Around the World in 33 Keyboards | Hacker News Reader

Around the World in 33 Keyboards

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Interesting how the French Canadian keyboard is the only one where the escape key doesn't contain the word "esc". They went with the ISO keyboard symbol for escape instead[0]. I didn't even realize there was such a symbol before today.

[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISOIEC-9995-7-029--I...

You're right, my macbook pro has that symbol, I've never noticed this before. But it looks like they must have recently dropped it, the new magic keyboard uses the word "esc" http://www.apple.com/xf/shop/product/MLA22C/A/magic-keyboard...

If you use a Mac you can see that symbol in the UI, for example in the "Apple" menu on the top left ("Force Quit"). Interesting, because the key is not labelled as such.

As a french person, I use an AZERTY keyboard, it can become really tedious when programming in some languages. The ` for instance is a pain to type : Atl Gr + 7 then space (though on apple keyboards it seems to have a dedicated key, but I'm pretty sure the space is still needed)... and of course numbers need the shift key to be held ... The issue is I can't really switch to QWERTY (accents).

I feel with you, but there is a nice solution :-)

I moved to France from Germany, I had first to unlearn the German layout (QWERTZ) and then learn the French AZERTY. But as you say it is so bad! Additionally I was travelling for work and sometimes was exposed to type on different layouts and was very frustrated because I was accustomed to AZERTY. After one week in Russia I took the decision and switched to QWERTY, configured it to US International with AltGR dead keys [1]. This give the advantage, to have all the accents you might, the French, the German ones as well as Turkish and some more by combining. Plus you have the convenience of a keyboard layout that was used to design most of the programming languages. When you are in a front of somebody's French computer - the English layout it is just some clicks away (Left Alt + Left Shift on most Windows).

Just to give you some idea of how to get the accents:

AltGr + ' + a -> á

AltGr + ` + e -> è

AltGr + " + e -> ë

Shift + AltGr + x -> Œ (I don't even know if it possible to get this one on AZERTY)

Shift + AltGr + , -> Ç (This one as well is not possible on AZERT AFAIK. I think for this character the , was used because the key has on the top half '<' and on the bottom half ',' so it resembles ç). With Shift you get the capital letter and without the normal letter.

and so on.

If you buy ThinkPads you can chose to get the US International keyboard layout. Not so sure about other brands.

This was definitely one of the better life hacks for me - I never looked back.

[1] On Linux you get the US International AltGr layout shipped. But on Windows there is only a US International, but without AltGr dead key. I find it very disturbing, because for example if you want to type a double quote (") you have to type " + Space and the same for tilde, single quote and back tick. So I had to dig around to find US International AtgGr dead key layout. This comment gives some info and hints to another alternative that I didn't yet try out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10948810

I think you can never get the Turkish "ı" and "İ" with any sane combination on any other keyboard than the Turkish though. I'm Turkish and have been living in Germany since more than 5 years and I still use a Turkish Q layout just for this reason (I occasionally have to write in Turkish). It also contains all the German letters under relatively sane combinations.

You can use the '.' (dot) key to modify/inverse the (single) dot above letters:

AltGr . + i => ı AltGr . + I => İ

I think this is what you were looking for and I find this combination easy to remember and other combinations seem to follow mostly the same principle (e.g. " (double quotes) modifies the double dots on the letters, which allows to make öÖäÄüÜëË, etc. The same for ~ (tilde), ` (backtick), ' (single quote).

Here the combination for the special Turkish characters:

Ç -> AltGr + % + C or AltGr , (comma) + C

ç -> AltGr + % + c or AltGr , (comma) + c

I remember this combination because the on the % key there is 5, or to say it differently % = Shift + 5, and 5 resembles a bit the symbol that goes below the C in Ç. The same is true for Şş

Ğ -> AltGr + Shift + 9 + G

ğ -> AltGr + Shift + 9 + g

I remember these because (Shift + 9 corresponds to '(', i.e. opening bracket, which truned by 90°to left is like the sign that is on top of ğ and Ğ

ı -> AltGr + . + i

İ -> AltGr + . + I

Ö -> AltGr + " + O

ö -> AltGr + " + o

Same principle for üÜ (and äÄ if you need German as well)

Ş -> AltGR + % + S

ş -> AltGr + % + s

Ü -> AltGr + " + U

ü -> AltGr + " + u

I can't thank you enough for this. Anyway, thank you very much for the detailed information.

You're welcome. I'm glad that it might be useful :-)

On Linux and MS Windows you can switch between two keyboard layout quickly by a key combination.

Beside programing, a lot of the internet content is in English (including hn!), I find it it a lot easier to switch keyboard layout based on the language I need to use, rather than try to type in a language with a layout that wasn't meant for it.

You might want to switch to the Spanish keyboard. It's qwerty and has easy access to accents, plus ç (and ñ that you don't need anyway :))

Now that's an interesting idea, i'll check that out thanks.

No one uses Polish keyboard in Poland. Since windows 95 the first thing you do is to change from polish 214 (QWERTZ) to polish programmer keyboard (QWERTY)

It's interesting that Apple's keyboard designs all revolve around on-demand parts. The holes can be milled to any arbitrary size or shape. The labels on the keys themselves are lasered on as necessary.

Apart from the membrane and the key shapes, this keyboard looks like it's intended to be highly reconfigurable.

This probably makes it easy for a single assembly line to slot in the keyboard for the destination region without too much fuss. Russian keyboard on one unit, Belgian on the next, no big deal.

I can only imagine how complicated that might be for a company like Logitech or Dell where the caps themselves are injection molded with the letters built in.

Indeed that does seem to be how they do it. Here in the UK, when you order a keyboard or a MacBook from the Apple Online Store, it gives you a bunch of language options, which doesn't affect the delivery time. I think you can only get ones with the same physical shape (no Japanese), but there's a choice of lettering.

I once bought a MacBook pro with an Arabic keyboard online thinking it had the standard US keyboard layout, it didn't, so I returned it. I just couldn't get over that return key. So tiny and cramped, basically unusable.

It's what you're used to. I'm used to the UK keyboard and when I tried a US macbook the only thing that bothered me was the height of the return key. I found that I must have been hitting the top of it when touch typing and on a US keyboard I was hitting the \ key instead.

The first Turkish keyboard in the article is called the "Turkish F Keyboard", and is not in common use, although said to be better suited to write Turkish.

That one fascinated me the most. I don't know Turkish, but among them all it seemed the most different to what I'm used to seeing.

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Except for some programmers (the kind that frequents this site but far from the majority) I can assure you that almost any German laptop buyer expects and prefers a German keyboard. Every keyboard in an office will be a German keyboard. All apps that are used and almost all games work fine with the German layout.

Might be different in small countries of course but I expect it to be the same in France, Spain, etc.

That's kind of the point - because of the keyboard you cannot buy your laptop from Bulgaria, Taiwan, or the US where it might be cheaper because your users will want a German keyboard instead of Bulgarian, Chinese, or American.

Can you really call it "region-locking" if you are free to use anything else but your users prefer not because it provides advantages for them? Separate keys for ÄÖÜ are important to German users. It's not done to lower the resale value but to sell it to the first user at all.

It's not really region locking, I was just expanding on his point. Unlike region locking, the keyboard customizations don't have a purpose of locking out other users; however, they have a tiny side effect of inconvenience that's similar to region locking.

The user claimed the the primary purpose was to lower resale value. That isn't the case.

Nobody forces one to buy the regional variant. The Apple online shop has different keyboards to choose from.

Yeah, I glossed over that. No, I don't agree that the primary purpose is to lower resale value, that much is obvious; it's just a side effect in some cases.

There are some limitations - for example, the German Apple store limits itself to 8-9 kinds of keyboards, though I guess it's more out of practicality than nefarious business decisions.

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The left shift on an ISO keyboard is the same distance from your left pinky as the right shift is from your right pinky. I don't see how it would be (objectively) harder. Plus with an ISO keyboard you get to move the `~ key down closer. I prefer to program on a US-International / Dutch Apple keyboard. It may be Stockholm syndrome from having to work with German keyboards.

If Wikipedia is to be believed both variants were introduced at the same time by the same company (Key Tronic). The European one fits one key more.

I never had problems to hit the European-style return-key for what it's worth and need a long time to adjust to the US variant whenever I have use them.

I'm from Finland and have an used Thinkpad that originally came from Germany and has a German keyboard layout. As long as you can touch type, it's not actually an issue at all, since I can just switch the keyboard layout to Finnish in the OS and go from there - the keyboard has the same amount of keys in all the same places, after all.

The only time I've had an issue in this regard is with US keyboards, because the physical key layout is actually different. Most notably, "international" keyboard layouts have a a button next to left shift that's missing from US keyboards, which is used to write <, >, and | in the Finnish layout (and most other intl layouts), and no key maps to it if you switch to a Finnish layout on a US keyboard. This made programming an exercise in great frustration. (I also really didn't like the short Enter, I kept constantly hitting the button above it due to having used a tall Enter for all of my life before.)

It only really matters for laptops, though. And even then you can use a different layout, except that the keys might not match the typed characters.

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Sorry, I meant the case where the layout is the same but button markings are different. If the layout is actually different, then yes, you'd have to adjust even more.

There are only two different versions for key shape and positions if I didn't miss one: the US variant and everything else.

Japanese has the fat enter.

Thanks, you are right and upon closer inspection South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand use US-style keys as well. My point still stands: If you have an European laptop at hand and don't care about the markings, you can freely use any of the other European keyboard layouts.

But...but how does one type '#' on a British keyboard?

Use a standard british keyboard[1]. It is a pain using the Mac "british" keyboard for programming in my experience.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_United_Kingdom.sv...

I agree the post title should be edited, apple layout is not standard layout.

The PC British layout is annoying. It swaps @ and " relative to the US layout, among some other important keys, which means that when you're dropped at a US-layout terminal you struggle.

It also doesn't have the wonderful set of Alt+ combinations as the Mac British layout for typing various types of diacritics, widths of dashes, Greek letters, mathematical symbols, opening and closing quotes, and other things. PC layout users are stuck with acute accents, the Euro symbol, and nothing else.

Luckily, the Mac "British - PC" layout (not the same as the actual British PC layout) does include the extra Alt+ combos.

I'm not sure why anyone would find the Mac British layout difficult to program with. It's closer to the US layout than the PC British layout. I suppose # requiring Alt might be bothersome, but # isn't a symbol used that frequently in programming, and Alt+3 is not that difficult to type.

Having always used a standard british keyboard, the subtle differences, e.g. location of \, #, ", `, ~, really slow me down. It just seems petty for Apple to ignore the standard and go it's own way... then again, it is Apple.

Also, I use # loads every day for c++ macros, and #if 0 blocks.

> It just seems petty for Apple to ignore the standard and go it's own way... then again, it is Apple.

Apple's had their own layout for literally decades. There wasn't a standard back then.

> Having always used a standard british keyboard, the subtle differences, e.g. location of \, #, ", `, ~, really slow me down.

You can adjust to it pretty quickly.

Apple keyboards are annoying like that. On a "normal" British keyboard, the '#' is unshifted and is just to the left of the Return key.

My habit when I have to use a Mac is to switch to the Australian mapping, which is the same as the British one but with £ and # switched.

I work in an Austrian company (in Austria). My laptop has a German keyboard layout. My USB keyboard has an American layout.

I have them both mapped to British layout and my fingers just "know" where things are. However, my conscious brain might not. I actually had to think really hard about where the '#' key is. On the American layout, it's printed above the number 3 (Shift-3), but actually produces the '£' symbol. The hash is above the return key and is printed as '\'. On the German keyboard it's actually in the "right" place, just to the left of the return key.

The biggest key I have problems with switching between American and British keyboards is the @ symbol. If I don't remap the keyboards, I'm forever typing " or @ incorrectly. On un-remapped German keyboards it's Y and Z.

I still try to buy my personal laptops from the UK, so I have the correct keyboard. It's a surprisingly big productivity loss to have incorrectly mapped keyboards.

Alt-3 instead of Shift-3

And how do Americans type the all-important § and ±?

Also, there's a nice single-serving site for your Q: http://wheresthehashkeyonamac.co.uk

ALT+3. Dead easy right~

Looking at the subtle layout changes for Roman characters (which I assume are based only on letter frequency for each language) I wonder if it's possible to tell if they are more, less, or the same efficiency as QWERTY is for U.S. keyboards.

Also, are there Dvorak equivalents for other languages?

Is there any real evidence that Dvorak layouts are better? I've only seen anecdata.

There you go, CAPITALS indicate letters outside of home row:

  QWERTY: Is ThERE aNY EVIdENCE ThaT dVORak laYOUT Is BETTER? I'VE ONlY sEEN aNECdaTa.

  DVORAK: is theRe anY eVidenCe that dVoRaK LaYout is BetteR? i'Ve onLY seen aneCdata.

It seems that every single word from your post requires less vertical movement on Dvorak.

Dorak also puts emphasis on hand alternation. I found evidence and better particularly awful on QWERTY - lots of row jumping and mostly left hand.

Not to mention that I'm less concerned with screen locking than my QWERTY peers - security by obscurity FTW :)

My understanding is that they're fractionally better speedwise and a bit better for RSI issues, but not enough to justify switching, it would take forever to make up the lost productivity while re-training.

A few weeks to reach a solid level, most likely, provided you actually practice.

If you type a lot of boilerplate code (which really is the only area where typing speed will hurt you) you'll notice a difference, but I'd argue that fact in itself is something you ought to fix.

I taught myself workable svorak (A5) in a weekend on IRC, then polished it over a shorter period after to feel comfortable. The good thing about SvorakA5[0] is that it uses AltGr + regular keys for special characters, which is really nice.

I don't recommend learning dvorak or any variant of it for the typing speed unless you do dictation or whatever, because you're not getting that much from it in any profession that requires you to think anyway. Personally, I just feel like I'm destroying my hands less when typing, which is a good enough reason. They're already some level of broken from having played strategy games too much, so I feel like I should take care of them more.

(Obviously Svorak is the Swedish version of Dvorak, so for other languages you'd have to find something like A5)

Edit: I recommend playing "Typing of the Dead"[1] if you can find a way to do so. Great way for polishing your use of a layout.

0 - http://aoeu.info/s/dvorak/images/svorak-A5.png

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead

It's less than you might think. I did a complete switchover to Dvorak to ameliorate some wrist issues and was back to my normal speed in about 2 weeks. I surpassed my qwerty speed by about 20% according to my own tests before and after.

That said, I'm back on qwerty because my wrist is OK now and it's just less hassle when using multiple machines over which I have less control.

Also, anecdotally, when I made the switch I was in my mid 20's. I tried the experiment again (albeit with Colemak) a couple years ago in my late 40's and after 2 weeks I was still struggling so gave up.

I don't know if age had anything to do with it, but that's one big difference between the 2 times.

I had major wrist issues and made the switch to programmer dvorak around 2 years ago. Took around one to two months before my wrist got better and about the same time before I didn't feel constrained by the new layout.

Now two years later I would have to say I'm at about the same speed I was with qwerty, except for when I have to write numbers with the horrible positioning on the programmer dvorak layout :)

Would never recommend someone to make the switch unless they have problems with RSI.

There is one for German, the Neo layout: http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html

QWERTY was laid out (at least partially) with the intent of preventing typewriter jams and increasing productivity. This was done by placing commonly paired letters far apart from one another; maybe this was also taken into account when designing each other language's keyboard. Letter pairs will differ, presumably, so the important keys to separate will change from language to language.

That's my intuition, anyways.

I knew that but that's a good reminder, did other countries have their own typewriter layouts too or did they just use US/UK English layouts?

Those computer keyboard layouts are based on formerly used typewriter layouts.

As someone who lives in a russian-speaking country, I must note that the russian keyboard layout is a nightmare. It's already been written about (http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/105/) but I only realized how bad the situation is when I learned how to touch type.

Think of the money that could be saved if the Danes and Norwegians would just use the same keyboard...

It seems difficult to program on many of these, as best as I can tell, many are missing symbols common to programming notation -- [] {} |

Portugal, Norway, Germany, Belgium, France, Czech R, and Croatia specifically.

It's still there but not labelled as such. It's a bit harder to press but not prohibitively so. For example, on a German keyboard you press Alt+5 for [ and Alt+9 for }.

The German Windows keyboard has those somewhere else for some reason though...

At least on a 'real' Norwegian keyboard {,[,] and } are on AltGr-7,8,9 and 0 respectively. I'm guessing it's the same on an Apple keyboard, but Apple just didn't draw the character on the keys for some reason.

The Italian keyboard has a £ symbol. I wonder why.

That is also the currency symbol of the Italian lira [0], which was in use before the euro.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_lira

It's a symbol for the now-defunct lira, though a 'L' was probably more usual.

The pound symbol is actually a lira symbol.

Apple only do one keyboard layout, it's US of A, anyone from the countries listed there will tell you that.

How could you possibly be more wrong?

Well when I ordered my first mac I clicked British keyboard. I nearly sent it back as I thought they'd sent the wrong one.

The " was not on number 2 The # symbol had appeared on number 3 Where was my £ symbol

If they can't get a British keyboard right I have serious doubts about other countries.

The Mac has its own British layout. The British PC layout isn't the only valid one.

Macs (and before them, Apple IIs) and PCs have differed here for a long time. Look at this 1984 British Apple IIe layout: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Apple_II...

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