Origin of each country's QWERTY keyboard layout?

[RC-1140]

So you think it's worth the effort? Currently I'm already struggling to learn QWERTZ (touch-typing-wise) and I think if I learned Neo I could not type on (the keyboards of) normal PCs properly anymore.

Learning Neo is definitely worth it. Once you get used to it you never want to miss it again, but at least in my case I can still type QWERTZ as fast as before. Maybe it takes a minute or two, but you get used to it very quick again.

And the best feature of Neo in my opinion is the third and fourth layer. Especcially when you're using any UNIX/Linux like OS or programming, as the special characters are very well located. And even when you're not a programmer, you can still profit of it, as the german typografical correct doublequotes „ “, and the english ones ( “ ” ) are available too.

[Namenlos]

Im using Neo too, but in a qwertz version. I dont want to learn a new layout yet (at least not Neo2) so i basicly just use the 3ʳᵈ and 4ᵗʰ layer. You can activate this mode by pressing m3 (eg Caps) and F6 in the autohotkey driver, to see the interactive layout just press M3 and F1.

[filimonovici]

The vehicular language is French because every Flemming learns French, but lets not get into the discussion about which side of the country is superior (as its clearly obvious).

WHOOOO here comes the troll

I often go in Belgium both sides, and i really don't undertand that hate between flemish and wallons. for me this is one of the most stupid thing in Europe, both nationalism mixed with "ancients griefs".
So claming one side is superior si so ...


Back to topic AZERTY is the famous way for french not to do like the others (a speciality ). I don't think it's efficient, but you have direct access to many french accents. I think it'll suit to italians too (éàè are direct access).
pero dovrei provare il mio azerty tastiera in italiano ...

For the begining, I'm a romanian, residing in Italy and writing on a keyboard with UK layout. This was just for the sake of internationality ), or European comunity.
Anyway, I have to say that for the italians the best is the UK layout, which I found out, it let's you type the capital leter É one thing that is not possible with the official italian layout (strange, isn't it?). For the rest is almost identical with the italian layout. Just some symbols are moved around.

[filimonovici]

Even the search by user is borked.

Not sure what the problem is. Vbulletin isn't usually THAT bad.

You know? I have contacted the administrators at GH, telling them that I had some bad experiences with the search engine on GH. The answer was, and I quote:

"Google actually works better."

Nice, right? This is why I migrated to Deskthority.

[rodtang]

Unicomp seems to provide the Norwegian layout after the website changes.

Fellow Norwegian here.

[Grond]

Anyway, I have to say that for the italians the best is the UK layout, which I found out, it let's you type the capital leter É one thing that is not possible with the official italian layout (strange, isn't it?).

The É is almost useless in italian, the right accent is È.

[Ekaros]

Anyway, I have to say that for the italians the best is the UK layout, which I found out, it let's you type the capital leter É one thing that is not possible with the official italian layout (strange, isn't it?).

The É is almost useless in italian, the right accent is È.

Atleast on regular Finnish I can do É È Ê Ë

Need to test out multilinqual Finnish...

[Grond]

Actually you can do È by pressing Alt+Shift+E, but this only under OS-X. So it's actually an improvement offered by the OS, not a native feature of the layout, and I suspect a lot of people don't even know about it. Indeed most of people just type E' instead of È, which is not only incorrect but also ugly in my opinion.

[xbb]

Indeed most of people just type E' instead of È, which is not only incorrect but also ugly in my opinion.

I so hate that, even on italian legal/law texts you see that error very often…

[7bit]

...Especcially when you're using any UNIX/Linux like OS or programming, as the special characters are very well located. ...

Without hitting shift, things like [ ] ' \ ; / are missing. Don't see how NEO is good for programming.

...as the german typografical correct doublequotes „ “, and the english ones ( “ ” ) are available too.

This should be done by the typesetting software, not the typesetter or even the author!

[Gilgam]

...as the german typografical correct doublequotes „ “, and the english ones ( “ ” ) are available too.

This should be done by the typesetting software, not the typesetter or even the author!

I don't agree.

How would i type my letters in Vim ?

[Ekaros]

...as the german typografical correct doublequotes „ “, and the english ones ( “ ” ) are available too.

This should be done by the typesetting software, not the typesetter or even the author!

I don't agree.

How would i type my letters in Vim ?

LaTeX? Or other proper typesetting software. Write it in Vim with proper markup and then use different program to output it correctly. ;D


Typing out letters, I prefer using my keyboard specialy for ä ö Ö Ä ;D

[JBert]

...as the german typografical correct doublequotes „ “, and the english ones ( “ ” ) are available too.

This should be done by the typesetting software, not the typesetter or even the author!

I don't agree.

How would i type my letters in Vim ?

Ha, run :digraphs to see all symbols your (g)Vim knows about - if it's compiled with Unicode support, you'll even have the curly quotes (decimal 8220)!

I've even looked it up for you: go in Insert mode and press Ctrl-K " 6 or Ctrl-K " 9.

[Gilgam]

thanks guys
I use vim to type most of my texts and ouput them in latex or plain text.

I didn't knew either :digraphs or the ctrl thing, but i mostly use «» as french, and it works fine with altgr x or z.

A day without learning a new Vim command is a lost day

[RC-1140]

Don't see how NEO is good for programming.

Well, have you ever had a look on the third layer which is available by pressing the Caps Lock or the # key?



That’s IMHO the the most comfortable layout available for any of these tasks. Especcially as the Caps Lock key is even more comfortable than the Shift Key

...as the german typografical correct doublequotes „ “, and the english ones ( “ ” ) are available too.

This should be done by the typesetting software, not the typesetter or even the author!

Well, but have you ever seen any Forum, Website, Blog or similar where somebody used the correct quotes? Or a letter? Of course that’s not really important, but nevertheless it’s better style to use the correct ones.

[ideus]

Type writers did have dead keys. In Spanish, for example, the acute accent key was a key that produced the accent but did not move the carriage, then, after it any key typed was let to be printed under the accent. That was a dead key by definition.

[Telstar]

You can find some info on wikipedia under QWERTY.
As for Italian layout, I can tell you that it was not originated from typewriters. Italian typewriters used to be QZERTY, but I've never seen any pc keyboard with that layout. Whoever designed the italian layout did a lousy job. The keyboard lacks accented caps letters such as Á È Ì Ò Ù, and at least one of them is largely used in Italian (È = it is).

Yes and instead they put the ç symbol which is used only in French.
Some of the positions also sucks (why to press shift and a first row key to make a "?")?

[depletedvespene]

Type writers did have dead keys. In Spanish, for example, the acute accent key was a key that produced the accent but did not move the carriage, then, after it any key typed was let to be printed under the accent. That was a dead key by definition.

While we're at this, one thing that does not cease to strike me is how strong the aversion to dead keys is in people from some countries, while in others they're heavily used with no second thought - both the Portuguese (Portugal) and Spanish (Spain) layouts have five (two on the base layer, two more on the Shift layer and one under AltGr) of 'em, while layouts from some neighboring countries go to quite the length to avoid them (the dead keys, I mean).

[Laser]

Type writers did have dead keys. In Spanish, for example, the acute accent key was a key that produced the accent but did not move the carriage, then, after it any key typed was let to be printed under the accent. That was a dead key by definition.

Heh, editors *could* do that too ... (I mean, it would be nice)

[depletedvespene]

Type writers did have dead keys. In Spanish, for example, the acute accent key was a key that produced the accent but did not move the carriage, then, after it any key typed was let to be printed under the accent. That was a dead key by definition.

Heh, editors *could* do that too ... (I mean, it would be nice)

Unless editors can't tell the difference — sure, obviously "pinguino" is missing the diaeresis, but is that "basto" over there an adjective or a conjugated verb? And what if the pope comes over to visit my dad?

[Laser]

Heh, well I rather meant something like this: when you type a dead key, the editor (using low-level keyboard scanning or something similar) shows the accent on current cursor position, maybe flashing it, or in a different color, and then the cursor is kept as is, not moved; so the user can then type a letter and the result will get "accent"-ed

[depletedvespene]

Heh, well I rather meant something like this: when you type a dead key, the editor (using low-level keyboard scanning or something similar) shows the accent on current cursor position, maybe flashing it, or in a different color, and then the cursor is kept as is, not moved; so the user can then type a letter and the result will get "accent"-ed

Now, THIS is something all operating systems from the '80s onwards should have implemented (not necessarily flashing or in a differing colour, if that wouldn't be available, but still).

[Laser]

I *think* I remember some editor that showed an accent like ` or ' after typing such a dead key, although it moved the cursor afterwards (of course after the next letter typed it would do the right thing). It could have been even Notepad or Wordpad, I rarely use Windows nowadays.

[vometia]

Yes and instead they put the ç symbol which is used only in French.

Not sure if serious. :/

[depletedvespene]

Yes and instead they put the ç symbol which is used only in French.

Not sure if serious. :/

The c with cedilla (Ç/ç) isn't actually used in Italian (although it IS used in two subnational languages within Italy: Friulian and Franco-Provençal).

[Telstar]

Yes and instead they put the ç symbol which is used only in French.

Not sure if serious. :/

Totally serious.

[vometia]

I guess my "...?" was due to it also being used in various loan-words in English (since English is sort of the magpie of linguistics in that it'll steal anything that's shiny enough) and features words such as façade, but my understanding, admittedly speaking as someone who is a bit crap at languages including her own, is that cedillas (cedilli? cedillæ? I have no idea) are also prominent in several central-/east-European languages, Turkish and are also used in places whose languages I have even less clue about.

But I'm just sore that no keyboard has an n̈ key.

[depletedvespene]

I guess my "...?" was due to it also being used in various loan-words in English (since English is sort of the magpie of linguistics in that it'll steal anything that's shiny enough) and features words such as façade, but my understanding, admittedly speaking as someone who is a bit crap at languages including her own, is that cedillas (cedilli? cedillæ? I have no idea) are also prominent in several central-/east-European languages, Turkish and are also used in places whose languages I have even less clue about.

Don't tell the French, but The cedilla originated in Spanish and spread from there to neighboring languages, and made a jump into Turkish-influenced areas (of all places). It lives on, in spite of Spanish having gotten rid of it long ago.

Fun fact: the c with cedilla is used in typed, not handwritten, Catalan as a replacement for the otherwise unavailable ce trencada, which is a C with an entirely different diacritic. But don't tell the Catalans about that, either, as many have forgotten that this usage started as a convention to wade around a hardware issue. Oh, well...

But I'm just sore that no keyboard has an n̈ key.

No, but properly designed layouts do have properly configured diaeresis/umlaut dead key that allows typing the combining code point. I live for the day where Spin̈al Tap demands the Unicode Consortium add the precomposed N̈/n̈ code points.

[Telstar]

No, but properly designed layouts do have properly configured diaeresis/umlaut dead key that allows typing the combining code point.

This would have been good for other accents as well.

[depletedvespene]

No, but properly designed layouts do have properly configured diaeresis/umlaut dead key that allows typing the combining code point.

This would have been good for other accents as well.

Indeed. Plenty of the "old" layouts still have the non-combining versions for reasons that were defensible "back in the day", but not anymore... and the layouts don't ever get revised.

On my custom layouts, I do make the effort of making all dead keys produce the combining code points, if available in Unicode, when combined with the space character(s).