From: Cristian Secarã (orice@secarica.ro)
Date: Tue Apr 27 2004 - 21:05:26 EDT
On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 00:10:08 +0200, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> Did you try the [Windows+U] keystroke to start the visual keyboard (also
> available in the login screen)? It is shipped with Windows XP...
It's not the same thing.
As far as I remember, on Mac, when I "press" a dead key character on
that program, the keyboard picture shows the new composed status of
each character, where applicable.
On Windows, without a specific tool (like MKLC), I have to test
physically each <dead_key + key> etc., just to find out what characters
are covered / if the accented character I am looking for is available.
> Additionally, nothing forbids a user to have two simultaneous keyboard layout
> for the same language: a simplified/standard version and an extended one. That's
> what I use...
Sure, but if the physical keyboard is labeled according to keyboard
layout 1, how is the user aware of what can be achieved by using
keyboard layout 2 ?
I am more than involved in this kind of thing, because I have just
defined two keyboard layouts in the national Romanian keyboard standard
(the origin of this thread is in part because of this).
Basically, the main layout has full [International + Romanian specific]
character set directly available, with limited extra regional language
support by use of dead keys - like German and Hungarian.
The second layout (a so called Programmers layout) *is* the US English
layout, with the Romanian specific characters available via AltGr.
However, both layouts have the same extra regional language support (by
use of dead keys), on exactly the same positions, with the same
additional accented character support. It is supposed that the dead
keys are shown on a physical keyboard (labels), so the user should not
be much confused when switching layouts.
It is true that for complex layouts this is not always possible -
that's why my question here ("how is the user aware of what can be
achieved by using keyboard layout 2 ?")
> Why that? Keyboard labelling can be simple if the layout is correctly made: you
> don't need to put both lowercase and uppercase letters, and using dead keys will
> greatly limit the number of glyphs to label your keycaps.
True, but my question still remains, if one dead key can be used in
conjunction with *many* base characters.
On Mac, the users have just to take a look at that program to see the
final result of each dead key action.
On Win, the users have to type some garbage (in WordPad, for example)
to see the final result of a dead key action.
I have never used a Mac computer for myself, but I requested much
information about it because of the keyboard standard related work and
the explanations I received were demonstrated this way.
Cristi
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