5 ms·

It took many decades to widely adopt UTF-8. I think that one of the reasons was that US companies did not really care about character encodings, as it's not som

It took many decades to widely adopt UTF-8. I think that one of the reasons was that US companies did not really care about character encodings, as it's not something they have to often deal with. Even today managing multiple keyboard layouts is a pain in most operating systems, it's buggy, it does not have enough configuration options, it's not convenient. Probably because most US developers never tried to use that functionality.

jacobolus 6y ago
Mac Firefox and Mac Chrome both break a bunch of keyboard shortcuts if you use a non-US-ANSI keyboard. Safari handles alternate layouts correctly. Just yesterday I learned that on an ISO Spanish keyboard, both of those browsers will pop up a help menu for ⌘⇧7. The logic goes: ⇧7 means / on a Spanish ISO keyboard, and ⇧/ means ? on a US-ANSI keyboard, therefore ⌘⇧7 is by the transitive property of inter-layout shift functions equivalent to ⌘?, which is the shortcut for opening the help menu. They don't pop open the help menu if you press ⌘⇧', the actual ISO Spanish layout way to type ⌘?
- misterS 6y ago
  Stuff like this is the reason why I, as a non-american software engineer, use `US_en` layouts on all my machines.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    I use a Japanese keyboard that pretends to be a US-ANSI on my laptop. The extra keys and narrow spacebar are super handy. Something like http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/9150730dbd4d2824ec3cca5b62925f38 http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/9150730dbd4d28...
  - SwiftyBug 6y ago
    Same. When I have to use someone else's computer without an US_en keyboard I look like an elder learning to type.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    I use EurKey [0] (I think this was actually recommended to me on HN) so I have easy "AltGr" access to German characters like öüß. Sadly some tools (most notably Microsoft’s) have hardcoded shortcuts for some of those, which is really annoying. [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/ https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
  - trinix912 6y ago
    I use the Canadian English layout on macOS for most of the time, if I need to enter accented letters, I can just hold down a normal letter (A) then select an accented one from the popup (Å). The international English layout works the same way if I remember correctly.
- lou1306 6y ago
  Not only Firefox. Cmd-/ is also a very common "toggle line comment" shortcut. I think it's the default on Sublime and IntelliJ, and any editor that offers a "Sublime compatible" preset (like VS code) imitate that. Of course, such a shortcut broken out-of-the-box for any keyboard layout that lacks a / key.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    Yeah, Sublime copied this shortcut (like most of its features) from TextMate, and it has since spread widely. Amusingly, TextMate's author and many early users were European programmers with US-ANSI keyboards (because the various European layouts are just too painful for writing code in ASCII-based programming languages).
- happymellon 6y ago
  Mac everything breaks for me on a UK Mac when using an ISO keyboard rather than their non-standard ISO layout. Page down only sometimes works, and Command+~ to switch same app Windows works in some apps and not others. It's a bit of a train wreck when you want to get rid of their pointless keys.
- trinix912 6y ago
  The built-in apps seem to handle it pretty well (ex. the dictionary app has ⌘Ä / ⌘Ö shortcuts when set to Swedish). 3rd party apps often don't care and it gets worse the more you move away from plain QWERTY. Although macOS is good in the aspect that combinations akin to AltGr on PCs aren't unique to non-US layouts. I've seen programmers assume it's safe to assign shortcuts to Ctrl-Alt (which simulates AltGr), making it impossible to enter certain characters. Not surprising, as it's not used on the US layout (just as there's no extra key next to the left Shift).
young_unixer 6y ago
And multiple languages. Spell-chackers enabled by default are specially annoying.
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
But contrary to the date issue, you could at least make a case for using ASCII everywhere. I'm not saying it has no downsides (e.g information density). It may also be unrealistic and culturally insensitive, but there are very clear upsides as well. Not so with the U.S date format. It's just bad.
mmis1000 6y ago
Until people get used to emoji... And not supporting UTF-8 is suddenly a big problem even for English people now.
SwiftyBug 6y ago
My wife recently bought by mistake a keyboard whose layout I couldn't figure out. It took me a full 5 minutes to even get to the correct place where I could configure keyboard layouts under Windows 10 settings. Then I had to choose the keyboard layout I wanted to add. This was a list in a dropdown with hundreds of options without an image of what each layout looks like so I could not check which option matched the keyboard in front of me. There was not even an input field where I could test the chosen layout, I had to switch back and forth from the Notepad. After many tries, I finally got it right: Portuguese. Completely by trial and error.
- majewsky 6y ago
  I like the method that Mac OS uses to detect the layout of a newly connected keyboard. It brings up a dialog asking the user to press specific keys (something like "type the | character") until there is only one possible layout that would generate the observed keycodes for the characters in question.
  - bombcar 6y ago
    It’s really well done - and usually Identifies the most common keyboards in only a few key presses.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Same method as certain mainstream Linux distros has been using the last few years? Or has Mac been doing this for even longer (I cannot remember how it worked back in 2012, the last time I used Mac.)

jacobolus 6y ago

Mac Firefox and Mac Chrome both break a bunch of keyboard shortcuts if you use a non-US-ANSI keyboard. Safari handles alternate layouts correctly. Just yesterday I learned that on an ISO Spanish keyboard, both of those browsers will pop up a help menu for ⌘⇧7. The logic goes: ⇧7 means / on a Spanish ISO keyboard, and ⇧/ means ? on a US-ANSI keyboard, therefore ⌘⇧7 is by the transitive property of inter-layout shift functions equivalent to ⌘?, which is the shortcut for opening the help menu. They don't pop open the help menu if you press ⌘⇧', the actual ISO Spanish layout way to type ⌘?

misterS 6y ago
Stuff like this is the reason why I, as a non-american software engineer, use `US_en` layouts on all my machines.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  I use a Japanese keyboard that pretends to be a US-ANSI on my laptop. The extra keys and narrow spacebar are super handy. Something like http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/9150730dbd4d2824ec3cca5b62925f38 http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/9150730dbd4d28...
- SwiftyBug 6y ago
  Same. When I have to use someone else's computer without an US_en keyboard I look like an elder learning to type.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  I use EurKey [0] (I think this was actually recommended to me on HN) so I have easy "AltGr" access to German characters like öüß. Sadly some tools (most notably Microsoft’s) have hardcoded shortcuts for some of those, which is really annoying. [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/ https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
- trinix912 6y ago
  I use the Canadian English layout on macOS for most of the time, if I need to enter accented letters, I can just hold down a normal letter (A) then select an accented one from the popup (Å). The international English layout works the same way if I remember correctly.
lou1306 6y ago
Not only Firefox. Cmd-/ is also a very common "toggle line comment" shortcut. I think it's the default on Sublime and IntelliJ, and any editor that offers a "Sublime compatible" preset (like VS code) imitate that. Of course, such a shortcut broken out-of-the-box for any keyboard layout that lacks a / key.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  Yeah, Sublime copied this shortcut (like most of its features) from TextMate, and it has since spread widely. Amusingly, TextMate's author and many early users were European programmers with US-ANSI keyboards (because the various European layouts are just too painful for writing code in ASCII-based programming languages).
happymellon 6y ago
Mac everything breaks for me on a UK Mac when using an ISO keyboard rather than their non-standard ISO layout. Page down only sometimes works, and Command+~ to switch same app Windows works in some apps and not others. It's a bit of a train wreck when you want to get rid of their pointless keys.
trinix912 6y ago
The built-in apps seem to handle it pretty well (ex. the dictionary app has ⌘Ä / ⌘Ö shortcuts when set to Swedish). 3rd party apps often don't care and it gets worse the more you move away from plain QWERTY. Although macOS is good in the aspect that combinations akin to AltGr on PCs aren't unique to non-US layouts. I've seen programmers assume it's safe to assign shortcuts to Ctrl-Alt (which simulates AltGr), making it impossible to enter certain characters. Not surprising, as it's not used on the US layout (just as there's no extra key next to the left Shift).

young_unixer 6y ago

And multiple languages. Spell-chackers enabled by default are specially annoying.

fauigerzigerk 6y ago

But contrary to the date issue, you could at least make a case for using ASCII everywhere. I'm not saying it has no downsides (e.g information density). It may also be unrealistic and culturally insensitive, but there are very clear upsides as well. Not so with the U.S date format. It's just bad.

mmis1000 6y ago

Until people get used to emoji... And not supporting UTF-8 is suddenly a big problem even for English people now.

SwiftyBug 6y ago

My wife recently bought by mistake a keyboard whose layout I couldn't figure out. It took me a full 5 minutes to even get to the correct place where I could configure keyboard layouts under Windows 10 settings. Then I had to choose the keyboard layout I wanted to add. This was a list in a dropdown with hundreds of options without an image of what each layout looks like so I could not check which option matched the keyboard in front of me. There was not even an input field where I could test the chosen layout, I had to switch back and forth from the Notepad. After many tries, I finally got it right: Portuguese. Completely by trial and error.

majewsky 6y ago
I like the method that Mac OS uses to detect the layout of a newly connected keyboard. It brings up a dialog asking the user to press specific keys (something like "type the | character") until there is only one possible layout that would generate the observed keycodes for the characters in question.
- bombcar 6y ago
  It’s really well done - and usually Identifies the most common keyboards in only a few key presses.
- eitland 6y ago
  Same method as certain mainstream Linux distros has been using the last few years? Or has Mac been doing this for even longer (I cannot remember how it worked back in 2012, the last time I used Mac.)