Want to type cx and have ĉ automatically replace it?
I have already done the scripting for you!

AutoHotkey is a free & lightweight Windows based scripting language
(you need to be running a version of Windows for this to work).

1. download and install autohotkey from http://ahkscript.org/
- make sure it's from that website, and when you install choose UNICODE
-- choose 32bit if you don't know what you have

2. download and install this Autohotkey script editor http://fincs.ahk4.net/scite4ahk/
- it's important that the script I'm providing is saved as UTF-8, and this editor does that by default

3. right-click in some folder and choose New -> Autohotkey script
- title it Esperanto, or whatever you want

3. right-click this new file and choose Edit
- in theory this opened the file with SciTE4AHK (from step 2)

4. copy and paste this code (excluding Citaĵo):

#Hotstring ? C *

::cx::ĉ
::Cx::Ĉ
::gx::ĝ
::Gx::Ĝ
::hx::ĥ
::Hx::Ĥ
::jx::ĵ
::Jx::Ĵ
::sx::ŝ
::Sx::Ŝ
::ux::ŭ
::Ux::Ŭ

5. save it and close, then double click the file to launch it
- you will see a green icon with a white H at the bottom right system tray
-- right click this icon to suspend or close the program

If you want an AHK script to load when Windows (7) starts you can place it in:

C:Users-yourUSERNAME-AppData-Roaming-Microsoft-Windows-Start Menu-Programs-Startup

Learn more about hotstrings: http://ahkscript.org/docs/Hotstrings.htm

Congratulations on taking the time and effort to do this.
However you are reinventing the wheel.
There has been another program available for some time that does exactly the same thing.

Well it only took 2 minutes to reinvent this wheel. ;-]
For me the introduction to AutoHotkey is more valuable than the script.
This is only one of many ways it can produce the letters with diacritical marks.
The limit is our imagination / keyboard / willingness to learn (or ask for help).

Hotkeys and hotstrings can also be made context sensitive
(work only while a certain program is the active window),
using #IfWinActive or #If for more advanced conditions.

With like 20 threads here about how to type Esperanto on a computer, each with different third-party software, there is one thing I don't understand:

Why not just use an Esperanto keyboard layout?
Have your national layout and the Esperanto one and toggle between them as needed. Write a comment in Esperanto, Super+Space (in my case), back to English.

Why install additional software if all you need is a convenient keyboard layout?
For instance, if you worked partly in Russian, would you also install some extra software, or just add a Russian keyboard to your system?

nornen:With like 20 threads here about how to type Esperanto on a computer, each with different third-party software, there is one thing I don't understand:

Why not just use an Esperanto keyboard layout?
Have your national layout and the Esperanto one and toggle between them as needed. Write a comment in Esperanto, Super+Space (in my case), back to English.

Why install additional software if all you need is a convenient keyboard layout?
For instance, if you worked partly in Russian, would you also install some extra software, or just add a Russian keyboard to your system?

Didn't thee hear? American computers don't recognize any language with less than 5 million speakers!
Seriously, though, on MAC's (at least on my Macbook Pro) Use the U.S. Extended and then for each accented letter, push option+6 (which will print the circumflex accent mark) and then the character one wants to use and it will appear. However, I don't know if it will work between email platforms. Sometimes when I use the accented vowels in a spanish email, it comes out garbled in the local university's email.

orthohawk:

nornen:With like 20 threads here about how to type Esperanto on a computer, each with different third-party software, there is one thing I don't understand:

Why not just use an Esperanto keyboard layout?
Have your national layout and the Esperanto one and toggle between them as needed. Write a comment in Esperanto, Super+Space (in my case), back to English.

Why install additional software if all you need is a convenient keyboard layout?
For instance, if you worked partly in Russian, would you also install some extra software, or just add a Russian keyboard to your system?

Didn't thee hear? American computers don't recognize any language with less than 5 million speakers!
Seriously, though, on MAC's (at least on my Macbook Pro) Use the U.S. Extended and then for each accented letter, push option+6 (which will print the circumflex accent mark) and then the character one wants to use and it will appear. However, I don't know if it will work between email platforms. Sometimes when I use the accented vowels in a spanish email, it comes out garbled in the local university's email.

Apparently we use a similar layout. I use "US intl with dead keys". But if I felt like it, I could switch to Esperanto. However, the US intl with dead keys is so potent, that I use it for almost anything I have to type (excluding arabic).

The issue with sending and receive mails, doesn't depend on how you entered the character, but how it is encoded and mostly whether or not the receiving side respects that encoding. However, I doubt that today there will be any system (except maybe some legacy software, e.g. at universities) that cannot handle unicode encoded as UTF-8.

I still don't understand why install extra software just for typing. That's what keyboard layouts are for. I also bake muffins and cakes in the same oven; I just switch moulds. I don't install a third party muffin adapter in my oven.

orthohawk:
Didn't thee hear? American computers don't recognize any language with less than 5 million speakers!
Seriously, though, on MAC's (at least on my Macbook Pro) Use the U.S. Extended and then for each accented letter, push option+6 (which will print the circumflex accent mark) and then the character one wants to use and it will appear.

On my Mac set to US extended option+6 gets you ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ. I use option+b to get ŭ.

nornen:With like 20 threads here about how to type Esperanto on a computer, each with different third-party software, there is one thing I don't understand:

Why not just use an Esperanto keyboard layout?
Have your national layout and the Esperanto one and toggle between them as needed. Write a comment in Esperanto, Super+Space (in my case), back to English.

Why install additional software if all you need is a convenient keyboard layout?
For instance, if you worked partly in Russian, would you also install some extra software, or just add a Russian keyboard to your system?

My computer doesn't have an Esperanto keyboard layout; I checked that first. I have three keyboard layouts currently installed [English (United States), aka regular QWERTY keyboard; United States-International, which is the same thing only able to type some diacritics and special characters; and a Russian layout]. But Windows XP apparently doesn't have an Esperanto layout, so I use the Tajpi program for that. The plus to that is that it works regardless of whether I'm using the int'l layout or the plain ol' English one (But not with the Russian one, obviously). So, if I want to, I can type ¡¿ñ áéíóú äëïöü, etc, and ĉĝĥĵŝŭ, without changing layouts. But the int'l layout annoys me by making umlauts whenever I type a vowel after a quotation mark, so I don't use it by default.

nornen:

orthohawk:

nornen:With like 20 threads here about how to type Esperanto on a computer, each with different third-party software, there is one thing I don't understand:

Why not just use an Esperanto keyboard layout?
Have your national layout and the Esperanto one and toggle between them as needed. Write a comment in Esperanto, Super+Space (in my case), back to English.

Why install additional software if all you need is a convenient keyboard layout?
For instance, if you worked partly in Russian, would you also install some extra software, or just add a Russian keyboard to your system?

Didn't thee hear? American computers don't recognize any language with less than 5 million speakers!
Seriously, though, on MAC's (at least on my Macbook Pro) Use the U.S. Extended and then for each accented letter, push option+6 (which will print the circumflex accent mark) and then the character one wants to use and it will appear. However, I don't know if it will work between email platforms. Sometimes when I use the accented vowels in a spanish email, it comes out garbled in the local university's email.

Apparently we use a similar layout. I use "US intl with dead keys". But if I felt like it, I could switch to Esperanto. However, the US intl with dead keys is so potent, that I use it for almost anything I have to type (excluding arabic).

The issue with sending and receive mails, doesn't depend on how you entered the character, but how it is encoded and mostly whether or not the receiving side respects that encoding. However, I doubt that today there will be any system (except maybe some legacy software, e.g. at universities) that cannot handle unicode encoded as UTF-8.

I still don't understand why install extra software just for typing. That's what keyboard layouts are for. I also bake muffins and cakes in the same oven; I just switch moulds. I don't install a third party muffin adapter in my oven.

I wound up just making my own Mac Esperanto keyboard with the program Ukelele. Here's my ŜŬERTĴ layout on Dropbox with installation instructing on this Reddit comment.

Christa627:

nornen:With like 20 threads here about how to type Esperanto on a computer, each with different third-party software, there is one thing I don't understand:

Why not just use an Esperanto keyboard layout?
Have your national layout and the Esperanto one and toggle between them as needed. Write a comment in Esperanto, Super+Space (in my case), back to English.

Why install additional software if all you need is a convenient keyboard layout?
For instance, if you worked partly in Russian, would you also install some extra software, or just add a Russian keyboard to your system?

My computer doesn't have an Esperanto keyboard layout; I checked that first. I have three keyboard layouts currently installed [English (United States), aka regular QWERTY keyboard; United States-International, which is the same thing only able to type some diacritics and special characters; and a Russian layout]. But Windows XP apparently doesn't have an Esperanto layout, so I use the Tajpi program for that. The plus to that is that it works regardless of whether I'm using the int'l layout or the plain ol' English one (But not with the Russian one, obviously). So, if I want to, I can type ¡¿ñ áéíóú äëïöü, etc, and ĉĝĥĵŝŭ, without changing layouts. But the int'l layout annoys me by making umlauts whenever I type a vowel after a quotation mark, so I don't use it by default.

This might have to do with the fact that your OS has reached the end of its lifecycle on April 14, 2009. Five and a half years ago the manufacturer of your OS stopped supporting it. This could be a broad hint that you might start to consider using an OS which is actually still supported.