A standard United States QWERTY keyboard is practical, even in Europe. It suits coders (programmers), expatriates and people who prefer specific (non-localized) hardware. Accented characters (which are not on the QWERTY key caps) can be typed using (AltGr-) deadkeys, but that may require 4 keys (for ö: Shift-AltGr-", followed by the letter o). AltGr-o is faster.

This layout makes all accented characters used in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish available through one AltGr keystroke. (Letters from neighboring languages remain available through additional AltGr deadkeys.)

Get the altgr-weur layout for your QWERTY keyboard on:
Linux	Windows	macOS

These are the 'ground rules' for fast access to accented letters using AltGr:

• diaeresis (umlaut) versions on the key itself: a→ä e→ë i→ï o→ö u→ü
• acute versions below-right of key: z→á d→é k→í l→ó j→ú
• grave versions available right of key: s→à r→è p→ò (but m→ì and y→ù)
• circumflex versions below grave version x→â f→ê ;→ô h→û (but g→î)
• tilde versions next to each other on the bottom row: v→ã b→õ n→ñ
• some have 'logical' places: w→æ (w is between a and e); q→å (Q is round); 8→ß (similar form); c→ç
• some will take getting used to: t→ø .→œ (and mentioned exceptions m→ì y→ù g→î)

Download (and print?) a cheat sheet, and read about how we made this up in the history of the layout.