
Around the World in 33 Keyboards - lelf
http://thebrainfever.com/apple/around-the-world-in-33-keyboards
======
desdiv
Interesting how the French Canadian keyboard is the only one where the escape
key doesn't contain the word "esc". They went with the ISO keyboard symbol for
escape instead[0]. I didn't even realize there was such a symbol before today.

[0] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISOIEC-9995-7-029--
I...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISOIEC-9995-7-029--ISO-7000-2029
--Symbol-for-Escape.svg)

~~~
quernard
You're right, my macbook pro has that symbol, I've never noticed this before.
But it looks like they must have recently dropped it, the new magic keyboard
uses the word "esc" [http://www.apple.com/xf/shop/product/MLA22C/A/magic-
keyboard...](http://www.apple.com/xf/shop/product/MLA22C/A/magic-keyboard-
fran%C3%A7ais-canada)

------
aikah
As a french person, I use an AZERTY keyboard, it can become really tedious
when programming in some languages. The ` for instance is a pain to type : Atl
Gr + 7 then space (though on apple keyboards it seems to have a dedicated key,
but I'm pretty sure the space is still needed)... and of course numbers need
the shift key to be held ... The issue is I can't really switch to QWERTY
(accents).

~~~
reirob
I feel with you, but there is a nice solution :-)

I moved to France from Germany, I had first to unlearn the German layout
(QWERTZ) and then learn the French AZERTY. But as you say it is so bad!
Additionally I was travelling for work and sometimes was exposed to type on
different layouts and was very frustrated because I was accustomed to AZERTY.
After one week in Russia I took the decision and switched to QWERTY,
configured it to US International with AltGR dead keys [1]. This give the
advantage, to have all the accents you might, the French, the German ones as
well as Turkish and some more by combining. Plus you have the convenience of a
keyboard layout that was used to design most of the programming languages.
When you are in a front of somebody's French computer - the English layout it
is just some clicks away (Left Alt + Left Shift on most Windows).

Just to give you some idea of how to get the accents:

AltGr + ' \+ a -> á

AltGr + ` + e -> è

AltGr + " \+ e -> ë

Shift + AltGr + x -> Œ (I don't even know if it possible to get this one on
AZERTY)

Shift + AltGr + , -> Ç (This one as well is not possible on AZERT AFAIK. I
think for this character the , was used because the key has on the top half
'<' and on the bottom half ',' so it resembles ç). With Shift you get the
capital letter and without the normal letter.

and so on.

If you buy ThinkPads you can chose to get the US International keyboard
layout. Not so sure about other brands.

This was definitely one of the better life hacks for me - I never looked back.

[1] On Linux you get the US International AltGr layout shipped. But on Windows
there is only a US International, but without AltGr dead key. I find it very
disturbing, because for example if you want to type a double quote (") you
have to type " \+ Space and the same for tilde, single quote and back tick. So
I had to dig around to find US International AtgGr dead key layout. This
comment gives some info and hints to another alternative that I didn't yet try
out:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10948810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10948810)

~~~
egeozcan
I think you can never get the Turkish "ı" and "İ" with any sane combination on
any other keyboard than the Turkish though. I'm Turkish and have been living
in Germany since more than 5 years and I still use a Turkish Q layout just for
this reason (I occasionally have to write in Turkish). It also contains all
the German letters under _relatively sane_ combinations.

~~~
reirob
You can use the '.' (dot) key to modify/inverse the (single) dot above
letters:

AltGr . + i => ı AltGr . + I => İ

I think this is what you were looking for and I find this combination easy to
remember and other combinations seem to follow mostly the same principle (e.g.
" (double quotes) modifies the double dots on the letters, which allows to
make öÖäÄüÜëË, etc. The same for ~ (tilde), ` (backtick), ' (single quote).

Here the combination for the special Turkish characters:

Ç -> AltGr + % + C or AltGr , (comma) + C

ç -> AltGr + % + c or AltGr , (comma) + c

I remember this combination because the on the % key there is 5, or to say it
differently % = Shift + 5, and 5 resembles a bit the symbol that goes below
the C in Ç. The same is true for Şş

Ğ -> AltGr + Shift + 9 + G

ğ -> AltGr + Shift + 9 + g

I remember these because (Shift + 9 corresponds to '(', i.e. opening bracket,
which truned by 90°to left is like the sign that is on top of ğ and Ğ

ı -> AltGr + . + i

İ -> AltGr + . + I

Ö -> AltGr + " \+ O

ö -> AltGr + " \+ o

Same principle for üÜ (and äÄ if you need German as well)

Ş -> AltGR + % + S

ş -> AltGr + % + s

Ü -> AltGr + " \+ U

ü -> AltGr + " \+ u

~~~
egeozcan
I can't thank you enough for this. Anyway, thank you very much for the
detailed information.

~~~
reirob
You're welcome. I'm glad that it might be useful :-)

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lukasm
No one uses Polish keyboard in Poland. Since windows 95 the first thing you do
is to change from polish 214 (QWERTZ) to polish programmer keyboard (QWERTY)

------
astrodust
It's interesting that Apple's keyboard designs all revolve around on-demand
parts. The holes can be milled to any arbitrary size or shape. The labels on
the keys themselves are lasered on as necessary.

Apart from the membrane and the key shapes, this keyboard looks like it's
intended to be highly reconfigurable.

This probably makes it easy for a single assembly line to slot in the keyboard
for the destination region without too much fuss. Russian keyboard on one
unit, Belgian on the next, no big deal.

I can only imagine how complicated that might be for a company like Logitech
or Dell where the caps themselves are injection molded with the letters built
in.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Indeed that does seem to be how they do it. Here in the UK, when you order a
keyboard or a MacBook from the Apple Online Store, it gives you a bunch of
language options, which doesn't affect the delivery time. I think you can only
get ones with the same physical shape (no Japanese), but there's a choice of
lettering.

------
Yabood
I once bought a MacBook pro with an Arabic keyboard online thinking it had the
standard US keyboard layout, it didn't, so I returned it. I just couldn't get
over that return key. So tiny and cramped, basically unusable.

~~~
aembleton
It's what you're used to. I'm used to the UK keyboard and when I tried a US
macbook the only thing that bothered me was the height of the return key. I
found that I must have been hitting the top of it when touch typing and on a
US keyboard I was hitting the \ key instead.

------
egeozcan
The first Turkish keyboard in the article is called the "Turkish F Keyboard",
and is not in common use, although said to be better suited to write Turkish.

~~~
michaelcampbell
That one fascinated me the most. I don't know Turkish, but among them all it
seemed the most different to what I'm used to seeing.

------
tcfunk
But...but how does one type '#' on a British keyboard?

~~~
m0tive
Use a standard british keyboard[1]. It is a pain using the Mac "british"
keyboard for programming in my experience.

[1]
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_United_Kingdom.sv...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_United_Kingdom.svg)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
The PC British layout is annoying. It swaps @ and " relative to the US layout,
among some other important keys, which means that when you're dropped at a US-
layout terminal you struggle.

It also doesn't have the wonderful set of Alt+ combinations as the Mac British
layout for typing various types of diacritics, widths of dashes, Greek
letters, mathematical symbols, opening and closing quotes, and other things.
PC layout users are stuck with acute accents, the Euro symbol, and nothing
else.

Luckily, the Mac "British - PC" layout (not the same as the actual British PC
layout) does include the extra Alt+ combos.

I'm not sure why anyone would find the Mac British layout difficult to program
with. It's closer to the US layout than the PC British layout. I suppose #
requiring Alt might be bothersome, but # isn't a symbol used that frequently
in programming, and Alt+3 is not that difficult to type.

~~~
m0tive
Having always used a standard british keyboard, the subtle differences, e.g.
location of \, #, ", `, ~, really slow me down. It just seems petty for Apple
to ignore the standard and go it's own way... then again, it is Apple.

Also, I use # loads every day for c++ macros, and #if 0 blocks.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> It just seems petty for Apple to ignore the standard and go it's own way...
> then again, it is Apple.

Apple's had their own layout for literally decades. There wasn't a standard
back then.

> Having always used a standard british keyboard, the subtle differences, e.g.
> location of \, #, ", `, ~, really slow me down.

You can adjust to it pretty quickly.

------
minikites
Looking at the subtle layout changes for Roman characters (which I assume are
based only on letter frequency for each language) I wonder if it's possible to
tell if they are more, less, or the same efficiency as QWERTY is for U.S.
keyboards.

Also, are there Dvorak equivalents for other languages?

~~~
noja
Is there any real evidence that Dvorak layouts are better? I've only seen
anecdata.

~~~
minikites
My understanding is that they're fractionally better speedwise and a bit
better for RSI issues, but not enough to justify switching, it would take
forever to make up the lost productivity while re-training.

~~~
59nadir
A few weeks to reach a solid level, most likely, provided you actually
practice.

If you type a lot of boilerplate code (which really is the only area where
typing speed will hurt you) you'll notice a difference, but I'd argue that
fact in itself is something you ought to fix.

I taught myself workable svorak (A5) in a weekend on IRC, then polished it
over a shorter period after to feel comfortable. The good thing about
SvorakA5[0] is that it uses AltGr + regular keys for special characters, which
is really nice.

I don't recommend learning dvorak or any variant of it for the typing speed
unless you do dictation or whatever, because you're not getting that much from
it in any profession that requires you to think anyway. Personally, I just
feel like I'm destroying my hands less when typing, which is a good enough
reason. They're already some level of broken from having played strategy games
too much, so I feel like I should take care of them more.

(Obviously Svorak is the Swedish version of Dvorak, so for other languages
you'd have to find something like A5)

Edit: I recommend playing "Typing of the Dead"[1] if you can find a way to do
so. Great way for polishing your use of a layout.

0 -
[http://aoeu.info/s/dvorak/images/svorak-A5.png](http://aoeu.info/s/dvorak/images/svorak-A5.png)

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead)

------
drops
As someone who lives in a russian-speaking country, I must note that the
russian keyboard layout is a nightmare. It's already been written about
([http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/105/](http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/105/))
but I only realized how bad the situation is when I learned how to touch type.

------
nrjames
Think of the money that could be saved if the Danes and Norwegians would just
use the same keyboard...

------
hodwik
It seems difficult to program on many of these, as best as I can tell, many
are missing symbols common to programming notation -- [] {} |

Portugal, Norway, Germany, Belgium, France, Czech R, and Croatia specifically.

~~~
germanier
It's still there but not labelled as such. It's a bit harder to press but not
prohibitively so. For example, on a German keyboard you press Alt+5 for [ and
Alt+9 for }.

The German Windows keyboard has those somewhere else for some reason though...

------
aembleton
The Italian keyboard has a £ symbol. I wonder why.

~~~
mbi
That is also the currency symbol of the Italian lira [0], which was in use
before the euro.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_lira](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_lira)

------
xedarius
Apple only do one keyboard layout, it's US of A, anyone from the countries
listed there will tell you that.

~~~
astrodust
How could you possibly be more wrong?

~~~
xedarius
Well when I ordered my first mac I clicked British keyboard. I nearly sent it
back as I thought they'd sent the wrong one.

The " was not on number 2 The # symbol had appeared on number 3 Where was my £
symbol

If they can't get a British keyboard right I have serious doubts about other
countries.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
The Mac has its own British layout. The British PC layout isn't the only valid
one.

Macs (and before them, Apple IIs) and PCs have differed here for a long time.
Look at this 1984 British Apple IIe layout:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Apple_II...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Apple_IIe.jpg)

