Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their @!#$%?

Does MS just make up these punctuation-challenged keyboards to piss people off?

Sorting it all Out — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:02:29 GMT

Regular reader Jan Kučera asks over in the Suggestion Box: Who does create the keyboard layouts? I'm

Governments can be one of the last places to get the best keyboard layouts

Sorting It All Out — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:37:25 GMT

David asked me via the Contact link: Is there a way that users can submit keyboard layouts for inclusion

Does MS pull new locales out of their [insert stronger language here]?

kurakuraninja — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 20:32:58 GMT

This may remind you a little of my post back in January (Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out...

re: Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their @!#$%?

Michael Kaplan — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 15:38:00 GMT

The disconnect between the hardware and the software is a different problem... I will talk about that one in a future column. :-)

re: Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their @!#$%?

Serge Wautier — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 15:02:00 GMT

Michael,

Thanks for answering my (collective) question.

I'm probably coming back a little late but there is a point I think is important to note:

> So any time you prefer another layout, you can pick your language with this alternate selection.

This is not a software issue at all. It's an hardware issue: You buy a computer and get a keyboard with it. You unpack the box and find it's french layout. Assuming you notice the difference, what do you do ? Return the keyboard and ask for french belgian ? Chances are they'll tell you 'Well ! Oh ! I don't know. I'll return it to the manufacturer. Come back in another 3 weeks.' No way. You keep your keyboard with unusual layout and... never get used to it (except if you are one of the four of us among 4.5 million french speaker belgians who can mentally use a french belgian layout).

Besides the one user who complains for too many layouts and the 6 ones that want additional layouts, I believe there are ONE THOUSAND who never paid attention to the existence of 2 distinct layouts. All these people can remember is that there are some keys they just never managed to remember where they are. These people (the vast majority) never came to the point that there are 2 distinct layouts. I wish people who create the layouts had these 1000 in mind rather than the other 6.

My 2 cents (I must be getting close to a nickel by now ;-).

re: Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their @!#$%?

Michael Kaplan — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 08:13:00 GMT

There is of coursd nothing MSKLC could do here for this situation. We are definitely veering off topic here....

re: Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their @!#$%?

Norman Diamond — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 01:42:00 GMT

1/1/2005 12:28 PM Unfortunately

> However in notebooks and those small new
> flat keyboards, often some special keys are
> just in plain akward positions. For example,
> page up and page down is between alt gr and
> ctrl.

In another thread I mentioned the absence of AltGr, but perhaps now the absence of Page Up and Page Down needs to be noted as well. Most notebooks that I've seen have Page Up available as a combination of the Fn key plus the up arrow key, and Page Down as Fn plus down arrow.

Anyway in situations like this surely the remapping is done by the keyboard controller (which in notebooks often controls some other devices in addition to the keyboard). I can't imagine a way to remap half of each key even in an OS or BIOS.

I played a nasty game to patch grub to work with a Japanese keyboard. The patch was ignored not because of abuse of the otherwise unused (in grub) scan code for the Insert key, but because grub's maintainer doesn't consider this kind of patch important to the basic functionality of grub 1, even though grub 1 hasn't reached version 1 yet, and even though the maintainer is Japanese. Sigh.

re: Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their @!#$%?

Fox Cutter — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 07:55:00 GMT

I'm surprised just how many keyboard layouts a given language can have. English (United States) has five layouts. This includes the basic QWERTY, an international layout, and three Dvorak layouts (I use the basic Dvorak myself). It's nice that Windows provides so many choices out of the box.

Of course the different layouts can cause some interesting breaks. Like one has CTRL-@, and another has CTRL-SHIFT-2. It's interesting to see which programs work correctly and which ones don't when mapping keys.

It's interesting just how many different ways you can input English in a standard windows installation, and it's something most places don't test for. Of course all my code will now be tested on all the standard keyboard layouts.

--Fox Cutter

re: Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their butts?

Michael Kaplan — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 05:06:00 GMT

I have had several off-blog requests for more detail on some of the "worse" ways that people asked the "pulling keyboards out of your butt?" question.

The two worst of them:

"Is there a minimum amount of crack that has to be smoked before you are allowed to author a keyboard for Microsoft?"

and

"Whoever made these layouts who thinks that this layout is used by anyone should strongly consider a future in fiction writing.

Most of the other bad ones just involved more curse words. :-)

re: Does MS pull new keyboard layouts out of their butts?

Michael Kaplan — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 20:44:00 GMT

Well, MSKLC can handle all of the basic keys that are used for updating language or layout of keyboards.

Trying to change the behavior of system keys is possible through extreme efforts (and fun if you are looking to pull a prank on someone!), but not really part of the core intentions behind releasing a tool like the layout creator....