Polyglot keyboards

Otto Stolz otto.stolz at uni-konstanz.de
Tue May 10 11:42:27 CDT 2016


Hello,

I had written:
> <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_(Tastaturbelegung)>.

On 2016-05-10 16:55 GMT+02:00 Doug Ewell has written:
> QWERTY users are about as willing to switch to QWERTZ

I have never meant that QWERTY – or AZERTY – users should
switch to QWERTZ. I just wanted point to one instance of
an officially standardized polyglot keyboard layout.

E. g, there is already the Canadian multilingual keyboard, cf.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Canadian_Multilingual_Standard_comment-en.svg>,
based on the traditional QWERTY layout.  I do hope that other
standard bodies will follow suit and define their own QWERTY,
or AZERTY, or whatever versions of polyglot keyboard layouts,
in accordance with ISO/IEC 9995.

Am 2016-05-10 um 17:30 Uhr schrieb Philippe Verdy:
> All that can be made reasonable is to extend existing layouts with minimal
> changes:
…
> This leaves little freedom for changes except for keys currently assigned
> to less essential characters such as the degree sign, the micro sign, the
> pound sign (in countries not usingf this symbol daily), the "universal"
> currency sign, the paragraph mark... Those can be used to fit better
> candidates for extensions.

Another option (which I exploited for my personal keyboard layouts) is
the re-definition of a special-character key to work as a dead key.
E. g., on my personal keyboard, the »"« key gives access to all sorts
of quote characters (for French, German, English, …, even ASCII),
depending on the following key; the »~« key works as tilde accent
on the letter typed subsequently; and so on. This scheme allows the
conventional QWERTZ hardware to be used for multilingual typing –
with minimal re-learning and training. And still the »µ« key  produces
the »µ« character :-)

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz


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