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authorRyan <fauxpark@gmail.com>2020-05-27 10:52:48 +1000
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+# Language-specific Keycodes
+
+Keyboards are able to support a wide range of languages. However, they do not send the actual characters produced by pressing their keys - instead, they send numerical codes. In the USB HID spec, these are called "usages", although they are more often referred to as "scancodes" or "keycodes" when in the context of keyboards.
+Less than 256 usages are defined in the HID Keyboard/Keypad usage page, and some of those do nothing on modern operating systems. So, how is this language support achieved?
+
+In a nutshell, the operating system maps the usages it receives to the appropriate character based on the user's configured keyboard layout. For example, when a Swedish person presses the key with the `å` character printed on it, the keyboard is *actually* sending the keycode for `[`.
+
+Obviously, this could get confusing, so QMK provides language-specific keycode aliases for many keyboard layouts. These won't do much on their own - you still have to set the matching keyboard layout in your OS settings. Think of them more as keycap labels for your keymap.
+
+To use these, simply `#include` the corresponding [header file](https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/tree/master/quantum/keymap_extras) in your `keymap.c`, and add the keycodes defined in them in place of the `KC_` prefixed ones:
+
+|Layout |Header |
+|---------------------------|--------------------------------|
+|Canadian Multilingual (CSA)|`keymap_canadian_multilingual.h`|
+|Croatian |`keymap_croatian.h` |
+|Czech |`keymap_czech.h` |
+|Danish |`keymap_danish.h` |
+|Dutch (Belgium) |`keymap_belgian.h` |
+|English (Ireland) |`keymap_irish.h` |
+|English (UK) |`keymap_uk.h` |
+|English (US International) |`keymap_us_international.h` |
+|Estonian |`keymap_estonian.h` |
+|Finnish |`keymap_finnish.h` |
+|French |`keymap_french.h` |
+|French (BÉPO) |`keymap_bepo.h` |
+|French (Switzerland) |`keymap_fr_ch.h` |
+|French (macOS, ISO) |`keymap_french_osx.h` |
+|German |`keymap_german.h` |
+|German (Switzerland) |`keymap_german_ch.h` |
+|German (macOS) |`keymap_german_osx.h` |
+|German (Neo2)* |`keymap_neo2.h` |
+|Greek* |`keymap_greek.h` |
+|Hungarian |`keymap_hungarian.h` |
+|Icelandic |`keymap_icelandic.h` |
+|Italian |`keymap_italian.h` |
+|Italian (macOS, ANSI) |`keymap_italian_osx_ansi.h` |
+|Italian (macOS, ISO) |`keymap_italian_osx_iso.h` |
+|Japanese |`keymap_jp.h` |
+|Korean |`keymap_korean.h` |
+|Latvian |`keymap_latvian.h` |
+|Lithuanian (ĄŽERTY) |`keymap_lithuanian_azerty.h` |
+|Lithuanian (QWERTY) |`keymap_lithuanian_qwerty.h` |
+|Norwegian |`keymap_norwegian.h` |
+|Polish |`keymap_polish.h` |
+|Portuguese |`keymap_portuguese.h` |
+|Portuguese (Brazil) |`keymap_br_abnt2.h` |
+|Romanian |`keymap_romanian.h` |
+|Russian* |`keymap_russian.h` |
+|Serbian* |`keymap_serbian.h` |
+|Serbian (Latin) |`keymap_serbian_latin.h` |
+|Slovak |`keymap_slovak.h` |
+|Slovenian |`keymap_slovenian.h` |
+|Spanish |`keymap_spanish.h` |
+|Spanish (Dvorak) |`keymap_spanish_dvorak.h` |
+|Swedish |`keymap_swedish.h` |
+|Turkish (F) |`keymap_turkish_f.h` |
+|Turkish (Q) |`keymap_turkish_q.h` |
+
+There are also a few which are not quite language-specific, but useful if you are not using a QWERTY layout:
+
+|Layout |Header |
+|-------------------|------------------------|
+|Colemak |`keymap_colemak.h` |
+|Dvorak |`keymap_dvorak.h` |
+|Dvorak (Programmer)|`keymap_dvp.h` |
+|Norman |`keymap_norman.h` |
+|Plover* |`keymap_plover.h` |
+|Plover (Dvorak)* |`keymap_plover_dvorak.h`|
+|Steno* |`keymap_steno.h` |
+|Workman |`keymap_workman.h` |
+|Workman (ZXCVM) |`keymap_workman_zxcvm.h`|
+
+## Sendstring Support
+
+By default, `SEND_STRING()` assumes a US ANSI keyboard layout is set. If you are using a different layout, you can also `#include "sendstring_*.h"` (as above) in your keymap to override the lookup tables used for mapping ASCII characters to keycodes.
+
+An important thing to note here is that `SEND_STRING()` only operates on [ASCII text](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#Character_set). This means that you cannot pass it a string containing Unicode characters - this unfortunately includes accented characters that may be present in your desired layout.
+Many layouts make certain characters, such as Grave or Tilde, available only as [dead keys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key), so you must add a space immediately after it in the string you want to send, to prevent it from potentially combining with the next character.
+Certain other layouts have no Sendstring header as they do not use a Latin-derived alphabet (for example Greek and Russian), and thus there is no way to input most of the ASCII character set. These are marked above with a `*`.