Re: Emacs and add-on USB support

[Yuri Khan]

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am now doing dev work with Perl 6 which has good unicode support. I'm
> considering buying an add-on, customizable keyboard to hold a collection of
> oft-used code points for easy entry.

Start by describing your software environment. Your options will vary
greatly depending on it. Are you on X11/Linux, tty/Linux, Windows,
Mac, other?

Have you already exhausted the high layers that your desktop
environment of choice provides?

E.g. on X11 with XKB, beyond the usual unshifted and shifted
characters, you can have Level3, Level3+Shift, Level5, Level5+Shift,
Level5+Level3 and Level5+Level3+Shift, for (almost) each key, where
Level3 and Level5 are two modifier keys of your choice. Additionally,
you can have multiple (up to 4?) groups, with all of the above levels
in each group. There is also Compose which lets you enter characters
by typing a sequence of more easily typed characters.

On Windows, you can have AltGr and AltGr+Shift layers, and Caps Lock
decoupled from Shift, for a total of 6 characters per key per layout.

On Mac, you have the Option key out of the box, and I hear there
exists customization software for that.

> Can anyone recommend a suitable one that they have successfully used with
> Emacs?

If you go the hardware route, you’ll still need software support, so
that same keys on different devices map to different characters. X11
can do that; not sure about Windows and Mac.