The ELK is an AutoHotKey (AHK) script that is able to type every Latin character, every diacritic, and every possible combination of them whether pre-composed or not. It can type characters used in Latin-based scripts ranging from German to Vietnamese, phonetic scripts from the IPA to Teuthonista, and everything in between. It can even type Zalgo text!
This script supports all characters in the following Unicode blocks:
- Latin-1 Supplement | Latin Extended Additional
- Latin Extended-A | Latin Extended-B | Latin Extended-C | Latin Extended-D | Latin Extended-E | Latin Extended-F | Latin Extended-G
- IPA Extensions | Phonetic Extensions | Phonetic Extensions Supplement
- Superscripts and Subscripts | Spacing Modifier Letters | Modifier Tone Letters
- Combining Diacritical Marks | Combining Diacritical Marks Extended | Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement
It also supports some characters in other blocks also used in the IPA.
- Install AutoHotKey at version 2.0 or newer.
- Place the
.ahkfile (the script) in your start-up folder. - Run the script.
The script should now automatically run every time your machine boots.
All characters in this script are typed with hotkeys and hotstrings involving RAlt (the right Alt key) which on some keyboards is shown as AltGr. Please note that this script will override the original functions of this key, and that hotstrings are only able to function when every component character has been typed consecutively and therefore registered by AHK.
Hotkeys are composed of RAlt, optionally LAlt, and a key. They type the most common diacritics and a select few common characters, and are the easiest to type.
Diacritics are typed in the form of combining characters, and can be appended to base letters to form new letters. The key of a diacritic may depend on its shape, name, or relative position to the key of a related diacritic on the QWERTY layout. For instance, RAlt + U yields a breve, RAlt + A yields an acute, and RAlt + Q yields a double acute as Q is above A.
The LAlt key is used similarly to how the Shift key is used normally, usually causing the diacritic to be placed below the preceding letter instead of above it, or occasionally vice-versa. For instance, RAlt + LAlt + A yields an acute below. The Shift key is not used in any hotkeys as Alt + Shift triggers a keyboard switch on Windows.
A number of non-diacritics may also be typed with hotkeys, such as the interpunct with RAlt + . or the zero-width space with RAlt + .
A list of all hotkeys can be found here.
Thanks to AHK's hotstrings, letters with diacritics are automatically converted to their pre-composed form as specified in Unicode, if it exists. This may be prevented by typing RAlt + ; (before the hotstring is complete), which resets the hotstring register.
All other characters are typed using the hotstring brackets ⁅ and ⁆, typed with RAlt + [ and RAlt + ] respectively, in the form ⁅hotstring⁆.
Hotstrings using brackets are never layered; no hotstring will contain more than one of each bracket. In cases where a character involves other characters that are also typed with hotstring brackets, the inner brackets are omitted. This makes it easier to type hotstrings, but it also means that hotstrings using brackets cannot trigger other hotstrings using brackets.
When a combining diacritic is used, a space is added to prevent automatic pre-composition. When a modifier (described below) does not apply to every part of the hotstring, spaces are also used to separate each part.
Modifiers are used in hotstrings to represent a kind of visual transformation, most frequently appearing in phonetic characters. Most modifiers are either only prepended or only appended to the character being modified, but in some cases either may apply with different effects depending on position.
For instance, the small modifier - is prepended (e.g. ⁅-H⁆ -> ʜ) while the bar modifier - is appended (e.g. ⁅H-⁆ -> Ħ).
Modifiers may be escaped for their character values with a backtick, but in practice this has not been necessary yet.
A list of all modifiers can be found here.
Namespaces are used to categorise characters that cannot be described with modifiers alone, and often use modifiers differently. Their syntax is ⁅namespace:hotstring⁆, such as in ⁅rn:X⁆ which yields Ⅹ (the Roman numeral for 10).
A list of all namespaces can be found here.