My new job is forcing me to use Windows. Yes, it sucks a bit, but to make the best of the situation I try to set it up as similar to my Mac environment as I can. My primary editor is SublimeText 2, which is available on both platforms, so that works fine. I have set it up with all package files in Dropbox, so they are automatically shared. More on that later.

A code editor such as that relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts. And those tend to work best with an American keyboard layout. I switched over several years ago on the Mac, and use a keyboard macro program to type all the necessary national characters without having to resort to cumbersome dead key combinations and such.

So when I started using Windows, I immediately looked for a suitable program, and I can really recommend AutoHotkey (http://www.autohotkey.com). It is free, incredibly capable, as it  actually contains a full programming language and can create arbitrarily complex GUI widgets. I currently use just a small part of it, but intend to look at more use cases later. Anyhow, here’s my national characters macros. They may come in handy for someone else.

To type åäö for instance, I actually key .aa.ae.oe. That may look like a lot of work, but it becomes second nature very quickly. I also use this system for a bunch of other Unicode characters that are sometimes useful. Here are my current AutoHotkey definitions: