5 ms·

I’m Finnish. The caret is not always easy to type in my experience on international keyboards. Not sure what the added value is of creating yet another conventi

I’m Finnish. The caret is not always easy to type in my experience on international keyboards. Not sure what the added value is of creating yet another convention here, as there are so many already with each new templating language.

paulsmith 4y ago
That's good feedback, thank you. My US-centric eye didn't consider that.
- thiht 4y ago
  Same on a French keyboard, trying to type `^if {` will result in `îf {`
derkoe 4y ago
Oh yes it's pretty hard to type on a German keyboard as well. In most editors you will need two keystrokes.
- fulafel 4y ago
  But don't you need 4 keystrokes for the common alternative, {} enclosed template expressions? Same as french, nordic, and probably lots of other european intl layouts. (Or even better against the {{ }} ones requiring 6)
  - Zababa 4y ago
    "{" on a french keyboard is two key presses but at the same time (alt gr and 4), while ^ is two key presses one after the other, which makes it a bit slower. Most editors will also insert the corresponding } when you create a {. That makes in my experience {} faster than ^ and {{}} as fast as ^. {} is still a common complaint in my circle of programmer friends and everyone has seriously thought even once about switching to an english/american keyboard, but then there's the issue of switching back when writing stuff in french (é by itself almost ruins the idea).
    - calgoo 4y ago
      I use a Spanish keyboard but with US layout on top. I normally let autocorrect deal with special Spanish characters, but just switch layout if I’m writing something longer.
- fileeditview 4y ago
  For German devs it makes sense to use a no dead keys keyboard layout IMHO. You rarely need the accents anyways and it saves a lot of time when coding. I made the switch a long time ago and don't regret it. For the occasional word like "Expose", I just leave off the accent and that's that.
tuetuopay 4y ago
same in french. it's a dead key on our keyboard, so it's basically two keystrokes instead of one to type it. to be fair most special characters are behind AltGr on azerty, soooo...
- kgeist 4y ago
  Interestingly, there's no such problem on Cyrillic keyboards despite being a totally different alphabet. We only need to switch the current layout to English which is what we do all the time anyway.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Not despite, because. You need to switch to type in any other alphabet, so you switch to English. German, French keyboards work perfectly well for English, it’s just that the symbols are not as easy to reach. Personally, I use and love EurKEY [0] as I rarely type in German anyway and rather optimize for coding. [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/ https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
- playingalong 4y ago
  Admittedly ^ on a US keyboard also involves two keys.
kej 4y ago
I spent a lot of time in C# and ASP.Net, and I was struck by how closely this resembled Razor syntax, but with ^ instead of @. Switching to @ would make it slightly more familiar to that cohort, and it might even be possible to build on some Razor-parsing code for editor plugins or whatever.
- paulsmith 4y ago
  I was inspired in part by Razor, although I'm not a C#/ASP.net developer. I just liked the way it looked and worked from examples I saw. I actually started with @ [1] but changed to ^ for 2 reasons: having to escape for email addresses (although in retrospect maybe it's not such a problem), and the admittedly cheeky ^ being the "up" in "Pushup" :^) [1] https://github.com/adhocteam/pushup/commit/04aa00bb5401bc93bf423e7658e5838c140808de https://github.com/adhocteam/pushup/commit/04aa00bb5401bc93b...
euroderf 4y ago
OTOH I have an actual Finnish keyboard and caret is simply Shift-umlaut (the key has a caret over a pair of dots).
- b4je7d7wb 4y ago
  You still need to press space after that.
  - euroderf 4y ago
    Ah. True dat.
nine_k 4y ago
Many templating engines allow to customize the delimiters. Quite useful sometimes.

paulsmith 4y ago

That's good feedback, thank you. My US-centric eye didn't consider that.

thiht 4y ago
Same on a French keyboard, trying to type `^if {` will result in `îf {`

derkoe 4y ago

Oh yes it's pretty hard to type on a German keyboard as well. In most editors you will need two keystrokes.

fulafel 4y ago
But don't you need 4 keystrokes for the common alternative, {} enclosed template expressions? Same as french, nordic, and probably lots of other european intl layouts. (Or even better against the {{ }} ones requiring 6)
- Zababa 4y ago
  "{" on a french keyboard is two key presses but at the same time (alt gr and 4), while ^ is two key presses one after the other, which makes it a bit slower. Most editors will also insert the corresponding } when you create a {. That makes in my experience {} faster than ^ and {{}} as fast as ^. {} is still a common complaint in my circle of programmer friends and everyone has seriously thought even once about switching to an english/american keyboard, but then there's the issue of switching back when writing stuff in french (é by itself almost ruins the idea).
  - calgoo 4y ago
    I use a Spanish keyboard but with US layout on top. I normally let autocorrect deal with special Spanish characters, but just switch layout if I’m writing something longer.
fileeditview 4y ago
For German devs it makes sense to use a no dead keys keyboard layout IMHO. You rarely need the accents anyways and it saves a lot of time when coding. I made the switch a long time ago and don't regret it. For the occasional word like "Expose", I just leave off the accent and that's that.

tuetuopay 4y ago

same in french. it's a dead key on our keyboard, so it's basically two keystrokes instead of one to type it. to be fair most special characters are behind AltGr on azerty, soooo...

kgeist 4y ago
Interestingly, there's no such problem on Cyrillic keyboards despite being a totally different alphabet. We only need to switch the current layout to English which is what we do all the time anyway.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Not despite, because. You need to switch to type in any other alphabet, so you switch to English. German, French keyboards work perfectly well for English, it’s just that the symbols are not as easy to reach. Personally, I use and love EurKEY [0] as I rarely type in German anyway and rather optimize for coding. [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/ https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
playingalong 4y ago
Admittedly ^ on a US keyboard also involves two keys.

kej 4y ago

I spent a lot of time in C# and ASP.Net, and I was struck by how closely this resembled Razor syntax, but with ^ instead of @. Switching to @ would make it slightly more familiar to that cohort, and it might even be possible to build on some Razor-parsing code for editor plugins or whatever.

paulsmith 4y ago
I was inspired in part by Razor, although I'm not a C#/ASP.net developer. I just liked the way it looked and worked from examples I saw. I actually started with @ [1] but changed to ^ for 2 reasons: having to escape for email addresses (although in retrospect maybe it's not such a problem), and the admittedly cheeky ^ being the "up" in "Pushup" :^) [1] https://github.com/adhocteam/pushup/commit/04aa00bb5401bc93bf423e7658e5838c140808de https://github.com/adhocteam/pushup/commit/04aa00bb5401bc93b...

euroderf 4y ago

OTOH I have an actual Finnish keyboard and caret is simply Shift-umlaut (the key has a caret over a pair of dots).

b4je7d7wb 4y ago
You still need to press space after that.
- euroderf 4y ago
  Ah. True dat.

nine_k 4y ago

Many templating engines allow to customize the delimiters. Quite useful sometimes.