[OT] Keyboards (was: American English translation of character names)

[Arcane Jill]

Oh wow. Well, the range of different keyboard layouts I see around me is something else! (Especially on laptops).

Now here's something weird. Just about every standard, fully-size, desktop, (British) QWERTY keyboard I have ever seen, has the legend for U+00A6 BROKEN BAR as the shifted symbol printed on the key to the immediate left of Z (with the unshifted symbol being backslash), and the legend for U+007C VERTICAL LINE as the third symbol printed on the key to the immediate left of 1 (with the unshifted and shifted symbols being backquote (U+0060, officially GRAVE ACCENT) and the aforementioned "not sign" (U+00AC) respectively). Thus, you would expect <shift + backslash> to yeild BROKEN BAR, and you would expect <alt-gr + backquote> to yield VERTICAL LINE, because that's what printed on the keys.

However, on every keyboard I have tried, these assignments are actually the other way round! (Anyone else from this part of the world care to confirm this? Or perhaps explain why?).

Jill


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cowan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 2:31 PM
> To: Arcane Jill
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: American English translation of character names
>
>
> On the standard U.S. keyboard, that gesture generates ~.
> If I turn on the U.S.-International keyboard, then RightAlt-\
> gives me the
> NOT SIGN, where \ is the rightmost key in the QWERTYUIOP row.