Microsoft Word used to "auto-correct" the ASCII codes 0x22 and 0x27 to those.
Also, ISO 8859-1 was the default character set for the web, and MS Word was in common use for making simple web pages... but without narrowing from CP-1252 to ISO 8859-1.
This had the effect that when you browsed one of those pages in a browser on another operating system, the quotation marks rendered as empty boxes ( = illegal character).
On so-called modern X11 or Wayland based systems (Linux or *BSD), there is a similar feature called XCompose. Worse syntax, but still functional.
This really messed me up when I started programming since those quotes will not work when writing in a language that expects a set of the same character but they may use the same glyph. This is one of the many reasons I have my systems set to English.
I agree that for a normal writing environment it may be advantageous to have it auto replace since it is also just easier to hit the same key twice and have it auto open/close.
Many blog engines online will also try to be helpful and replace quotes with smart quotes, which makes copy-pasting source code from tutorials quite a pain.
I can't seem to replicate the behavior now on win 11 even with the same language set and keyboard layout (system language set to English), so perhaps I'm misremembering? It seems that this keyboard layout does enable typing ¨ U+00A8 so perhaps I am confused with that and that some editors (word etc) do the opening/closing replacement.
IME is not used, though interestingly in Asian languages the do used even different quotes, example Japanese:「x」and『x』
“ Option [
” Option {
‘ Option ]
’ Option }
… Option ;
- just -
– Option -
— Option _
• Option 8
But } needs shift. So this is Shift+Option+] which forces me to move my left hand off the base row. Not ideal.
I bought several second-hand on German eBay, for scavenging parts for DIY mechanical keyboards back in the early '10s before the mechanical keyboard scene matured. The build is cheap and dated compared to modern mechanical keyboards, and newly produced keyboards are very overpriced. [2]
Most keyboard models are produced in ISO layouts, but you might have to look abroad to find one the right one or buy it from an online store selling internationally.
