Keyboard layout
Computers and other typing devices offer many different keyboard layouts, for people to be able to input data in different languages. The standard English keyboard layout is known as QWERTY. Various alternatives to the QWERTY layout have been suggested, many claiming advantages such as higher typing speeds. The most famous alternative is the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.
Keyboard structure
The keys labelled only with a capital letter can type both small and capital letters. To type the symbol at the top left of a key, the Shift key, often labelled "↑", is used. To type the symbol at the bottom right of a key, the Alt Gr key is used.
In the standard keyboard structure are included too the control, alternative and function keys. Together, these keys are commonly known as modifier keys.
Dead key
Many languages include additional characters, such as accented characters, that do not easily fit onto a standard English keyboard. Typing the accented characters is made easier by using a dead key feature. When you use the dead key, you press the designated key for the accent that you want; nothing will happen on the screen. Next, you type the character that you wish to have accented. If you type the correct accent and character, the desired accented character appears on the screen. This key combination requires that you type an acceptable sequence. For example, if you type the acute accent dead key followed by the letter "a", you will get the accented "a": "á". If you type the accented dead key followed by the "t" key, you will not get anything on the screen unless that particular font includes an accented "t" character. Alternatively, you get an accent as a separate character, followed by the other character.
To type a diacritical mark on its own, it should be followed by a space.
Keyboard layouts in different languages
Note: The following layouts assume that the physical location of all keys are the same as on a US keyboard. In practice, keyboards from other countries may have keys in slightly different locations. However, if you have a standard US keyboard and you configure your operating system to use a non-English language on it, the keys will be placed as follows.
Keyboard layouts for roman script
Although there are a large number of different keyboard layouts used with different languages written in roman script, most of these layouts are quite quite similar. According to where the keys for Q, A, Z, M, and Y are placed on the keyboard, they can be divided into three main families. These are usually named according to the first six letters.
Note that while the core of the keyboard, the alphabetic section, remains fairly constant, and the numbers from 1-9 are almost invariably on the top row, keyboards differ vastly in:
- the placement of punctuation characters,
- which punctuation characters are included,
- whether numbers are accessible directly or in a shift-state,
- the presence and placement of accent deadkeys and accented characters.
QWERTY
Is by far the most widespread of these, the only one not confined to a particular geographical area. Note that words like "return" have not been translated from the lanaguage of the keyboard in question.
Canadian French
Danish
Portuguese, Brazilian
Swedish/Finnish
To make the Euro sign on a Finnish computer i.e. €. Press AltGr+E.
UK
The United Kingdom layout similar to the United States, except that the " and @ keys are switched around; the key above right shift immediately to the left of the Enter key is # and ~ when shifted, rather than \ and |; shift-3 gives a £ sign; and AltGr-4 gives a € sign. Also, the key to the immediate left of numeral 1 (backtick, `) gives ¬ when shifted (not ~), and AltGr-` gives ¦ (broken pipe, not the same as |).
US
.
Note that the US keyboard layout offers no way of inputting any sort of diacritic or accent; this makes it unsuitable for all but a handful of languages unless the US International layout is used, which changes the `, ~, ^, " (for ¨), and ' (for ´) keys into dead keys, as well as having some extra AltGr combinations.
QWERTZ
The QWERTZ layout is fairly widely used in Germany and much of Central Europe. The main difference between it and QWERTY is that Y and Z have been swapped.
Germany and Austria (but not Switzerland)
Swiss German, Swiss French, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg
Remarks: Luxembourg doesn't have a keyboard layout of its own. Public education uses the Swiss-French keyboard, whereas the banking sector prefers the Belgian layout. Other places use either one, or even the US layout.
AZERTY
The AZERTY layout is used in France and in some surrounding countries. It differs from the QWERTY layout thus:
- A and Q are swapped
- Z and W are swapped
- M is moved from the right of N to the right of L [where colon/semicolon is on a US keyboard].
OTHERS
There are also keyboard layouts that do not resemble QWERTY/QWERTZ/AZERTY very closely, if at all. Best known among these is the Dvorak layout (named after its inventor, not the key order), which is claimed by its proponants to offer higher typing speed. Some languages use the roman script but with non-QWERTY-based keyboard layouts, such as Latvian and Turkish.
Keyboard layouts for non-roman alphabetic scripts
Some keyboard layouts for non-roman alphabetic scripts are actually based off the QWERTY layout, in that, as far as possible, glyphs are assigned to keys which bear similar-sounding or -appearing glyphs in QWERTY. This saves learning time for those familiar
This is not a general rule, though, and many non-roman keyboard layouts are invented from scratch.
Also, most non-roman keyboard layouts have the capacity to be used to input roman letters as well as the script of the language; users of non-roman scripts frequently encounter situations where they must enter roman script (for example, when typing in URLs or names). This may be done through a special key on the keyboard devoted to this task, or through some special combination of keys, or through software programs that don't really interact with the keyboard much.
Arabic
Armenian
Greek
Hebrew
Russian
Sanskrit (also for Hindi)
Thai
Note on East Asian languages
Chinese, Japanese and Korean require special input methods (often abbreviated to CJK IMEs) due to the thousands of possible characters in these languages. Various methods have been invented to pack all these possibilities into a normal QWERTY keyboard, so East Asian keyboards are essentially the same as those in other countries. However, their input methods are considerably more complex, without one-to-one mappings between keys and characters.
In general, one needs to first narrow down the range of possibilities (most often by entering the desired character's pronunciation), and then if there remains more than one possibility, select the desired ideogram using a graphical menu. The computer assists the user by using heuristics to guess which character is most likely desired. Although this may sound clumsy, East Asian input methods are today sufficiently sophisticated that for both beginners or experts, typing in these languages is only somewhat slower than typing English.
Normally in Japanese the standard US QWERTY keyboard layout is used, and the pronunciation of each character is entered using Hepburn or Kunrei-shiki romanization. (There exist kana-based layouts, but they are difficult for foreigners to learn and yield only a relatively small speed benefit. However, most Japanese people are using that, and you will see that in typing games as well) See also Japanese language and computers. In Korean, because of the simplicity of the Hangul characters and the relative rarity of ideograms, a special Hangul layout (shown below) is more commonly used. Once the pronunciation is known, the correct ideogram is selected from a menu using the arrow keys or the space bar.
Chinese has the most complex and varied input methods. One can enter characters by pronunciation (like Japanese and Korean) or by structure. The structural methods are the most difficult to learn, but they are extremely fast for experienced typists, as they do away with the need for selecting characters from a menu. For a detailed treatment, see Chinese input methods for computers.
There exist a variety of other, slower ways a character may be entered. If you don't remember the pronunciation of a character, you can also narrow down the selection by giving its component shapes, radicals, and stroke count. Also, many input systems include a "drawing pad" permitting "handwriting" of a character using a mouse. Finally, if you are on a computer without CJK software installed, it is always possible to enter a character directly through its encoding number (e.g. Unicode).
Chinese
Usually identical to a US keyboard. See the section on East Asian languages above, and also Chinese input methods for computers.
Hangul (for Korean)
Pressing Ha/En key once switches between Hangul as shown, and English. There shall have another key just next to the Ha/En key, for Hanja input. If you are using a standard 104-key keyboard, the right Alt key will become the Ha/En key; and the right Ctrl key will become the Hanja key. There are alternative keyboard style, but people rarely use them now. They are for IBM mainframes only.
Japanese
Usually identical to a US keyboard. See the section on East Asian languages above, and also Japanese language and computers.
See also
External links
- IBM's database of keyboard layouts (http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/keyboards/registry_index.jsp)
- German keyboard-dead keys (http://www.cyrillic.com/kbd/german.gif)
- Additional keyboards (http://www.hermessoft.com/newproject/lang.html)
- Esperanto keyboard layout (http://lingvo.org/klavaro/)
ja:キー配列