201–210 of 212 posts
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.
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…
Why is it so bad? Because folks keep on buying it. So there's no demand to improve it.
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I don't know which language you're using but for french I migrated from "US International with dead keys" to "canadian english". I fill that, among other things, simple quotes are easier to type and consistency between OSX and Linux is better. A matter of habits and workload balance I guess.
You are talking about a different layout, which I also dislike. I'm talking about "AltGr dead keys", in which the quotes are available directly and the accents are entered using e.g. AltGr-'. I'm using 6 european languages occasionally, of which 3 every day, including French. Of these, Canadian English would be only useful for French (e.g. it does not have a tilde dead key AFAIK) and is still different enough from US…
However, the canadian english variant I'm using definitely has a ~ key and accepts alt+n for ñ. Concerning angle brackets they are at the same position as on a standard US layout.
I assume that we are using different operating systems and that they use the same name for different layouts.
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> What is it? Not sure if you meant this literally, but I've seen it refered to as a back tick. As to what it's for, I have no idea either. I can't recall ever seeing it outside of programming.
On a mechanical typewriter you'd have a button that would "revert" the position you'll write to by one character - also known as backspace. So if you pressed backspace followed by "`", you'd give the last character a grave accent. That's my theory for it being called back tick anyways. Nowadays you could configure your input method to make that key give the next character a grave accent
If the back tick on the en_GB keyboard is a sop for the grave accent, then why do we not have an acute accent available as well? or a cedilla for that matter?
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I remember that too. But the console you only open sometimes. But everyday(!), I have to use {[(| ... and they are just awkward to reach on a german layout.
Last time I needed a new laptop (my old one died) I took a 8 hour train to travel to the Netherlands from Munich instead of back home to Berlin (where I live) just so I could visit a store that has laptops with a non German layout (US international). The only way to get a non German keyboard in Germany is to order them online and wait for a week+ (typically) for that to ship internationally (because they don't stock…
- the registers "+, "*, "~ are on the same key
- `,` and `;` for backward and forward searching are on the same key
- the macro operations `q` and `@` are also on the same key
- `^` for the line beginning is the key left to `1`, which also makes sense for `Ctrl+^` to switch recent buffers.
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The British/Irish ISO layouts are reasonable. They are very close to the US layout, but gain the additional key.
I don’t think UK/ISO and US are close? Especially backquote between LShift and Z feels awkward if you’re used to ANSI.
These keys are present on the UK keyboard, but not the US: £¬
Compared to every other common ISO keyboard layout, ISO UK and ANSI are very similar. For non-programmers, ", @ and (nowadays) # are the ones that matter. For a programmer used to an ISO keyboard, the UK layout may well be a better choice than the US ANSI one. (US ISO would be a good choice, but the extra key seems to duplicate symbols already present on the layout).
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You are talking about a different layout, which I also dislike. I'm talking about "AltGr dead keys", in which the quotes are available directly and the accents are entered using e.g. AltGr-'. I'm using 6 european languages occasionally, of which 3 every day, including French. Of these, Canadian English would be only useful for French (e.g. it does not have a tilde dead key AFAIK) and is still different enough from US…
I can't find any "AltGr dead keys" variant on the OSX I'm using at the moment, I'll check later on Linux. I don't have any keyboard with a key marked "AltGr" either btw :). However, the canadian english variant I'm using definitely has a ~ key and accepts alt+n for ñ. Concerning angle brackets they are at the same position as on a standard US layout. I assume that we are using different operating systems and that the…
I don't use OSX, sorry. Maybe try https://github.com/xv0x7c0/osx-us-altgr-intl
> I don't have any keyboard with a key marked "AltGr" either btw :).
That's the right alt (not to be confused with the alt right).
> the canadian english variant I'm using definitely has a ~ key
Can you type "ã" or "õ"?
I'm not saying it's the optimal solution, in fact my custom layout works slightly better for myself. However, learning how to build that custom layout in both Linux and Windows took me time that would have been better spent elsewhere.
All I'm saying is that people in the same situation I was in (programmer writing daily in multiple Western European languages), this obscure-niche-that-nobody-seems-to-know-about layout will serve you fine 100% of the times, whatever the language, without you spending ungodly hours coming up with your own.
Honestly don't wait on all the web Dev to fix their app. Buy yourself a programmable keyboard that tells the computer they are a "normal US layout keyboard". Now when you press "shift+7" on your keyboard it only sends "regular US keycode for /" As a benefit you'll maybe also realize that Azerty or Qwertz are pretty bad layout for typing French/German, and you'll come up with something better.