Library. The page is still there, but it has not been updated for years, and there are several dead links. More importantly, the version of Alt-Latin for Windows offered for download—which I believe has not changed since 2004—does not work with the current version of the operating system. I ended up using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to make a few small fixes and export a new installation package. Now it works just fine. All credit still goes to Kino, whoever s/he may be, but if you are using Windows 10 and want to set up the Alt-Latin keyboard, I think that what I am posting here is the only game in town.
Download
What you need is a ZIP archive, just a couple hundred KB in size, available at the following URL:
https://www.theobeers.com/AltLat19.zip
Installation
- Extract the archive (AltLat19.zip), and you should see a directory named AltLat19.
- Enter that directory.
- Find the file named setup.exe and run it. (This executable was generated directly by the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. I have not done anything else to it.) Follow the resulting prompts. This should be fairly self-explanatory.
Setup
Now that the layout is installed, you will need to configure Windows to use it. This may be a bit fussy. I hate dealing with things like this in Windows (most of my time is spent in macOS). But here is how the setup process should work in Windows 10 as it currently stands (version 1903):
- Click on the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen to launch the Start Menu (assuming they still call it that).
- After the menu pops up, click on the gear icon on the left side. This should take you to Settings—not to be confused with Control Panel!
- There should be a category in Settings labeled Time & Language. Click on that.
- On the resulting page, click on Language on the left side.
- Now you should see a list of Preferred languages, and one of them should be English (United States). (If you want to use Alt-Latin but do not have US English as one of your languages in Windows, then you will probably need to add it.) Click on English (United States).
- There should now be a button labeled Options. Click that.
- At the bottom of the resulting page, you will find a list of keyboard layouts selected for US English input. Click on “Add a keyboard.”
- In the list that pops up, find Alt-Latin 2019 (I named it this way to prevent any confusion with the original version), and click on it.
- To keep things simple, you may want to remove any other keyboard layouts associated with US English. But this is optional.
- Once you have multiple languages/input methods set up in Windows, there should be a small language selector widget toward the right side of the taskbar. You can click on that at any time, to see what languages are available and switch among them.
I hope this works for you! In case it might be helpful, I also made a screen recording of the process as it currently appears on my Windows laptop.
Usage
Now everything should be set up, and the last, and most important, question is how to use the Alt-Latin keyboard. The basic idea is that you hold the Ctrl and Alt keys—or just the Alt key to the right of the space bar—and press another key to select a diacritic that you would like to use. Then, having released the modifier key(s), you type the letter on which you want the diacritic to be placed; and voilà, it should appear as intended.
This may sound a bit confusing, since it involves something called “dead keys.” Again, when you hold the modifier key(s) (I recommend using Right Alt by itself), and press the key associated with a diacritic, nothing visible will happen. The keyboard is waiting for you to enter the next letter, to which the diacritic will be applied. Once you get accustomed to this process, it can be done very quickly.
Which keys handle which diacritics? First, for reference, I will provide a screenshot of what Alt-Latin looks like in its default state. It should be identical to US English QWERTY. (Please note that my keyboard layout screenshots are all taken from macOS, since no viewer for this currently exists in Windows. So the modifier keys will not match what you find on a Windows keyboard, but the rest will be the same.)
The following screenshot shows what changes when you hold the modifier key(s). Again, on Windows, this would be either Ctrl and Alt at the same time, or just the Alt key to the right of the space bar. (I recommend the latter.)
The keys that now appear orange are the aforementioned dead keys. If you hold Right Alt and press the A key, for instance, you have requested a macron. Then you can release Right Alt, and type a subsequent letter of your choice, and it will appear with a macron—if available. You will not be able to place any diacritic on any letter; a finite but generous set of options is provided for. In the case of the macron, you can use Alt-Latin to apply it to seven letters: ā, ē, ḡ, ī, ō, ū, and ȳ.
You may notice that, apart from the dead keys for diacritics, you now have various other special characters at your disposal. This is an added convenience, and you can access a few more possibilities by holding Shift along with the modifier key(s). See the screenshot below.
One of my personal favorite features is that if I hold the modifier key(s) and press the hyphen key, I get an en dash (–). If I also hold Shift, it gives me an em dash (—). Who knows which of the available shortcuts you might end up using regularly? The central feature of Alt-Latin is that it employs dead keys to place a substantial variety of diacritics on letters of your choice (within reason); but its usefulness extends further.
Demonstration
I wanted to be able to show how the Alt-Latin keyboard works, for a mediocre (at best) typist who uses it regularly. So I recorded a video, in which I type out a transliteration of a few lines from a famous Persian poem by Ḥāfiẓ of Shīrāz (d. ca. 1390 CE). This is in real time, including pauses to check the Persian and occasional mistakes that I go back to correct.
If you encounter any difficulties installing or using the Alt-Latin layout, or if you have any questions, or if you think there is some way that I could improve this post, please leave a comment or get in touch with me by other means. Thanks so much for your time!
