From: Marnen Laibow-Koser (marnen@marnen.org)
Date: Sun Apr 29 2007 - 01:40:49 CST
On Apr 28, 2007, at 11:17 PM, William J Poser wrote:
>
> Doug Ewell wrote:
>> But ordinary people don't do it, just "Unicode geeks" like me and
>> others
>> who haunt this list.
>
> Is that really true? I'm a Unix person who rarely useds MS Windows or
> Mac OS, but as I recall on both there is a keyboard chooser from which
> you can select a keyboard for French or Greek or whatever, and both
> have maps of these keyboards that you can keep displayed. A quick
> google
> on "French keyboard" obtained instructions for switching to a French
> keyboard under MS Windows as the first hit, which makes me think this
> can't be all that obscure or rarely used.
[...]
I believe you're missing the point here. I do a lot of multilingual
typing on Mac OS X. It's easy enough to switch keyboard mappings,
but that's really not the problem. The problem is that once
switched, it's annoying to squint at Keyboard Viewer to see what
character is on which key. And Mac OS users are fortunate in that
Keyboard Viewer is easily accessible: I *still* haven't found a
reliable equivalent in Kubuntu or Windows XP.
Having variable displays on each key would solve that problem
neatly. If I want to know what a key does, I can just glance at the
keyboard. The letters on the Optimus keyboard appear to be bigger
and more legible than what Keyboard Viewer would provide, too, and
the Optimus labeling takes up no screen real estate. A great
solution, if you ask me.
Best,
-- Marnen Laibow-Koser marnen@marnen.org
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