UK keyboard layout with Swedish character support for Windows

I'm learning Swedish, but my keyboard doesn't have keys for å, ä, and ö. Most of the time I use a Mac and can get these letters relatively easily using the option key. On Windows it's not nearly so easy -- the common advice to get a å, for example, is to hold down alt and type 134. Might be okay if you only have to do it once, ludicrous otherwise.

Microsoft includes an alternative keyboard layout for international use, called UK Extended. UK Extended, it turns out, has been cleverly designed so as to be able to produce two-thirds of the letters I need.

So I built my own keyboard layout using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. I just took the standard UK English keyboard and mapped Swedish keys to it, as follows:

• å: AltGr + a
• ä: AltGr + q
• ö: AltGr + o

I'm not too happy about AltGr + q. If you've got a better suggestion let me know.

Here is the installer -- just run it, and then select the new keyboard layout from control panel (it's in the keyboard portion of regional settings):

UK keyboard with Swedish letters: sweuk.zip (248k)

Here is the keyboard source file for MKLC if you would like to build your own:

Source code for UK keyboard with Swedish letters: UK-Swe keyboard.klc (13k)

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