Talk:Dead key

Unicode section needs to be re-formatted
The bottom section regarding unicode is not written in the correct format, styling, and should be re-worked. I fixed up the more obvious spelling mistakes, but it is written very informally Rqwan (talk) 10:20, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Bad link
This link should be replaced by a page that is accessible to more people... http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/hfws.aspx?AssetID=HP051865621033 --Nil0lab 22:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Compose vs Dead Keys
I reverted this edit : Dead keys, made popular by the Sun Compose key, are an intuitive way to type letters, diacritics, and other symbols not normally on a given keyboard or keyboard layout. Use of a dead mimics type accents on a mechanical typewriter -- by typing one letter, backspacing, and then typing an accent in the same spot.

Some examples: Compose + e + ' yields: é Compose + D + - yields: Ð Compose + L + ­- yields: £ This is a different method for inputting accented characters which works quite opposite to dead keys. --Pjacobi 10:35, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * ACK Compose and Dead Key are different methods of input and thus deserve distinct articles.--Hhielscher 11:50, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Relation to combining character
This article should avoid talking too much about combining characters, which are a way of constructing complex glyphs from multiple characters. Dead keys, on the other hand, are just one technique of accessing such complex glyphs. A-giau 03:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

AltGr using X-Windows
"In many text processing programs, dead keys are typed using the Ctrl key with the punctuation mark that looks most like the accent. In the X Window System, the AltGr key has this function." AFAIK AltGr is Level-3-Shift under X. Can someone give an example what is meant with the above? Does it need a special keyboard/xkb layout?--Hhielscher 09:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

AltGr is usually set up such that when used on normal punctuation it turns it into a dead key. For example " AltGr + ' " would be an acute accent (´) dead key where normally it is a apostrophe.The Sanest Mad Hatter (talk) 00:29, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Example not working on my computer
The example given of the '~' over a 'p' does not show up on my computer, just shows as '~p'. Using Firefox latest patch, WinXP Pro SP2 if that makes any difference. Not that you'd ever need to combine thsoe 2 characters, just the article claims you can, and then proceeds to demonstrate, and it doesn't really work. Lurlock 23:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * On mechanical typewriters, this actually works. The article says that nowadays. – gpvos (talk) 08:03, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Mac example
Should a chorded keystroke ever be considered a dead key, even when it does the same thing that a dedicated dead key would do? This is in reference to the article's example of "option-`, e produces è on the Macintosh". — wfaulk 20:01, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Compose key/Dead key merge
Please discuss here: Talk:Compose key. – gpvos (talk) 10:48, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Why are they called "dead keys"?
What is the origin of the name? --TiagoTiago (talk) 11:04, 24 August 2014 (UTC)


 * in the article, it says they are called dead keys because nothing immediately obvious happens when you hit them. or something along those lines. Snarevox (talk) 16:04, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

actually this is even better. in the mechanical typewriter section of this article, it says the name originated with mechanical typewriters because when you press the dead key the ribbon doesnt move and nothing appears to have happened, as if the key were 'dead'. Snarevox (talk) 16:18, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

DEADTRANS Function
Which Function of which Framework/Library/Language? Robotic-Brain (talk) 23:12, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The DEADTRANS references in the "Chained dead keys" need to be either removed or clarified as to use. Most users looking to understand how diacritics are used will have no use for this information. WesT (talk) 18:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Incoherent text
I deleted this text from the lead because it is unintelligible and (contrary to WP:LEAD) did not summarise any body content: "This legacy behavior is newly replaced with a more efficient one with respect to the use of combining diacritics following the Unicode Standard. The combining diacritic is then obtained with, while a spacing form of the diacritic is inserted with (typically + or +)."

It may well be true but it needs to be rewritten in English, needs more detailed explanation, and needs to be supported by citation. "Newly": when?; "replaced": by who?; "more efficient": says who?; "following the Unicode standard": Unicode says nothing about input methods, only that most compound characters are achieved by composition rather than pre-composition. If starts a combining sequence, what about its normal use? Please try again, preferably by offering a draft here for comment before putting it in the article. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:14, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Another way to get a dead key value printed
In addition to pressing the space bar after pressing a dead key to print its value, I've always got the same result by just pressing a dead key twice. I don't know whether it prints dead key combinations too and cannot test it right now (no dead keys in my phone's keyboards). Edited: wrong word "once" corrected to "twice" at the end of first sentence.Wafikiri (talk) 14:09, 7 July 2023 (UTC)