Another minor US/UK difference is that <shift 2> is double quotes in England, not @.
I remember my old TRS-80 had double-quotes on shift-2 as well. I half-remember that it had something to do with the bit-patterns, so the shift key could work by applying a fairly trivial transformation to the unshifted characters. "2" is 0032 and """ is 0022, so I may not be completely mistaken... yeah, I think it looks right: the rest of the shifted-number symbols match the number symbols minus 0010.
I never understood why a certain computer company saw fit to squeeze three extra keys onto an already crowded keyboard.
Not sure I do either, but I have to admit it comes in handy to have a couple of extra shift keys. I map them to things like compose-character, Meta, stuff like that. But then, I don't use that company's software much.
As another aside (and a possibly useful tip), I once had a keyboard with black keys, on which the letters were printed in white. Being a touch-typist, I painted all the key legends out with black paint, leaving only legendless keys.
Didn't Big Julie in Guys and Dolls try the same thing with dice? He remembered where the spots formerly were...
~mark
