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A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

farah.cl

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Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#11

Post by c-fe »

1. The author mentions that the french (belgian) layout is more popular in luxembourg that the swiss (french) layout. Anecdotally, I can not agree with this. As a luxembourgish person, encountering many keyboards in schools, offices, through laptops i bought etc, the swiss (french) layout is by far the most common. I have never seen an Azerty used in practice except by french people. The second most common seems to be German Qwertz, that could also be because there is no amazon.lu but instead most people i know order through amazon.de which of course mostly shows german keyboards so its easy to buy it on accident.

2. I once did an exchange semester of university in France, where i was forced to use their computers for programming. Not only did I start 2 weeks after the other students due to timing issues with my primary university, but then I also had some very stressful weeks learning to program on azerty keyboards. It was very painful at first and i nearly went back to two-finger typing, but in the end after 5 months i became more fluent than i expected on azerty.

3. 3 years ago (i was around 24 years old) I decided to switch from my layout i used until then (ISO, swiss french) to the Ansi Us layout, and I am happy i did the switch. It is so much better for programming, especially wrt to [] {} (). And I even prefer typing diacritics by using US international. I write fluently in french and german with this and I like it. The main pain point was switching from vertical to horizontal enter, I typed \ for months...

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#12

Post by jagrsw »

fowlie wrote: post #3

This is really stupid, old, legacy sh*t. If the USB HumanInoutDevice spec would support full unicode, keyboards could just send unicode directly and not rely on a not-known-by-the-keyboard-firmware language setting. The language settings would be implemented in the keyboard firmware, but with todays hardware shouldn't be a problem. Edit: typos

While I get the sentiment, implementing full Unicode support directly in the keyboard firmware would pose challenges. Consider mechanical keyboards where keys are swappable; you'd need a mechanism to inform the firmware of the current configuration, either through dip switches or a separate firmware tool. It's not as straightforward as it might seem.

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#13

Post by ejolto »

c-fe wrote: post #11

1. The author mentions that the french (belgian) layout is more popular in luxembourg that the swiss (french) layout. Anecdotally, I can not agree with this. As a luxembourgish person, encountering many keyboards in schools, offices, through laptops i bought etc, the swiss (french) layout is by far the most common. I have never seen an Azerty used in practice except by french people. The second most common seems to b…

You can use US international layout on an ISO keyboard, then you get is access to all the types of parenthesis while keeping the vertical enter. That's what I do, it doesn't matter what lettes are on the key caps.

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#14

Post by TacticalCoder »

c-fe wrote: post #11

1. The author mentions that the french (belgian) layout is more popular in luxembourg that the swiss (french) layout. Anecdotally, I can not agree with this. As a luxembourgish person, encountering many keyboards in schools, offices, through laptops i bought etc, the swiss (french) layout is by far the most common. I have never seen an Azerty used in practice except by french people. The second most common seems to b…

> As a luxembourgish person, encountering many keyboards in schools, offices, through laptops i bought etc, the swiss (french) layout is by far the most common. I have never seen an Azerty used in practice except by french people.

I won't disagree with that but, living in Luxembourg, I head to the closest supermarket, a "Cora" also selling keyboards, mice, USB sticks, etc. and I can buy an AZERTY layout if I want to (they've got both QWERTZ and AZERTY keyboards).

That said, just like you: I type using a QWERTY layout.

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#15

Post by TacticalCoder »

zokier wrote: post #5

Keyboard layouts are such a pet peeve of mine on so many layers. Using custom keyboards and/or layouts is a pain because there is no standard way of defining layout and furthermore most systems do not support arbitrary layers/modifiers/layouts which are critical for reduced key count keyboards. The standard national layouts often being poor fit for technical use only makes the situation more annoying.

> The standard national layouts often being poor fit for technical use only makes the situation more annoying.

Definitely!

And the absolute biggest pain with physical keyboard layouts is that if you use anything not standard then you're sorry out of luck when you buy a laptop (until your carry your external keyboard with you in addition to your laptop).

Even buying a common laptop with a US ANSI physical layout (wide enter key, not tall) is not trivial in Europe. It's doable but it requires some research/planning.

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#16

Post by Tijdreiziger »

> This used to be the standard keyboard layout in the Netherlands, but at some point (seemingly, during the late ’90s), it was abandoned in favor of the English (US international) layout, laid on top of ISO keyboards (although ANSI units are a common sight and ANSISO models can be spotted every now and then). Worse, the keyboards commonly sold in that country print the legends for the regular English (USA) layout, with the only addition of the euro sign (€) on the bottom-right corner of the 5 % keycap. Why aren’t the rest of the tertiary (AltGr) and quaternary (AltGr‑Shift) layer assignments printed is a mystery, but cost-saving and laziness are quite probably to blame.

I assume it’s because:

1) those symbols are rarely used in the Dutch language, so there’s no need to label them

2) pre-euro keyboards were presumably simply US keyboards (IIRC guilders were simply denoted by ‘fl.’). With the introduction of the euro, there came a need to type its associated symbol, which then led to the € symbol being printed on the 5 key (and AltGr being printed on the right Alt key).

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#17

Post by c-fe »

ejolto wrote: post #13
c-fe wrote: post #11

1. The author mentions that the french (belgian) layout is more popular in luxembourg that the swiss (french) layout. Anecdotally, I can not agree with this. As a luxembourgish person, encountering many keyboards in schools, offices, through laptops i bought etc, the swiss (french) layout is by far the most common. I have never seen an Azerty used in practice except by french people. The second most common seems to b…

You can use US international layout on an ISO keyboard, then you get is access to all the types of parenthesis while keeping the vertical enter. That's what I do, it doesn't matter what lettes are on the key caps.

I was aware of this, but I chose to go to Ansi since it seemed that lots of gaming and special ergonomic keyboards used Ansi and i may be curious in the future to try them

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#18

Post by c-fe »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #14
c-fe wrote: post #11

1. The author mentions that the french (belgian) layout is more popular in luxembourg that the swiss (french) layout. Anecdotally, I can not agree with this. As a luxembourgish person, encountering many keyboards in schools, offices, through laptops i bought etc, the swiss (french) layout is by far the most common. I have never seen an Azerty used in practice except by french people. The second most common seems to b…

> As a luxembourgish person, encountering many keyboards in schools, offices, through laptops i bought etc, the swiss (french) layout is by far the most common. I have never seen an Azerty used in practice except by french people. I won't disagree with that but, living in Luxembourg, I head to the closest supermarket, a "Cora" also selling keyboards, mice, USB sticks, etc. and I can buy an AZERTY layout if I want to…

Yeah good point, I also checked hifi.lu and saturn.lu and in both cases azerty seems to be top suggested choice. Its just weird to me, because I have never encountered azerty in the wild in luxembourg. All family, friends (all but one), colleagues, .. use the swiss layout. And I also know that default choice at university of luxembourg and the government is swiss french...

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#19

Post by treyd »

jagrsw wrote: post #12
fowlie wrote: post #3

This is really stupid, old, legacy sh*t. If the USB HumanInoutDevice spec would support full unicode, keyboards could just send unicode directly and not rely on a not-known-by-the-keyboard-firmware language setting. The language settings would be implemented in the keyboard firmware, but with todays hardware shouldn't be a problem. Edit: typos

While I get the sentiment, implementing full Unicode support directly in the keyboard firmware would pose challenges. Consider mechanical keyboards where keys are swappable; you'd need a mechanism to inform the firmware of the current configuration, either through dip switches or a separate firmware tool. It's not as straightforward as it might seem.

That and also it wouldn't be able to express modifier key state, locks, etc, so it would have to coexist with the existing scancode-based input methods.

Re: A visual comparison of different national layouts on a computer keyboard (2019)

#20

Post by qingcharles »

jayrobin wrote: post #7
qingcharles wrote: post #4

Converting from vertical Enter to horizontal Enter when moving to the USA was a real frustration. I spent the first 4 years just importing British keyboards.

I miss my chunky Enter key! Also whenever I have to write a currency value in £ I'm always annoyed that I need to go to the Wikipedia entry for "Pound sign" and copy it from there. There's probably an easier way, but it comes up so infrequently and I'm far too lazy to learn.

Are you me? LOL

There is an ALT+ for it, but I can never remember it, despite needing it at least once a week.

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