Allow German characters with US keyboard layout

[Speculi]

I'm using a US keyboard layout but sometimes want to type in characters like ßäöüÄÖÜ in text fields for item descriptions, names and so on, because they are normal German characters.
The issue is, to type them on a US keyboard (on Linux / Windows) I need to use the ALT key. But keys pressed with the ALT key seem to be interpreted as keyboard shortcuts by Fantasy Grounds (i.e. switches to another hotkey bar). This leads to no character appearing in the text field.

Is it possible to get this to work? I.e. if a key combination is not a shortcut, but creates a valid character, then treat it like a normal character input?

[Zacchaeus]

I think you need to copy/paste such characters. The Unity engine will interpret the ALT key in such a way that it's not expecting text. But I'm not absolutely sure that's the case.

[Asgurgolas]

I set my Windows to cycle between Italian and US keyboard by pressing Alt + Shift. You could do that, too... swap, input, swap again. Layout is totally different, but if you DO know where the keys are anyway, it's no problem

[Trenloe]

The font used in the control will need to support the characters. If so, ALT should work (with the usual gotcha that the character doesn't appear until you release the ALT key) - here's an example in a story entry:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=66513

Using codes detailed here: https://bonfx.com/alt-key-combinations-with-pdf-cheat-sheet/

[Speculi]

Thanks for the recommendations, and maybe I'm lazy, but non of these solutions are what I would want to do.

Copy/Paste takes too much time for pretty common characters.
Switching layouts is annoying and FG would be the only application I need to do this, because all other applications can handle this just fine.
I don't want to use the ALT + number codes to get those characters. The US international layout allows for using i.e. "ALT + p/P" to get "ö/Ö" and so on. That's what I'm referring to. I know there is also another layout with other dead keys, but that introduces issues with typing text with apostrophes, which is even more annoying.

[pindercarl]

Thanks for the recommendations, and maybe I'm lazy, but non of these solutions are what I would want to do.

Copy/Paste takes too much time for pretty common characters.
Switching layouts is annoying and FG would be the only application I need to do this, because all other applications can handle this just fine.
I don't want to use the ALT + number codes to get those characters. The US international layout allows for using i.e. "ALT + p/P" to get "ö/Ö" and so on. That's what I'm referring to. I know there is also another layout with other dead keys, but that introduces issues with typing text with apostrophes, which is even more annoying.

I've never seen the "ALT + p/P." Can you walk me through how that works?

[Speculi]

I use "English (US), English (international, with AltGr dead keys)" keyboard layout (KDE on Linux, but similar Layouts exist for Windows) with a physical US keyboard.
So I then use the right ALT key with s/q/y/p for ß/ä/ü/ö for example.

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International
I now realize I can use right Alt/AltGr + " followed by a/u/o to produce äüö as well. So that's an option. Still strange that I can't just type the characters like I would normally do in any other application.

[Speculi]

Just bumping this once to see if it is something you want to look into, since I didn't get an answer anymore.

I asked a friend to try this with a German Keyboard on Windows, it's working fine there.
But with a German keyboard layout on Linux (physical US keyboard), some special characters like @{[]}\ which need the AltGr key don't work for me.

[Moon Wizard]

It’s not something that we have direct control over. We get the text entry directly from the Unity Engine.

Regards,
JPG

[Speculi]

I was about to leave it at that answer, but then someone mentioned in the FG Discord a similar issue with typing accents on Spanish keyboards on Mac (https://discord.com/channels/274582899045695488/692116657858150410/1472270071400239360)... so:

Are you using the Unity UI EventSystem? If so, did you look at IMECompositionMode (https://docs.unity.cn/2021.3/Documentation/ScriptReference/IMECompositionMode.html)?

Something along the lines of this might work, but I'm not sure what other side effects it might have:

EventSystem.current.currentInputModule.input.imeCo mpositionMode = IMECompositionMode.On;
Usually this seems to only be activated when a Unity UI input field is selected so it can get actual written text input. While in most other situations a game engine just wants to get simple key presses and not wait for combined keys to translate into characters. So that's the default in Unity as well.

I still see the possibility, that Unity just implemented input handling a bit half baked with certain keyboard combinations... wouldn't be the only thing they did a bit weird.