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I assume you don't work or live in a multilingual environment, do you? That's the kind of shortcut that brings huge problems to people all around the world. Of

I assume you don't work or live in a multilingual environment, do you? That's the kind of shortcut that brings huge problems to people all around the world. Of course it means more engineering effort. That's why we're here for.

rwmj 8y ago
I routinely type English and Japanese on my one keyboard. We're not talking about whether keyboards should have different configurations in different parts of the world, just whether any particular keyboard should be able to be remapped so that it sends keys which no longer correspond to what's written on the keycaps. I contend that almost no one does that (obviously outside the 2 people on this page who are so insistent on the feature), so the engineering effort is not worthwhile. And it must be weighed against all the times everyone has to select the right keyboard layout manually when installing operating systems, or they type a particular key but what shows up on the screen is different from the keycap and they have no idea how to fix it.
- avian 8y ago
  My experience comes from continental Europe. Most people I know here switch at least between their local national keyboard layout and the US layout. US layout lacks the characters necessary to write in the local language. European layouts often make it awkward to access punctuation common in English (e.g. you need Alt-Gr combos to access). Many people need to use both English and their local language (and perhaps a third European language!) in day-to-day business, hence the need for switching between layouts.
- vvillena 8y ago
  I understand your opinion, and surely you have way more experience than me on this matter. Still, it seems that there should be a better way. Why aren't keyboards able to communicate a default layout? I've been reading about the current one and it's true it's complex and full of legacy decisions, so why isn't there a "better scancodes" protocol? It's true, using a keyboard layout different from the one printed on the keyboard is unheard of in much parts of the world, but on others it's almost a necessity. Continuously installing operating systems and manually configuring keyboard layouts is uncommon, too, and it's mostly solved by automatic layout recognition, aka "write the words you see".

rwmj 8y ago

I routinely type English and Japanese on my one keyboard. We're not talking about whether keyboards should have different configurations in different parts of the world, just whether any particular keyboard should be able to be remapped so that it sends keys which no longer correspond to what's written on the keycaps. I contend that almost no one does that (obviously outside the 2 people on this page who are so insistent on the feature), so the engineering effort is not worthwhile. And it must be weighed against all the times everyone has to select the right keyboard layout manually when installing operating systems, or they type a particular key but what shows up on the screen is different from the keycap and they have no idea how to fix it.

avian 8y ago
My experience comes from continental Europe. Most people I know here switch at least between their local national keyboard layout and the US layout. US layout lacks the characters necessary to write in the local language. European layouts often make it awkward to access punctuation common in English (e.g. you need Alt-Gr combos to access). Many people need to use both English and their local language (and perhaps a third European language!) in day-to-day business, hence the need for switching between layouts.
vvillena 8y ago
I understand your opinion, and surely you have way more experience than me on this matter. Still, it seems that there should be a better way. Why aren't keyboards able to communicate a default layout? I've been reading about the current one and it's true it's complex and full of legacy decisions, so why isn't there a "better scancodes" protocol? It's true, using a keyboard layout different from the one printed on the keyboard is unheard of in much parts of the world, but on others it's almost a necessity. Continuously installing operating systems and manually configuring keyboard layouts is uncommon, too, and it's mostly solved by automatic layout recognition, aka "write the words you see".