{"id":225,"date":"2013-12-06T11:40:17","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T11:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deeproot.co.uk\/blog\/?p=225"},"modified":"2017-11-29T20:20:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T20:20:29","slug":"extra-keys-new-version-2-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/2013\/extra-keys-new-version-2-2-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Extra Keys new version 2.2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A new\u00a0 version of Extra Keys has been released, which is a major change in one respect as it introduces selectable sets of keys. This enables a big increase in the number of character keys, in fact there are now over 600 unique characters available.<\/p>\n

\"extrakeys220-3\"<\/a>The characters are grouped by alphabets and languages that share characters.\u00a0 Common accented letters are repeated on several sets,\u00a0 aiming at reducing the need to switch sets.\u00a0 For the first time, letters from some non-Latin alphabets are included. This version has Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian and Armenian as well as additional Latin accented letters that are relevant to Eastern European languages such as Polish, Hungarian and Romanian.<\/p>\n

The default start-up set remains as Latin for Western European languages, but with some changes.\u00a0 Letters for Nordic languages are moved to a separate set, while some new accented letters are added to the default set.\u00a0 Perhaps most notably this now includes the letters needed for Welsh.\u00a0 It has been pointed out that the original Extra Keys provided accented letters for most Western European languages but omitted Welsh, which is an official language within the UK. Welsh is unusual in treating W and Y as vowels that are sometimes accented. The new version has these characters. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve little knowledge of Welsh, even though my father could speak it!<\/p>\n

The original versions concentrated on characters that were part of the ANSI code.\u00a0 Greatly extending the character range relies entirely on using Unicode.\u00a0 Most modern applications are Unicode compliant but older programs may have trouble displaying all letters.<\/p>\n

It is also very important to use a suitable font, which can be an issue on older Windows versions.\u00a0 Some applications don’t give a choice of font, but many do, especially word processors and similar programs.\u00a0 Standard Windows fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman are actually pretty good and have most characters.\u00a0 If you are running on Windows XP or even Windows 2000 then you may want to install the latest font updates in order to display certain letters. There are additionally some great free fonts that have excellent Unicode support, for example the DejaVu font family that comes with OpenOffice\/LibreOffice.<\/p>\n

Due to\u00a0 all the additional character data the program file for this version is quite a lot bigger, though no heavy-weight at just 970Kb.\u00a0 The new version is still self-contained and fully portable.\u00a0 If you don’t need all the new letters, perhaps you only use French or Spanish, then the previous version will be fine (and smaller). It remains available for download and the actual program logic is the same as the new version, only the character range is different.<\/p>\n

As always,\u00a0 for more information and downloads\u00a0 see\u00a0 the Extra Keys web page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new\u00a0 version of Extra Keys has been released, which is a major change in one respect as it introduces selectable sets of keys. This enables a big increase in the number of character keys, in fact there are now over 600 unique characters available. The characters are grouped by alphabets and languages that share… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deeproot.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}