3 ms·

How to people in general feel about the backslash (\) in the non-english speaking world? Me personally I hate it. It is OK for escaping (as it doesn’t happen t

How to people in general feel about the backslash (\) in the non-english speaking world? Me personally I hate it. It is OK for escaping (as it doesn’t happen that often) but for things like typing out LaTeX or paths on Windows is awful to an extend where I would rather not write LaTeX outside of my custom keyboard (Caps Lock as third level shift and Emacs key-chord of ðö together [icelandic keyboard] types \).

runarberg 5y ago
To clarify for people who only ever have seen English (or English derived) keyboards. The backslash (\) is usually bound to a third level shift. On some Windows you can reach third level shift with either a Ctrl + Alt or a single AltGr. On most linuxes AltGr is the only way to reach third level shift. This is a problem since AltGr is usually on the same side (right hand side) of the keyboard as the \ key, so you usually have to do some finger gymnastics to type it. On Macs Option double functions as a third level shifts which causes a whole different set of issues as many keyboard shortcuts also use the option key, so typing \ becomes ambiguous in some contexts.
- arketyp 5y ago
  I didn't always know that [ ] are immediate keys and { } are shift characters on a US keyboard. I had internalized the AltGr pain as something that just came with the territory of programming.
  - johnwalkr 5y ago
    For this reason many Japanese programmers use US layout.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  This problem does not exist for Cyrillic layout, since we always have two keyboard layouts (qwerty, йцукен) and switch between them. Press-release shift, then ctrl-shift, lately caps lock became fashionable. Clueless software such as KDE offers cumbersome switching hotkey such as ctrl-shift-K, which nobody uses in favour of a single easy combo. So, if we can't find [ or } or / on cyrillic layout, we just switch to latin and punch it. I've never seen a latin layout which did not have '\' readily available. When you need to type a path, it almost always contains some latin letters ("/usr" or "C:\") so you will have to switch regardless. Still, we have one more variable to occupy our mind, "what's the current keyboard layout I'm on". There were even software which did automatic layout switching based on dictionary heuristics. йцукен is also very efficient key placement-wise so we don't have anything like Dvorak layout. What's a bummer is ',' which requires pressing shift.
anonymfus 5y ago
On Russian keyboard layout backslash (\) is in the same position as on US keyboards (electronically; the actual position may differ as the shape and arrangement of Enter, Shift and Backspace keys is not standardised here), the forward slash (/) is entered as Shift+\ As I understand, that layout was designed for MS-DOS by the group of computer enthusiasts that joint USA-USSR company Dialog gathered in 1990 by request of Microsoft during Bill Gates' first official visit to Moscow, and these enthusiasts were basically all programmers. Hence the layout they created is based on a US English for a convenience of keeping some punctuation marks in the same places. That makes it horrible for Russian typography, but such is life here.
innocenat 5y ago
I don't care either way. But that's probably because my native language of Thai have completely different keyboard layout that require me to switch to English layout anyway for backlash and other file path.
3np 5y ago
I switched to us-altgr-intl (so now my native odd characters are altgr+whatever and otherwise en-us) and haven’t touched my native layout for 10y or so. So I have no issues with \

runarberg 5y ago

To clarify for people who only ever have seen English (or English derived) keyboards. The backslash (\) is usually bound to a third level shift. On some Windows you can reach third level shift with either a Ctrl + Alt or a single AltGr. On most linuxes AltGr is the only way to reach third level shift. This is a problem since AltGr is usually on the same side (right hand side) of the keyboard as the \ key, so you usually have to do some finger gymnastics to type it. On Macs Option double functions as a third level shifts which causes a whole different set of issues as many keyboard shortcuts also use the option key, so typing \ becomes ambiguous in some contexts.

arketyp 5y ago
I didn't always know that [ ] are immediate keys and { } are shift characters on a US keyboard. I had internalized the AltGr pain as something that just came with the territory of programming.
- johnwalkr 5y ago
  For this reason many Japanese programmers use US layout.
thriftwy 5y ago
This problem does not exist for Cyrillic layout, since we always have two keyboard layouts (qwerty, йцукен) and switch between them. Press-release shift, then ctrl-shift, lately caps lock became fashionable. Clueless software such as KDE offers cumbersome switching hotkey such as ctrl-shift-K, which nobody uses in favour of a single easy combo. So, if we can't find [ or } or / on cyrillic layout, we just switch to latin and punch it. I've never seen a latin layout which did not have '\' readily available. When you need to type a path, it almost always contains some latin letters ("/usr" or "C:\") so you will have to switch regardless. Still, we have one more variable to occupy our mind, "what's the current keyboard layout I'm on". There were even software which did automatic layout switching based on dictionary heuristics. йцукен is also very efficient key placement-wise so we don't have anything like Dvorak layout. What's a bummer is ',' which requires pressing shift.

anonymfus 5y ago

On Russian keyboard layout backslash (\) is in the same position as on US keyboards (electronically; the actual position may differ as the shape and arrangement of Enter, Shift and Backspace keys is not standardised here), the forward slash (/) is entered as Shift+\ As I understand, that layout was designed for MS-DOS by the group of computer enthusiasts that joint USA-USSR company Dialog gathered in 1990 by request of Microsoft during Bill Gates' first official visit to Moscow, and these enthusiasts were basically all programmers. Hence the layout they created is based on a US English for a convenience of keeping some punctuation marks in the same places. That makes it horrible for Russian typography, but such is life here.

innocenat 5y ago

I don't care either way. But that's probably because my native language of Thai have completely different keyboard layout that require me to switch to English layout anyway for backlash and other file path.

3np 5y ago

I switched to us-altgr-intl (so now my native odd characters are altgr+whatever and otherwise en-us) and haven’t touched my native layout for 10y or so. So I have no issues with \