The European Keyboard EurKEY is a keyboard layout based on the American keyboard layout. It is very popular with translators and programmers who appreciate the easy access to special characters. It also offers convenient access to many European letters and accents. In 2017 a long awaited new letter joined the German alphabet: the uppercase sharp S: ß.

Since then, the letter has been added to many keyboard layouts, including the EurKEY layout, which has been mentioned several times in this blog. In 2021, an update was accepted in the software repository xkbdesc/xkeyboard-config, which removes the sharp S again, arguing that "the uppercase Ssharp ẞ is nearly useless". This blog post highlights this controversy.

The story

History

The version 1.3 of the Eurkey layout specification was released by Steffen Brüntjen in 2017 shortly after the adoption of the uppercase letter ẞ (Ssharp) into the official German alphabet (see ISO/IEC 10646).

As the lowercase letter ß (ssharp) can be accessed with [alt]-s, Brüntjen assigned the uppercase letter ẞ (Ssharp) to [alt][shift]-s in his release v1.3.

The commit 08ef288b "upgrade to Version 1.3 (partial)" form 2.10.2020 implements this change.

In 28.5.2021 a new issue #271 states:

In commit 08ef288b the borderline useless "Ssharp" (U1E9E) symbol has been introduced following https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/changelog.html for Version 1.3, which is still in beta, replacing the essential "section" (§).

In 30.12.2021, the commits 6b9e6bb3 and 2d9cddfc reverted the work towards implementing v1.3. and rolled back to v1.2.

The following section argues why the changes in v1.3 are crucial for a European layout.

"The borderline useless Ssharp (ẞ) symbol"

The author of issue #271 considers ẞ (Ssharp) "borderline useless" and in his commit 6b9e6bb3 he states "the uppercase Ssharp ẞ is nearly useless". As I understand, the author is Dutch and for him ẞ (Ssharp) might not be important.

For Germans, since 29. June 2017 the letter ẞ (Ssharp) became official part of the German alphabet! This is the reason why the author of Eurkey "eu" released version v1.3. shortly after.

Brütjen's decision in v1.3 to assign the uppercase letter ẞ (Ssharp) to [alt] [shift]-s above the lowercase letter ß (ssharp) that can be accessed with [alt]-s is logical and straightforward.

The refusal to upgrade to version v1.3 means, one letter of the German alphabet is missing in the EurKEY layout. Reminder, the design principle of the "eu" layout is to enable people to type all western European languages on a US keyboard with the [Alt] modifier.

EurKEY version 1.3. is not beta!

It has been argued that v1.3 is beta and therefor the Linux implementation should be postponed. A closer look reveals that only the reference implementation for Windows is beta. The specification for version 1.3. is not! The latest (v1.3) layout specification can be found here:

  • EurKEY - The European Keyboard Layout

    Complete Layout

  • and here EurKEY - The European Keyboard Layout:

    Version 1.3
-----------
Added ✓ and ✗ (replacing © and №)
Added capital ß (ẞ)
Made ¬ a dead key with these bindings:
   s                   §
   1                   №
   2,3,4,5,6           ½,⅓,¼,⅔,¾
   c,p,r,t,T           ©,℗,®,™,℠
   h,j,k,l,u,i,n,m,=   ←,↓,↑,→,↖,↗,↙,↘,↔
   H,J,K,L,U,I,N,M,+   ⇐,⇓,⇑,⇒,⇖,⇗,⇙,⇘,⇔

Version v1.3 is widely adopted as its implementation for various operating systems show: Repository search results · GitHub

Current state

As of commit 893b1ff, "eu" is close to v1.2 but not conform, e.g. "Replace eth (ð and Ð) with d with stroke (đ and Đ)" is missing.

Todo

The following is taken from the above change log v1.3:

  1. Add ✓ and ✗ (replacing © and № by reapplying commit 08ef288b)
  2. Add capital ß (ẞ) (reapply commit 08ef288b)
  3. Replace eth (ð and Ð) with d with stroke (đ and Đ) (should have been done for v1.2 already)
  4. Make ¬ a dead key (can be postponed, as we have a compose key already)

What happened since