Comment by pta2002 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pta2002 | Hacker News Reader

One thing I never see mentioned, probably because it’s not very common, is that on some languages the Mac has a completely different position for symbol keys! This makes using a Mac keyboard on Windows (or vice-versa) extremely annoying (Linux tends to support the Mac layout as well so it’s fine).

For instance, in Portuguese, the Mac keyboard [1] has the + key two keys to the right of 0, and you use shift to input *. Meanwhile, on Windows [2], this key is one row below next to P, with the place it is on Mac occupied by «/». Most of the AltGr keys are also in different spots (particularly { and }), which makes this a major pain if you consistently switch between Windows and Mac.

Frankly I prefer the Mac layout, in part due to the Cmd/Ctrl split, but also because I believe it assigns more meaningful symbols to keys (I have literally never used «/», the internet will tell you that’s how quotations are done in Portuguese but everyone, books included, uses “/”).

I never saw any explanation as to why these differ. Does anyone know of any other languages where this happens? It doesn’t seem to be very common!

[1]: https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/1/as-images.apple.co... [2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/KB_Portu...

Another difference I remembered, this time a Microsoft-only idiocy: core Windows and Microsoft (Office) apps TRANSLATE shortcuts! Ctrl+A (“All”) becomes Ctrl+T (“Tudo”) in Notepad if the computer is in Portuguese. Ctrl+S also stops saving and is replaced by Ctrl+G (“Guardar”).

I can see why Microsoft thought this was a good idea, but the problem is that ONLY Microsoft apps do this, so you have two sets of shortcuts to remember. I don’t know a single person who likes this.

French AZERTY on Windows and on Mac have quite some differences in symbol locations, also drives me crazy when switching to my mechanical keyboard.

In AZERTY, the number row works differently. Unshifted gives symbols and commonly-used accented letters like "é" and "à", hold Shift to get a number.

In Windows keyboard, the unshifted "number 8" key corresponds to a "_" while it's a "!" in Mac. The key below Esc on Windows is literally just the superscript 2 for some reason, on Mac it's "@" unshifted, "#" shifted. We also have a key for "μ" and for "§" in Windows.

French AZERTY on Mac doesn't make sense. It doesn't fully map the locations for common shortcuts. Example: cmd + ` on a lot of systems switches windows inside an app (very useful with macOS where cmd + tab circles through apps, not windows). But on the French version, the ` key is somewhere on the right of the 'm' and the shortcut is not replaced with whatever key is above tab.

Apple's UK layout is annoyingly slightly different from the usual PC one: https://www.thecandidstartup.org/2022/10/07/mac-british-keyb...

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