Quick Accent Tool Customization Improvement

[python-bear]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

Main Proposition Summary

The Quick Accent tool should be more customizable. So that users have the ability to map any key on their keyboard (not including the numpad or the F-row and other modifier keys) to any alternate characters or groups of characters.

More Information On Features

• Each supported key should be able to be mapped to a list of any number of strings, each containing one or more characters. So, in addition to the current ability of Quick Accent, where each key is only mapped to strings that are one-character long they can now be mapped to strings that are more than one character long.
• Only keys that usually are used for typing (the base letter keys, the punctuation keys and the number row) should be supported for mapping. The user should also be able to map character alternates to their shifted/capital alternatives separately from their normal forms.
• In the PowerToys Settings app the user should be able to set up the mapping for all of the keys on their keyboard through some GUI interface or maybe also through a .json file (or other data structure storage file).
• The user should also be able to change the Activation Key to a larger range of alternate keys, such as the up arrow, the down arrow, the right alt key, or any other keys that make sense to map as the Activation Key.
• If the ability to edit the key mappings in a .json file or other similar file is added then there should also be documentation on how to do so and the file's directory.
• The tool should be renamed from Quick Accent to something more applicable, such as Quick Keys or Short Keys. Since now it will be used for more than just accents.

Scenario when this would be used?

Custom Mapping Use:

For example, I sometimes write in Old English yet Quick Accent does not support the letter variations that I need to do so using PowerToys. Here are the letter variations that I would need:

Capital-Lowercase Groups:

• G: Ȝ
• g: ȝ
• D: Ð
• d: ð
• T: Ꞇ
• t: ꞇ
• W: Ƿ
• w: ƿ

Single Case Groups:

• r: ꞃ
• f: ꝼ
• t: ꝥ
• d: ꝺ
• s: ſ

There are a few that are supported already:

Capital-Lowercase Groups:

• A: Æ
• a: æ
• A: Ā
• a: ā
• O: Œ
• o: œ
• O: Ō
• o: ō
• E: Ē
• e: ē
• T: Þ
• t: þ

Single Case Groups:

• i: ı
• y: ẏ

However, I would want Œ and œ to be mapped to E and e instead of O and o. I'm sure that there are many other situations where people would benefit from being able to map their own letters to keys, for more obscure languages/dialects or even just for fun/personal use.

Custom Activation Key Use:

Recently I have played games where both the arrow keys, and some of the letter keys have been used. It usually takes me a few minutes before I realize that Quick Accent is disturbing my gameplay, and once I do I quit PowerToys. It would be more convenient if I could just map the Activation Key to say, AltGr (usually the right Alt key), which is rarely used for anything other than the normal Alt key (usually the left Alt key).

More Than One Character Long Mappings:

This can be useful if say, you need to frequently insert the y͆ character. Yet, because this character is actually a combination of the y character and the combining accent ͆ character and doesn't have a single character representation then you wouldn't be able to map it in as easy a away as allowing multi characters in the mapping.

This could also be used so that you don't have to type out common words, such as the, and or this or even longer words such as because. Allowing the user to type them in just two keystrokes. This feature could also be used on the number-row so that you might map the words for numbers to their respective keys. For example, you could map one to the 1 key, two to the 2 key, and so on. Or you could do it like first to the 1 key, second to the 2 key, and so on.

A user might also use this feature for their name, other peoples' names, gamer-tags, or passwords. Which you should add a warning against doing, even though it might be helpful.

This feature can be used for a large range of things.

Supporting information

No response

[davidhunter22]

I would love to have more customization as well.

In my case I want to type Latin. Latin has vowels a, e, i, o, u but has both long and short forms. In modern texts long forms are normally written with a macron and short with a breve. Currently, if you select all languages, quick accent has all the vowels with macrons but only a and u with breves.
Now I could put in a request to support Latin as a language but that could take a while.
If I could add custom Unicode characters to a given letter I could fix this easily myself.

[TheJoeFin]

This issue has too many distinct issues within in. Some are duplicates and tracked elsewhere others maybe be unique. Could you please search through the issues and refine this to be a single issue, and open another issue for each other unique issue. Here are some related issues to reference.

#20958
#20312