Introduction: There are five blocks of Latin characters in Unicode: Basic Latin, Latin-1, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional. The accented characters in these blocks are "composite" characters with built-in diacritics, like é. The Latin Extended keyboard uses dead keys for the direct input of composite characters. It strives to be as comprehensive as possible. You type the dead key first and the base character second.
Pressing the = (equals) key after the dead key applies a Unicode "combining diacritical mark" to the preceding character. You can combine diacritics either by invoking two or more combining diacritical marks in sequence, or adding a combining diacritical mark to a composite base character.
International keyboards: The ISO-standard keyboard hardware used in Europe and around the world has one more key and a different arrangement than the ANSI-standard keyboard, used mainly in North America and China. The third type of hardware that Apple supports is the JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) keyboard.
Key assignments on the ISO keyboard vary according to locale. The French keyboard layout, for example, is different from the German, and so on. Latin Extended is available for most of the international keyboards supported by Apple.
Latin-based international keyboard layouts are listed below. If your locale does not appear, most likely your (Apple) keyboard matches one of those listed. A graphic of the basic keyboard is shown on each download page to help you find the right one. See the Read Me document (included in the downloads) for installation instructions.
Please note that you should only install the Latin Extended keyboard that matches your hardware, because they all use the same name in the Input Menu.
Each version of Latin Extended has the same set of dead keys. See the Dead Keys document (included with the downloads) for details. The Defaults graphic (included with the downloads) shows the location of the dead keys and the remainder of the layout. Latin Extended dead keys are shown in blue. Some international keyboards have their own built-in dead keys, shown in green if they remain active in Latin Extended.
Note: There is a persistent bug in OS X 10.2 and 10.3 that causes odd behavior with Unicode keyboards in the Input menu, with keyboards appearing/disappearing without being activated/deactivated by the user. You can use the following work-around:
[English ANSI] ~ [Dvorak] ~ [English ISO] ~ [British] ~ [Canadian CSA] ~ [French] ~ [Swiss-French] ~ [Swiss-German] ~ [German] ~ [Italian] ~ [Italian Pro] ~ [Spanish] ~ [Spanish ISO] ~ [Portuguese] ~ [Danish] ~ [Swedish] ~ [Swedish Pro] ~ [Norwegian] ~ [Icelandic] ~ [Polish] ~ [Czech] ~ [Slovak] ~ [Hungarian] ~ [Romanian] ~ [Croatian] ~ [Turkish] ~ [日本の JIS]
