Edit: typos
Hell, while we're dreaming here, it'd be nice to have OS-level support for telling which devices keypresses come from so you can have a different layout on every connected keyboard or even turn extra keyboards into macro pads. (I've seen some setups like this, each with varying levels of jank.)
The keyboards by Sun Microsystems did do that, and their USB versions used the standard.
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...
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.
There is an ALT+ for it, but I can never remember it, despite needing it at least once a week.
It requires you to curl your thumb awkwardly when resting on the home row or WASD.
It is between the Z and X, but on MacBook keyboard it is directly under the X so your thumb can rest straight.
The only keyboard I have found that has a similar MacBook layout is the Niz Plum Micro84[1] with dome switches.
There was also the discontinued NuPhy F1 that had a fn key but still had a terrible command placement.
I don't know why more Mac users don't complain about this.
[1]: https://epomaker.com/products/niz-plum-84-bluetooth [2]: https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/nutype-f1
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.
<Note the duplicated entries for two of the diacritics that are used in Polish.> - did the author conflate ż with ź? A rookie mistake! :)
I'm running the 'pl' layout on my Linux box. The Alt(Gr) layer outputs the following: ≠²³¢€½§·«»–śðæŋ’ə…łźć„”ńµ≤≥. Some are expected (diacritics, €), but the presence of characters like ¢, ð, æ, ŋ, and ə is somewhat baffling, I wonder what's the history here.
There are simple solutions to these problems. You can use a better keyboard layout, like Colemak or Dvorak, with your existing keyboard. The letters won't match the ones printed on the keys but if you touch-type it doesn't matter. If that bothers you, you can swap out your key caps, or use stickers. You can also just buy a well-designed keyboard. I use an Atreus keyboard, from Keyboardio, which fixes all of these problems, but there are lots of great keyboards which are commercially available, like the Planck or the ErgoDox, which help to fix the stagger problem.
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).
I cannot get a good danish keyboard anymore without the ÆØÅ keys having the Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish/Suomi keys printed on them as well, often in different colors.
My decade+ old "Logitech Illuminated" keyboard has been the best keyboard I've ever had but recently it's been acting up for me. It occasionally adds diacritics to random letters. Tried cleaning it with no luck. It was a danish-only version, laptop-like flat keys but with more "travel-distance" so it feels like the best of both worlds. Also had a nice flat palm-rest.
Unfortunately I can't get this keyboard or find something that has a similar form factor anymore anywhere - and if I can find some version of it, it has the the terrible multi-country-cost-cutting-keys on it. I suppose that if I find a replacement keyboard that I can move the old keys over to the new one (if they are even the same after all these years)
If it is confusing and wrong, it's a bad idea to base all of the other explanations on that terminology, because it just reinforces something that should not be reinforced. Yes, "109-key" can be off by as much as 20 keys; but it avoids implying the whole "ISO versus ANSI" nonsense, and making up things like "ISANSI" from whole cloth; and at least does imply that the important difference from "104-key" is 5 extra physical keys in various places.
