01-31-2026, 05:21 PM
Thank you for your answer.
What I am looking for is a quick, simple and customizable way to type foreign characters. I have tried several systems, including Popchar and Extended keboards, and now I think that the most logical and quick system is the one used on smartphones: you keep a key touched and a popup lets you choose from additional letters or symbols.
An imitation of this criterion on Windows is keyxpat (https://keyxpat.com), where, if you keep a key pressed, a sort of metronome starts, and a different letter or symbol will be typed depending how long you keep the letter pressed. I think that the principle of keeping a letter pressed is good, what I don’t like is the metronome criterion, because this way you need to remember what symbol corresponds to different durations. Instead, it should work like Android, a panel should popup and then you choose, by using arrow keys or other keys, even better if you could just use the same key that you kept pressed. The criterion of the popup panel is used on “Quick Accent”, that is part of a series of Powertoys for Windows, but the trigger of this program is based on combination of keys, not on keeping pressed just one key.
At the moment the quickest way I am using is based on Quick Macros: I press F6 and this button triggers at the same time a keyboard remapping for some keys and a popup picture that shows my keyboard and the new letters that will be typed with each key. Once I press a key, Quick Macros closes the popup picture and stops the key remapping. What I don’t like in this system is that you have to press F6. The advantage is that you don’t have to do any additional action, like moving with the mouse cursor through different symbols, to choose what you need to type.
I understand that the system of long press could break other applications and it could be itself not so reliable. I would like to test something with Quick Macros, but I would need a starting point how Quick Macros would detect a long press, may be also customizing a minimum time of keeping the key pressed, to make the trigger start.
What I am looking for is a quick, simple and customizable way to type foreign characters. I have tried several systems, including Popchar and Extended keboards, and now I think that the most logical and quick system is the one used on smartphones: you keep a key touched and a popup lets you choose from additional letters or symbols.
An imitation of this criterion on Windows is keyxpat (https://keyxpat.com), where, if you keep a key pressed, a sort of metronome starts, and a different letter or symbol will be typed depending how long you keep the letter pressed. I think that the principle of keeping a letter pressed is good, what I don’t like is the metronome criterion, because this way you need to remember what symbol corresponds to different durations. Instead, it should work like Android, a panel should popup and then you choose, by using arrow keys or other keys, even better if you could just use the same key that you kept pressed. The criterion of the popup panel is used on “Quick Accent”, that is part of a series of Powertoys for Windows, but the trigger of this program is based on combination of keys, not on keeping pressed just one key.
At the moment the quickest way I am using is based on Quick Macros: I press F6 and this button triggers at the same time a keyboard remapping for some keys and a popup picture that shows my keyboard and the new letters that will be typed with each key. Once I press a key, Quick Macros closes the popup picture and stops the key remapping. What I don’t like in this system is that you have to press F6. The advantage is that you don’t have to do any additional action, like moving with the mouse cursor through different symbols, to choose what you need to type.
I understand that the system of long press could break other applications and it could be itself not so reliable. I would like to test something with Quick Macros, but I would need a starting point how Quick Macros would detect a long press, may be also customizing a minimum time of keeping the key pressed, to make the trigger start.