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Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

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Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#41

Post by smnrchrds »

MattGaiser wrote: post #7

> What baffles me is that the problem exists in apps used by millions of people every day, developed by gigantic corporations who pride themselves with having the best engineers in the world. Why is this baffling? Because the underlying technical issues are rather trivial! > Hint for developers: Switch your computer’s keyboard layout to something other than US to debug your application’s shortcut handling on differen…

For a 10-person startup, that's fair. For a company like Google , with offices in Germany and France and hundreds of engineers from any nationality, not so much. Other companies fall somewhere in between based on their headcount and global reach.

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#42

Post by stkdump »

kps wrote: post #25

The root of the problem is what this article correctly describes as the deprecated properties `keyCode` et al. These are essential raw Windows events that browsers in the '90s unwisely decided to expose. For any platform that is not Windows, these have to be emulated, which is not at all simple, since the details vary according to particular Windows keyboard layouts.

It's not a windows thing. These are the codes that the hardware uses, on all platforms.

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#43

Post by snuxoll »

setr wrote: post #36
PureParadigm wrote: post #30

It's not just international keyboards that are affected by this. I'm a Dvorak user so I run into these issues from time to time. As the article explains, there is a difference between the physical keyCode and character it corresponds to. Which to use really depends on what it is being used for, and there are situations for both. The article suggests checking the character typed, but this is not always the correct way…

> For instance, the most annoying are games which default to WASD based on the letter typed and not the physical keys Is it even possible to do anything else? I can’t imagine keyboards report their physical layout..

Physical layout is mostly irrelevant, different keycap label arrangements use the same keycodes - the input system in your OS or application uses a keyboard layout to translate those into what you want to type.

Windows, macOS and the various input libraries on Linux provide ways to query the key map - and a number of games do use this to provide localized bindings (Ubisoft and Blizzard are notorious for doing this right, something I appreciate as a dvorak user who hates dealing with rebinding or constantly having to toggle layouts). As far as the browser there is coming support for reading the keyboard layout as well: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Keyboard/ge...

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#44

Post by carabiner »

PureParadigm wrote: post #30

It's not just international keyboards that are affected by this. I'm a Dvorak user so I run into these issues from time to time. As the article explains, there is a difference between the physical keyCode and character it corresponds to. Which to use really depends on what it is being used for, and there are situations for both. The article suggests checking the character typed, but this is not always the correct way…

OS X's solution works perfectly: Dvorak + QWERTY shortcuts layout. It's brilliant and elegant, Windows needs to implement the same thing (revert to QWERTY when holding the ctrl or windows keys).

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#45

Post by wodenokoto »

In order to write backtick, I have to shift-click the key left to backspace and then click spacebar.

Tilde ~ is similar: option-click and then space.

This makes the out-of-the-box keyboard shortcut for switching window on macOS unreachable on my macbook pro.

There are several default shortcuts on osx that are unreachable from international keyboards.

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#46

Post by layer8 »

stkdump wrote: post #40
joshuakarl wrote: post #29

I'm french canadian and the most satisfying solution I've found is to keep switching from one keyboard layout to another. I mostly use the american layout when I code, and the french canadian one to communicate. I got used to it in about a week.

I now exclusively use US-International No Dead Keys. I just use the right alt key + qpys to get äöüß. I hate having to switch layouts and switching layouts accidentally while typing. Those key combinations are not worse than []{}\ on the german layout.

I use a US keyboard with Caps Lock mapped to Compose (using WinCompose [0]), which lets me type any Unicode character I need. Totally agree that switching layouts is a pain.

[0] https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#47

Post by layer8 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #7

> What baffles me is that the problem exists in apps used by millions of people every day, developed by gigantic corporations who pride themselves with having the best engineers in the world. Why is this baffling? Because the underlying technical issues are rather trivial! > Hint for developers: Switch your computer’s keyboard layout to something other than US to debug your application’s shortcut handling on differen…

If there was a standard way to define hotkey bindings, a simple linter could take care of that. It just shows how far we still have to go in terms of good UI creation tooling.

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#48

Post by opan »

PureParadigm wrote: post #30

It's not just international keyboards that are affected by this. I'm a Dvorak user so I run into these issues from time to time. As the article explains, there is a difference between the physical keyCode and character it corresponds to. Which to use really depends on what it is being used for, and there are situations for both. The article suggests checking the character typed, but this is not always the correct way…

I've used dvorak and now workman and I don't mind the shortcuts moving around.

The biggest annoyance for me is if you want to sometimes use hardware-level dvorak or another layout (which expects software-level qwerty) and sometimes use it in software. Like, if your keyboard runs QMK but you use it with a laptop and might want to use the laptop's built-in keyboard if you take it on the go.

GTK also has some weird issues if you have multiple layouts enabled where the shortcuts are in the wrong place and don't all work (happens in Dino and Gedit). So, I now have only qwerty enabled in Sway and I'll just edit the config if I ever need to change virtual layouts instead of doing it with a couple keypresses.

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#49

Post by StavrosK »

Joeri wrote: post #15

On a tangent, why are non-qwerty keyboards so poorly designed for programming? And specifically, why is apple’s azerty layout so terrible? Just look at this image: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3LL8a.png Can you find the [ and ] keys? If you’re having trouble, it’s because you have to use 2 (two!) modifier keys and activate the ( or ) keys, which themselves are clumsily placed. This cannot be typed one-handed in a comfor…

I remapped all those keys to Tab+righthand, so to type the curly brace I press Tab+j. It's fantastic.

Re: Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it

#50

Post by desert_boi »

setr wrote: post #36
PureParadigm wrote: post #30

It's not just international keyboards that are affected by this. I'm a Dvorak user so I run into these issues from time to time. As the article explains, there is a difference between the physical keyCode and character it corresponds to. Which to use really depends on what it is being used for, and there are situations for both. The article suggests checking the character typed, but this is not always the correct way…

> For instance, the most annoying are games which default to WASD based on the letter typed and not the physical keys Is it even possible to do anything else? I can’t imagine keyboards report their physical layout..

Starcraft II had a grid (I don't remember the actual name) mode keyboard layout that worked perfectly with Dvorak without having to remap keys.

Other games like the Java version of minecraft didn't work with Dvorak when I tried them. Even with key remapping.

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