Typing Slovene on a non-slovenian keyboard can be a bit of a pain. Most keyboard layouts are missing buttons for the č, š and ž letters! This guide describes what I found to be the best solution: WinCompose
Important
This only works on windows, unfortunately. For MacOS, I left some notes HERE
The program assigns one of your keyboard key as the "compose key". By default, this is the right alt key (also known as Alt Gr).
You hold this key, and then type a sequence of letters, one after the other. For example:
compose t m→ ™compose v c→ č (odlično!)compose " e→ ë (for all those annoying dutch words...)compose ? ?→ ¿ (¿Donde esta la biblioteca?)
(And if you're wondering how I did those arrows, you can probably guess: compose - >)
Note
This guide may seem very long, but that's because I'm trying to provide as much detail as possible. In reality, installing and configuring can be done in under a minute, it's really simple.
CLICK HERE if you would like to skip to the quick guide
Go to http://wincompose.info/ and download the latest installer:
Depending on your browser settings, it will either ask you where to save the file, or it will automatically put it in your Downloads folder.
Important
During the installation process, you will likely get a popup from windows asking you to confirm the installation. Depending on your settings, it may also ask for your password or pincode.
Find the .exe file you just downloaded and double click it. You should get the following screen:
The default installation directory is very likely OK, but you can change it if you want.
Click Next
You should see this screen:
Hit next
Click install
All done! click "finish"
After the installation, the program should have automatically started. You can check this by looking in your system tray on the bottom right of your screen:
The icon might be immediately visible, or it may be hidden behind the little arrow, like in my case:
If you do not see it:
You can manually start the program by searching for it in your start menu:
It will likely be listed as the "recently installed" item:
Or you can search for it by typing "wincompose":
At this point, wincompose is running and it should already work, including the default combinations I listed above.
Before we continue, let's make sure it works.
Important
Some keyboard layouts use the Alt Gr or right alt key to give you more characters to type.
If your keyboard does this, WinCompose will not work with its default settings. This is why we test it now. If it doesn't work for you, don't panic and keep reading. We will simply use a different key as the compose key.
Open a text program. I suggest using notepad for simplicity, but you can also use Ms Word, Google docs, write an email to yourself, etc. Anywhere you can type is fine.
Try it by holding AltGr (if you don't have a key labeled Alt Gr, it's just the right alt key) and typing v c (that is, first a v, then a c, all while holding altgr) in any text field (e.g. notepad, your browser search bar, etc). It should turn into a č.
IF IT DOESN'T WORK: go to step 6 first
However, while v c is not bad, in my opinion we can make it even easier. My preference is c c for č, C C for Č, s s for š, and so on. Really easy to type and to remember!
Let's set that up.
First, open the wincompose window. To do this, go find the tray icon again and double-click it. The program's main window should open:
Now, let's add our own combos. Find the "edit" button on the bottom left and click it:
It will open its configuration file in Notepad (your notepad might have black text on a white background, this is just because of my settings):
Don't be intimidated by this file, adding combos is really easy. The file works like this:
- every line that starts with a
#will be ignored by the program - a key combo takes the form:
<Multi_key> <key>… : "resulting text"
You can delete the contents of this file, and replace them with the following:
# Key sequences have the following form:
#
# <Multi_key> <key>… : "resulting text"
#
# All key names must be enclosed in <angle brackets>.
# The first key must be <Multi_key>.
# The remaining keys can be single characters, like <a>, <B>, <7>,
# <.>, <@>, or from the following list:
#
# Up, Down, Left, Right (the arrow keys), space, exclam, quotedbl,
# numbersign, dollar, percent, ampersand, apostrophe, parenleft,
# parenright, asterisk, plus, comma, minus, period, slash, colon,
# semicolon, less, equal, greater, at, bracketleft, backslash,
# bracketright, asciicircum, underscore, grave, braceleft, bar,
# braceright, asciitilde.
#
# For more definitions, see the files in C:\Program Files\WinCompose\res.
<Multi_key> <s> <s> : "š"
<Multi_key> <S> <S> : "Š"
<Multi_key> <c> <c> : "č"
<Multi_key> <C> <C> : "Č"
<Multi_key> <z> <z> : "ž"
<Multi_key> <Z> <Z> : "Ž"
Important
Make sure to save the file after you're done! Either go to file → save, or hit Ctrl+s
Once you're done (and you've saved the file!) you can close notepad. Go back to the wincompose main screen and click the "reload" button:
All done! Now go try out your new combos! You can also add more combos, or look around in the main window to learn some of the default ones.
The Alt Gr key is a good choice, because it is rarely used. But as mentioned above, this doesn't work for some keyboards.
If this is the case, let's change it:
To get to the settings, find the tray icon again, but this time right click it:
Note: this is also how you can stop the program, by selecting "exit" here.
Click on "Options".
You'll get this screen:
To change the compose key, go to the second tab, "Composing", and click the FIRST "change" button. You will then be asked to press the key you'd like to use as the compose key.
From my testing, the RIGHT Ctrl key seems to work best. Another good option is the "Windows" key, if you don't use it otherwise.
You could also use one of the "F" (like F11, F12, etc) or other less important keys such as "Home", "End", "PgUp", "PgDown", etc.
Caution
I don't recommend using the LEFT Ctrl key, because it can interfere with common shortcuts such as Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v.
For similar reasons, the LEFT Alt key is also not a good choice. Too many applications use it for their shortcuts.
After you've changed the key, make sure to test it out. If you've come here from step 4, now go back to step 5
If you've skipped forward to here, I'm assuming you're already pretty familiar with how to install programs.
- download the installer from http://wincompose.info/
- install
- to edit the combos, double click the tray icon and click the "edit" key. Go here for info on how this file works.
- to edit the program settings, right click the tray icon and click on "Options"
This section is entirely optional, you can stop here. But if you'd like to see some alternative options, you can continue reading.
This is what I tried first. Windows allows you to register multiple keyboard layouts and switch between them fairly easily. It has a huge downside however: you have to re-learn your keyboard. The slovene keyboard layout is QWERTZ, so the Y and Z key are swapped from a regular QWERTY keyboard. If you're used to AZERTY, it's even worse! And even if you get used to those swaps, all the symbol keys are now different too, and you can't cheat by looking at your physical keyboard either.
Clearly, while it works in a pinch, this is not a great option.
Windows has a little-known feature often referred to as ALT-codes for entering basically any character you can think of. It works by holding the (left) ALT key and typing a sequence of numbers on your numpad (the numbers at the top of your keyboard DO NOT WORK for this!) If you don't have a numpad, you can't use this feature.
Here is a list of some of the codes: https://altcodeunicode.com/ And specifically the slovene ones: https://altcodeunicode.com/alt-codes-for-slovene-letters-with-accents-or-diacritics/ Here's a quick reference:
- Ž: Alt + 0142
- ž: Alt + 0158
- Š: Alt + 0138
- š: Alt + 0154
- Č: Alt + 0268
- č: Alt + 0269
This is quite a handy tool if you occasionally need a specific character. However, as you can see each of the letters we need have a code of 4 numbers long, all while holding the ALT key. This is not only hard to remember, but also hard to do. AND you need a numpad on your keyboard, so this likely won't work on your laptop. Not ideal.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an equivalently simple alternative on MacOS. I've looked around a bit, and there are some blogposts with some ways to do it, but they're quite involved. I don't have a mac myself, so I can't test any of them.
You might be better off using this seemingly builtin feature of MacOS: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/enter-characters-with-accent-marks-on-mac-mh27474/mac
Another interesting angle is Keyboard Maestro https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/ It seems incredibly powerful, going far beyond what WinCompose tries to do. This also makes it way more complicated, though.