Additional Latin Characters & Symbols for a standard U.S. Keyboard
kînus - a project of the Medienkontrollzentrum, open to public debate. The idea was to create an universal keyboard shortcut standard for letters with diacritics, like ò, ó, ô, ǒ, ö, ő, ȍ, ø, and other symbols, like: ¡ ¿ £ € « … ».
Based on the U.S. standard QWERTY keyboard layout, you gain access to 927 Western Latin UTF-8 Characters, 810 letters, 117 symbols and numbers. kînus supports more than 30 languages with only one keyboard.
Languages
kînus includes all letters used in the following languages:
Azeri
Croatian
Czech
Dansk
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Finish
French
German
Hungarian
Icelandic
Irisch
Italian
Kikuyu
Latvian
Livonian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Northern Sami
Norwegen
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Slovak
Slovenian
Swedisch
Spanish
Turkish
Welsh
… and many more using the same letters. It also includes extra characters you might find usefull.
A standard U.S. keyboard without any diacritics and limited symbols:
Standard U.S. QWERTY Keyboard
Changing the languages of your keyboard gives you access to special characters, but now you have to remember on witch keys they hide:
Standard German QWERTZ Keyboard
kînus gives you intuitive access to Grave, Circumflex, Tilde & Co:
kînus U.S. QWERTY Keyboard
"I took a closer look on the Latin Characters used in Europe, and developed a key system that enables your keyboard to access many special characters by the touch of only two extra keys. I tried to avoid key combinations used in programming languages and also make it simple, logical, and easy to remember."
If you are using an U.S. Standard Keyboard, and need to get those special WESTERN LATIN UTF-8 Characters – kînus may be for you. The Autohotkey Application (EXE) is free, enjoy. Latest version for Windows is 5.2.
Autohotkey is only used to demonstate the functional capability of the idea behind kînus. Integration should take place on the OS-Level.
Please contact me for errors that you have noticed, also please let me know what other languages you would like, or are already covered by kînus and are not listed here. Maybe it resolves the Misk section.
Some letters have diacritics that concist of a combination of 2 marks. Still, type what you see:
Above the letter, beginn with the lower mark and work yourself up
Then, type the part below the letter going down
Input
Result
Double
o
~
:
ṏ
o
~
-
ȭ
o
~
'
ỡ
a
^
`
ầ
a
^
~
ẫ
a
^
.
ậ
e
^
-
ê̄
a
-
^
ā̂
e
-
`
ḕ
r
-
.
ṝ
u
-
:
ṻ
u
-
~
ū̃
a
:
-
ǟ
u
:
`
ǜ
a
.
-
ǡ
Command Keys
To access more characters, some first digets serve as a command key:
Input
Result
Inverse
a
~
`
á
a
~
^
ǎ
a
~
,
ą
Intend
a
;
^
ȃ
a
;
-
ā
o
;
_
o̱
o
;
"
ő
o
;
'
ơ
o
;
,
ỏ
o
;
.
ȯ
o
;
/
ø
Extend
l
:
~
ɫ
m
:
^
m̆
l
:
-
ƚ
l
:
=
ⱡ
a
:
"
ȁ
k
:
,
ķ
s
:
.
ṣ
Unique
d
!
!
ð
Ligature
ae
!
!
æ
Command after Diacritic
In some cases you need a command key after you entered a diacritic. To avoid collisions with key combinations already been used by other letters, the spacebar (␣) serves as a seperator:
Example
The letter ễ is accessed by entering: e^~
The letter ê̌ would be accessed by entering: e^~^, but collides with the above
Simply add a Space before you beginn a new command: e^␣~^
The result is: ê̌
Input
Result
Command
e
-
␣
~
`
ḗ
u
:
␣
~
`
ǘ
u
:
␣
~
^
ǚ
Advanced Commands
Most letters do not collide with others because there is no match in key combinations. Therefore you can also access most Command after Diacritic key combinations without the spacebar:
Input
Result
Identical if NO Collision
i
-
␣
~
`
ī́
i
-
~
`
ī́
Special Letters & Ligatures with Diacritics
To access a diacritic on a special letter or a ligature, nest the key combination of the diacritic within the 2 explanation marks:
Input
Result
Nested Diacritic
d
!
^
^
!
ð̂
ae
!
~
`
!
ǽ
ae
!
;
-
!
ǣ
Exeptional Diacritics Below Letters
In most cases the diacritics are placed automaticly above or below the letter. However, for some letters you must force the below position manualy. This is done with the underscore (_) before the key combination:
Input
Result
Diacritic below
e
_
~
~
ḛ
c
_
^
^
c̭
ḁ
_
:
:
ḁ
h
_
:
^
ḫ
Stroke vs. Crossbar
While the stroke through the letter Ø is obvious, for layout reasons some letters rather display a crossbar than a stroke. Like the letter Đ, it looks like a crossbar but is called a stroke. As long there is no collision, booth shortcuts will work:
Input
Result
Identical
d
;
/
đ
d
:
-
đ
Characteristic
t
;
/
ⱦ
t
:
-
ŧ
Collision
u
;
/
ʉ
u
:
-
ǖ
B - Symbols
Extra characters are located by those keys looking alike, being associated, or right next to them: % ‰ ‱
If you have Autohotkey installed, you can copy & paste this code and create an AHK. If you copy from the source code, please replace:
<with<
>with>
Windows Autostart
To start this application when you turn on the computer, copy the EXE into the Autostart file.
press: WinKey R
enter: shell:startup
copy 'kinus_5.2.exe' and paste it into the open folder: Startup
Next time you start your computer, the script will be executed.
Using this Script,
if you are coding SQL queries the `` might get you in trouble, also the :: operator in other languages. It is recommended to deactivate additional languages in your OS.
CLOSE Application
Right click the Autohotkey Icon in your Taskbar and select:
