Currently for Windows only. A keyboard layout for typing characters used in Old English that are not used in Modern English. Many people use the Icelandic keyboard layout for Old English, but I found the characters were in unintuitive places for me.
This layout was made using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. If you would like to modify the layout to suit your needs, you can download MKLC and edit the oe-keyboard.klc file.s
- Clone or download the repository (the green button in the upper right).
- If you downloaded as a .zip, unzip the folder.
- Run setup.exe in the build folder.
- Restart your computer.
- Activate the keyboard layout as you would any other (through language settings or keyboard settings depending on your OS. Google is your friend!)
All the special characters are accessed using the right Alt key (aka AltGr). You can sub Ctrl+Alt for AltGr if you don't have a right alt key. Based on the US keyboard layout:
| Character | Name | Keystroke |
|---|---|---|
| Æ | capital ash | AltGr+Shift+A |
| æ | lowercase ash | AltGr+A |
| Þ | capital thorn | AltGr+Shift+T |
| þ | lowercase thorn | AltGr+T |
| Ð | capital eth | AltGr+Shift+D |
| ð | lowercase eth | AltGr+D |
| Ƿ | capital wynn | AltGr+Shift+W |
| ƿ | lowercase wynn | AltGr+W |
| ſ | long s | AltGr+S |
| ⁊ | Tironian et | AltGr+7 |
| Ȝ | capital yogh* | AltGr+Shift+Y |
| ȝ | lowercase yogh | AltGr+Y |
There are two other keys to note:
- The grave key (`/~) can be used to put macrons over vowels: ǣ ā ē ī ō ū ȳ (and capitals: Ǣ, etc). Press the grave key first, then type the vowel.
- The apostrophe key can be used to put dots over ġ and ċ in the same way.
*I realize yogh isn't in OE, but it's useful to have quick access to for ME
Lowercase
Uppercase
You can switch between keyboard layouts quickly on Windows 10 by pressing Win+Space.