PLK - PolyLingual Keyboard 5.x

PLK is an extended US keyboard able to generate all the characters of the English, Slovak, Czech, German and Hungarian languages. PLK eliminates the necessity to switch between US and SK (CZ, GE, HU) keyboards, keeps standard US keys layout and uses no dead keys. PLK is NOT compatible with typewriter-like SK (CZ, GE, HU) keyboard layout.

Typing on PLK is very natural and therefore easy to learn. The accented non-English characters are typed simply, using a new shift called here LanguageShift or shortly Lang, e.g.:

Lang+A yields á (long small a);
Lang+Shift+A yields Á (long capital A);
Lang+N gives ň (soft small n);
Lang+Shift+N gives Ň (soft capital N).

Because typing with the PLK is fast and natural, it is very easy to accustom to it. After a few weeks of continuous usage of the PLK, it is rather painful if one has to use a PC without the PLK. Therefore it is recommended to start to use the PLK only when its usage is guaranteed for long continuous time.

Newer versions of PLK for Windows XP are implemented using KLM - The Keyboard Layout Manager. In PLK for KLM, the LanguageShift is implemented by keys CapsLock and AltGr. While any of the two is hold down, hitting an appropriate key, the desired accented character or special character or sequence of characters is generated.

More about PLK is in the paper. PLK for KLM is ready to download in a zip-file, free of charge.