4 ms·
Because typewriters, and therefore keyboard layouts, predate computers. There's no technical reason to not just have composable meta-keys, excepting maybe the p
by jdmichal 12y ago
Because typewriters, and therefore keyboard layouts, predate computers. There's no technical reason to not just have composable meta-keys, excepting maybe the pure number of existent diacritics [0].
In fact, on the German keyboard, the circumflex (ˆ), acute accent (´), and grave accent (`) keys all compose with the next entered character. (That is, á is entered by pressing ´, then pressing a.)
Windows also offers an "international" keyboard mode which allows composition in a way similar to the German keyboard. [1]
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic
[1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560
- zokier 12y ago> Because typewriters, and therefore keyboard layouts, predate computers Even early US computers (and typewriters before them) had relatively varied keyboard layouts, but somehow[1] they still managed to converge into the standard 104 key layout that we have today in the early 90s (and that is a quarter of century ago). What we have missed is the extension of that convergence into international community. > There's no technical reason to not just have composable meta-keys, excepting maybe the pure number of existent diacritics [0]. > In fact, on the German keyboard, the circumflex (ˆ), acute accent (´), and grave accent (`) keys all compose with the next entered character. (That is, á is entered by pressing ´, then pressing a.) Dead keys are fairly good solution. Indeed I counted 19 dead-key diacritics on my countrys official standard keyboard (which almost nobody uses). [1] IBM PC/Wintel monopoly probably helped