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Comment by fwr | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps a better question to ask is why Outlook maps "alt+s" to send, which is how the "ś" diacritic in Polish is typed (also "ß" in German) resulting in all kinds of funny/awkward situations in which incomplete e-mails are sent.

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Because Bill Gates doesn't speak Polish or German.

That gets worse if Outlook pops up an appointment reminder while you are typing a message. Such windows show (http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/comp/blog/2007/figs/bbf2007061...) that alt-S does Snooze, but Outlook reacts to that key press, too (or eats it before the pop up can see it)

"ß" on the German keyboard is on the right to the "0" key and doesn't need any modifier.

And on qwerty US-International which is used throughout most countries that don't want to use their own specialized keyboards it's alt+s.

Then the Duden[0] gives the following rule:

"Fehlt das ß auf der Tastatur eines Computers oder einer Schreibmaschine, schreibt man dafür ss."

Translation: "If the ß is missing on a computer keyboard or typewriter, you have to write 'ss' instead".

[0] http://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/doppel-s...

But it's not missing. This is like saying capital s is missing because you have to press shift+s.

Hehe true. I guess they mean "if the (standalone) key is missing".

I'm pretty sure they refer to the inability to type ß. Which is a real concern for type writers, less so for most keyboards. I'm writing this using an American keyboard and I don't see why I shouldn't use "ß" just because it's a different key(-combination). I also wouldn't start writing "spaet" just because "ä" takes a bit more work (Alt+U, A).

The Duden abides. (sorry!)

AltGr+S (or Ctrl+Alt+S).

I thought ß was being phased out. In fact, I heard that like 10 years ago at school during a German class.

That would've been too easy - instead it's now used in fewer places, but with new rules ;) When it's long-pronounced, ß is still used, like in Fuß or Stoß. In words like Fluss it's replaced with ss.

Not entirely. The spelling reform (about 10 years ago) somewhat reduced the use of ß but you still use it frequently after a diphthong (as in "Straße" [street]).

That's just a long vowel, not a diphthong (literally "two sounds"; incidentally, "sounds" has a diphthong in it).

I started living in Germany right after it was adopted, and still cannot get the long vs short vowel history for ß.

They just sound the same to my hears, so I got around it by memorizing the respective use cases.

I tend to still write in the old spelling (I didn't have to take exams in the reformed spelling yet so I never bothered to memorise all the braindeadness) and rely on Word/Outlook to correct me where necessary. That works quite well so far.

It might depend on where you live. I took a recent trip through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and I noticed that Austrian street signs tended to use "Straße" while German and Swiss tended to use "Strasse".

OTOH it could also be just spending priorities of updating street signs vs. other things.

I knew nothing about the phasing-out of ß until reading the comments on this article.

> German and Swiss tended to use "Strasse".

In Switzerland, "ss" is standard (Duden says: "In der Schweiz kann das ß generell durch ss ersetzt werden <§ 25 E2>.") I haven't seen "Strasse" on signs in Germany, but there might be regional variation (since street signs are a local-government responsibility)

Isn't AltGr the usual key to get alternate characters instead of Alt which is for keyboard shortcuts? I've never seen a program mapping shortcuts to AltGr.

"ś" is input in Polish using AltGr+s (or Ctrl+Alt+s), but AltGr is not labeled as such on Polish keyboards (it's simply the right Alt key, and people will refer to it as such when asked).

Most North American keyboards don't have AltGr, they just have 2x Alt keys.

You can press Ctrl + Alt to emulate AltGr

I'd suggest the even more pertinent question to ask is: Who still voluntarily uses Outlook?

Microsoft arrogance aside: Gigantic, bloated, monolithic proprietary applications, written by a company known to be privacy-hostile and surveillance-friendly, handling your potentially sensitive communcations? I think not.

It integrates with windows and other microsoft services a lot more closely than thunderbird.

The Bat! Is what I used on Windows back in the days .. nostalgia

Best email/calendar/contacts integration?

I thought you were describing Gmail/Google there...

Works better though

Pretty much any Exchange shop that's standardized on Microsoft's tools. There are a lot of them out there.

Probably a sizable chunk of fortunate 500s.

A lot are using Zimbra now days. My company made the switch a few years back.

Lower TCO, has all the same features of Exchange (plus some collaboration features Exchange lacks), plus it's open source so you can hack on it or make your own custom modules if you desire.

I do. It's nice. Super fast for power users compared to web mail apps, and probably the best native client for Windows in terms of functionality. I'm not even locked into Exchange.

> I'd suggest the even more pertinent question to ask is: Who still voluntarily uses Outlook?

In corporate environment Exchange/Outlook is an awesome tool for e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, contacts, booking resources, etc.

I hope you're not referring to Microsoft Lync as "an awesome tool for IM", because I must disagree with you on that if you are.

I had to use Lync at my last job and to be honest it was one of the contributing factors to my leaving.

It breaks links, it breaks basic copy/paste functionality in clear and obvious ways, it wastes screen real estate like its going out of style, it's slow clunky and cumbersome... No Thankyou.

I agree Lync has its drawbacks, but still is pretty useful in terms of sharing desktop, integration with calendar, etc.

Hm. Most Germans probably use the German keyboard layout which has a key for the ß character. I guess I'm pretty odd in that I use the "US English International" (or similar) keyboard layout which supports the German characters via dead keys. Except ß, which is the right Alt key plus s. (The left Alt key plus s is just a regular Alt+S. US Intl changes the semantics of the right Alt key.)

For Polish, does the left Alt key generate "ś"? Or the right Alt key? Or both?

Sadly, most cross-platform apps have a shortcut that gets triggered with altgr + key. I use US-International (a layout where almost every key has a symbol mapped to an altgr + key combination), and this is very frustrating, especially with accented vowels áéíóú and ñ (pretty common in Spanish).

This is why I always prefer dedicated windows apps over cross-platform apps.

Even dedicated Windows applications get that wrong on occasion, despite the UX guidelines stating that Ctrl+Alt should never be used for shortcuts for this very reason. Alas, people with a vanilla US keyboard layout won't ever notice ...

Most recent thing that bit me in that regard was ReSharper.

On Swedish versions of Word find is moved to Ctrl+b since the word for bold starts with an f. Can get very annoying when mixing versions.

In the Spanish version, I believe it's Ctl+N. Even as a native speaker it used to trow me off.

That would be a great question for Raymond Chen! I wonder whoever thought that was a good idea. Anyone who uses a localized Word version is likely to use an English one as well sometime, and the hot keys are completely messed up.

For bonus points, ask about the localized Excel formulas. And date formats! That is so brain freezingly stupid I can not for my life comprehend it. It causes no end of trouble when moving data between versions.

The localized Excel formulas! Oh, the horror! Who would translate a programming language?

Visual Basic for Applications, AppleScript and HyperTalk have all supported different languages at some point...

Or the localised CSV formats. Yes, they actually localised a file format. Insanity.

ALT+S is also save in XCode with default key mappings for a standard keyboard. I hit save habitually while coding. I've sent several incomplete emails hitting that. I've started typing up my emails in Vim and pasting into Outlook when I'm done.

I was going to ask why the downvotes but today I switched to a newer Dell keyboard, the kind that looks like an Apple ripoff. I had the Dell KB212-B before. My 'Modifier Key' settings have always been the default. Alt mapped to Command on my old keyboard, "Windows" maps to Command on this one. Searching seems to suggest Windows to Command is the norm. I sort of liked Alt to Command since it mimicked the Apple layout more closely. Hmmm, which to choose?

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