Actually, Brad, I'm with you on this one. I don't remember every coming across an international or French-Canadian keyboard layout that I actually liked (or that was even familiar to me after learning to type on a bilingual typewriter). There doesn't (didn't?) seem to be a standard layout even, and keys get shifted around from where I'm used to finding them. It makes touch-typing very difficult. (Add to that the fact that I have to work on a number of different systems with different keyboards, so I like to have a consistent layout, as much as possible. The fairly standard US English 104-key layout is what I'm most comfortable with.)
I prefer to have the few accented characters I need implemented through "dead keys" in standard locations, and I don't need key-top label to guide me, once I know where those locations are.
I'm probably not alone in this. I'm guessing that's why the MS Office dev team put in their own dead-key support in the suite, rather than relying on the international keyboard support in the underlying Windows system. (I'm a big fan of the Zombie Keys add-on for Firefox and TB, which embraces the same set of dead-key combinations as MS Office, and extends it further. I wish someone would implement that at the system level in Windows, Linux, and macOS, so we could enjoy a consistent and usable standard everywhere!)
Gilbert
On 2020-09-29 1:43 a.m., Bradford Vokey wrote:
/On 2020-09-2=7 Trevor Coredes wrote: /
...
/I would suggest, for a typer/programmer like you, that you //*need*//a normal US keyboard and must eliminate all the bilingual keyboards many brands force on you. If you've never typed with the enter key 1.5cm further to the right, try it before you dare buy a bilingual. For me keyboard is top priority. Also, for accounting you might prefer a big laptop with a numeric keypad./
Wow. I remember you telling me about this before, so I researched, researched, and researched and found the G17 has *almost* a full normal keyboard with a fairly good numeric keypad. And you are right. I use the numeric keypad ALL THE TIME. Only the pageup/down, home/end, and delete/insert keys were rearranged and combined on the G17, so I thought I could live with that. But once I got it, whoa - tons of the "keycaps" have been replaced with bilingual character ones - which are not at all in the product photos on the Best Buy website. Bah! What a stupid way to clutter up the look of a perfectly good keyboard.
Why are bilingual keyboards being forced upon us? If you want a bilingual keyboard, buy one. Go ahead and charge more for all Canadian laptops with the extra cost of stocking another SKU to keep the Franco-phones happy if you need to, but don't make all of us use keyboards we can't even understand.
Are we changing the ABC song to accommodate French characters next?
Some of my keys are just nuts! Many have 5 different symbols on them like: "{^[[^" all one key!?! I have no idea how to access or use any of them.
Alt+numpad and/or the windows character map app (which has been around since XP days) work great for entering special characters. I don't need a dedicated key that constantly shows me characters I will never ever use.
*** Sorry for the bilingual rant Gilbert! ***