keyboard error ?

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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby Phil Last on Fri Sep 20, 2019 2:36 pm

There you are Kai.

You've finally been promoted to English Gentleman!
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby hbarkhof on Fri Sep 20, 2019 4:06 pm

I did not mention Kai. :-)
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby kai on Sat Sep 21, 2019 10:23 am

> Please, correct me if I missed the point. )

You did, but you were in good company ;)

My rant was not about Unicode, it's not about whether Russian APLers need one or two or three keyboard layouts. It's not about whether one is prepared to learn a new language.

It was about the fact that Microsoft in their wisdom installs a default keyboard shortcut so that every user can switch keyboard layouts by pressing Ctrl+Shift. Because they install always an American keyboard layout on any PC this causes confusion when a user who is not aware of this presses Ctrl+Shift by accident.

It confuses countless people who have just one non-american keyboard with a particular national layout installed, like Russian, Fins, Danes and, drum-roll, United Kingdom!

Yes, I agree that it is great to be able to switch keyboard layouts with a keyboard shortcut but again that is not the topic.

It's about changing the keyboard layout from French, German, UK, Dansk and Czech and probably many other countries to an Amercian layout which just does not fit to the physical keyboard.

And not only does Microsoft impose a keyboard shortcut that it for most users not applicable (Americans) or confusing (the rest of the world): the number of people outside IT using more than one layout is probabaly pretty low.

This link demonstrates how people struggle to disable the default keyboard shortcut for switching layouts even if they managed to figure out what happened:

https://superuser.com/questions/109066/ ... language-i

Cherry on the cake:Microsoft comes up with new ideas where to hide the option to switch it off with new versions of Windows. Great idea!

If Microsoft would not install an Amercian keyboard layout on every machine no matter what than Ctrl+Shift would have no effect because there is only the national one anyway. The keyboard shortcut would only become functional after you installed an additional "language" yourself, so it would make some sense. But even then the vast majority of people would not know about it.

It would make more sense to ask the user whether she wants to activate the keyboard shortcut in the process of installing an additional "language". At this point they could be told that it is Ctrl+Shift by default, and they could be prompted for other options.

hbarkhof: Okay, you have not promoted me to an English gentleman then; pity. But who were you talking about then? No English gentleman took part in the discussion at all until Phil joined the party ;)
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby hbarkhof on Sun Sep 22, 2019 11:59 am

Hi Kai. I am sure you are a gentleman , don't know if you from the UK.
Just saw your profile you'r British , so you are now official an English gentleman !

Thanks for the extended explanation. Now it's clear for me.
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby kai on Sun Sep 22, 2019 2:32 pm

Hi Kai. I am sure you are a gentleman , don't know if you from the UK.
Just saw your profile you'r British , so you are now official an English gentleman !


I hold dual citizenship: German and British. I live in Britain for 15 years now, but my first language is German.

Thanks for the extended explanation. Now it's clear for me.

I am glad we've got this sorted ;)
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby hbarkhof on Mon Sep 23, 2019 8:44 am

Ah , auch noch ein Herr aus Deutschland !! Wilkommen ! :)

Btw. My wife is from Germany too !
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