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Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | I do

Recep Kurt — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 08:52:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Recep Kurt
Post title: I do

My Turkish keyboard covers the English language, but occasionally I need to write in Russian - for this I use a nifty little program called Parawin XP (works on Windows 7 and 8 too), which you use to map your keyboard to almost any language. You hit a combination of keys to cycle between the languages you have mapped - very handy.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | Always, need to

Balasubramaniam L. — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 11:13:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Balasubramaniam L.
Post title: Always, need to

I work in English and Hindi, which have entired different scripts, though both languages belong to the Indo-Aryan group of languages.

This means I have to switch keyboard layouts when I switch between these languages. It has almost become a reflex action (Alt+Shift), almost like switching on caps lock for the first letter of each sentence in English.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | My approach

James McVay — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 21:58:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: James McVay
Post title: My approach

I use the standard Windows keyboards for English and Russian. I find that the Russian keyboard works just fine for Bulgarian. But I dictate English whenever I can using Dragon 14. Dragon lets me dictate most if not all the letters with diacritics and other odd letters and symbols, so I don't need to look up the keyboard shortcuts or ASCII codes for them.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | I'm not at all IT savvy

Sheila Wilson — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 20:59:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Sheila Wilson
Post title: I'm not at all IT savvy

So I just go with what I'm given. I bought my desktop in France so it has an AZERTY keyboard. I don't find it any problem to type in English, and Spanish just calls for a few ALT combinations. Actually, apart from the ñ I don't often know what's required in Spanish so I generally let the corrector help me out. My phone (being used at the moment) is set to a QWERTY layout but that's as good as any because I can't type accurately in such a small space anyway.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | yes, I use it. very easy

Liviu-Lee Roth — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:48:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Liviu-Lee Roth
Post title: yes, I use it. very easy

Since Romanian has a few special characters, I click on SHIFT+ALT once and get the extra characters ă, î, â ș, ț. If I click twice, I get the German layout and if I click three times, I get the French alphabet.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | No.

Juan Jacob — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 15:03:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Juan Jacob
Post title: No.

Spanish and French, no problem. Same keyboard. ñ ç ü ¿ ê ¡

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | Wired

Meta Arkadia — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 13:07:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Meta Arkadia
Post title: Wired

[quote]Thomas T. Frost wrote:
What I found was that they used to be available but aren't today.[/quote]

You can still buy a "wired keyboard" (with numeric pad), and they are available as an option when you buy an iMac.

Cheers,

Hans

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | They used to be available

Thomas T. Frost — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 12:15:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Thomas T. Frost
Post title: They used to be available

[quote]Tom in London wrote:

My Italian Apple keyboard (now about 10 years old but still going strong) has a numeric keypad but I've never used it and I don't know what it's for! [/quote]

What I found was that they used to be available but aren't today.

It's a matter of taste, but I find it's faster and more convenient to type numbers with a numeric keypad, as it's much like using a calculator.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | Numeric keypad

Tom in London — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 11:44:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Tom in London
Post title: Numeric keypad

[quote]Thomas T. Frost wrote:

....it appears to be impossible to get a keyboard with numeric keypad to the right, and that would be a showstopper for me. [/quote]

My Italian Apple keyboard (now about 10 years old but still going strong) has a numeric keypad but I've never used it and I don't know what it's for!

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | Depends

esperantisto — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 11:02:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: esperantisto
Post title: Depends

This depends on the operating system/device. I have to switch layouts anyway because of routinely using at least two kinds of scripts (Latin and Cyrillic), but patterns differ.
[u]Linux[/u]
Linux is the absolute winner in terms of typing convenience. On the one hand, you can have an infinite number layouts enabled but limit switching to two most frequently used (this behavior is set up via the windows manager settings [KDE and Gnome are equally convenient to me, don’t know about others] or via installing the old good kkbswitch). On the other hand, there are the international layout plus the compose key sequences that cover virtually all Latin-based characters and many common punctuation and technical signs and whatever you may need. Thus, I can type in all those ã, ŏ, ŭ, ñ, —, °, ç, ż, ą, ŵ, ŝ, ß, ả, č, ņ, ģ, ×, «», “”, ə, ḧ etc. without switching, which I am doing now. So, I use separate layouts only for a couple of mostly used languages, and for the rest I use the int’l layout.
[u]Android[/u]
Touchscreens of mobile devices are typist’s nightmare, IMHO. I prefer using Multiling or Multiling-O keyboards and I have to switch to a particular language because this enables language-specific word suggestions for faster typing.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | I don't need to

Ricki Farn — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 10:51:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Ricki Farn
Post title: I don't need to

... as long as I stick to English and German. ALT codes it is.

For a few weeks, I've been texting in French with my new neighbour (him on the mobile and me on the PC - the wonders of technology). I haven't bothered to find code for the c-cédille, and all my texts look like crap. But I'm still too lazy to look it up.

Another interesting question is if you can switch physical keyboards with the same layout. I can't. I have a shelf full of old Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite wavy monstrosities, just so I can plug in another one in any emergency. Make me type on someone else's keyboard, and I'll look like a schoolchild on an old mechanical typewriter. Muscular memory is strong.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | No, I don't need to switch

Emma Goldsmith — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 10:39:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Emma Goldsmith
Post title: No, I don't need to switch

In the case of English plus another European language, it's much easier to use the European layout and not switch at all, as Thomas and Tom mention.

The only symbol I miss out on is the £ sign, so I've remapped it to Shift+3 using AutoHotKey.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | No, I don't switch

Thomas T. Frost — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 10:23:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Thomas T. Frost
Post title: No, I don't switch

As I often work with Danish, and as Danish has three letters more than English (æøå), I have a Danish keyboard. These extra letters are frequently used in Danish, so it would not be practical to type several Alt codes in every phrase. The main difference from an English keyboard is the symbols are placed differently.

As I also need to write French often, I've found a Danish keyboard more suitable for French than a French one. The French keyboard layout lacks all the uppercase accented characters and ÇœŒ, and it doesn't have the dead accent keys, which would allow me to type the accented uppercase characters in two strokes. The Danish keyboard layout has them (`´¨^~).

For ß in German and œŒçÇ in French, as well as for sometimes useful symbols such as µ®©™‰²³·•–—…°, I use Alt combinations, but these characters don't appear so often that it's a problem.

German keyboards are designed to handle all European languages, so if I wasn't so used to the placement of the Danish letters, I would switch to a German one.

It's important for my typing speed to use one single keyboard layout only. As for Apple laptops, I realised, when having a look at their current models, that it appears to be impossible to get a keyboard with numeric keypad to the right, and that would be a showstopper for me. The modern IT trend seems to be to give the user fewer and fewer choices.

When I worked in France, I ran into their AZERTY keyboard, and the result was that with QWERTY at home and AZERTY at work, I made typing mistakes all the time, both at work and at home. I ended up buying a Danish keyboard more and taking it to work to restore my typing speed.

Recently the French have started discussing whether to update their keyboard layout so it can actually be used for writing correct French, but with the speed things happen in France, I wouldn't expect to see a result in this century, and probably only after countless protests and strikes and civil unrest in protest over making existing keyboards worthless, demanding the government pay to replace them, not to mention gangs of intellectuals writing floods of heartfelt articles about how changing anything would interfere with the French cultural heritage and threaten the survival of French as a dominant language across the planet.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | Using only two layouts for many languages

Anton Konashenok — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 09:41:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Anton Konashenok
Post title: Using only two layouts for many languages

I work under MS Windows and use the standard Russian layout for Russian, and for all my other working languages (which all use the Latin alphabet) I developed a custom universal layout containing the diacritics for all European languages: á à â ǎ å ą ă ā ä ã ø ß ð þ ż etc. To type, for example, the letter é on this keyboard, I press [AltGr]+['], then [e], for ø - [AltGr]+[/], then [o], for ç - [AltGr]+[,], then [c], and so on. It also contains special characters like °, ×, µ, ½, ¾, €, ¥, ₪ and others. If anyone wants a copy, drop me a line. Alternatively, one can easily make such a custom layout using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator tool - it's really easy to use.

[Edited at 2016-04-10 09:41 GMT]

[Edited at 2016-04-10 09:47 GMT]

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | I don't need to

Tom in London — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 09:10:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Tom in London
Post title: I don't need to

[quote]Heinrich Pesch wrote:

Do you always keep the same keyboard layout regardless of your target language? Probably this depends on the languages involved, as you cannot write let's say Russian on an English keyboard layout. If you have to switch, does it often result in typing errors or not?
I'm so used to FIN/SWE keyboards that I also type German on it, but the differences are minor, Y and Z interchanged. For the ß I have a shortcut in Word, otherwise I use Alt+255, and ü I do with two strokes. But I wonder how an Spanish-Polish-Spanish translator would manage all the different special characters, and typing Russian would require complete re-training of my hands. [/quote]

I work in Italian and English and fortunately, my Apple Italian keyboard works perfectly for both languages. The Mac operating system maps all the keys correctly.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | ES/PL/ES translator here

Francisco Vare — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 08:53:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Francisco Vare
Post title: ES/PL/ES translator here

I use Spanish, Polish and English on an every day basis in my translations. While I have no problem when writing in English (I can use the PL or the ES layouts and the differences are practically zero), I so need to change keyboard layouts when translating ES or PL because of the special symbols and the Spanish accent marks. It had become so automatic for me that I don't feel it bothers me anymore, but just in case I have a list of ALT codes always near me in printed form.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | Yes, all the time,

EvaVer (X) — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 08:48:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: EvaVer (X)
Post title: Yes, all the time,

as both Czech and French (my 2 main target languages) have special characters. I use my Czech keyboard layout for English. For French, I use Canadian French layout, as the basic layout is the same as in Czech - except for Y and Z, which is a mistake I sometimes make. I have a Czech keyboard and I just remember where my French special characters are - but they are in slightly different places on my notebook, which drives me crazy.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout? | I used to

Angela Malik — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 06:20:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Angela Malik
Post title: I used to

Yes, for Russian I used to. I had sticker labels on my keys to mark the Russian keys and a shortcut set in Windows to switch between keyboards quickly. But now I don't have the labels on my keyboard because there are plenty of virtual Russian keyboards, so I just connect to one of those (without having to switch in Windows) and type as normal.

For German I just use ALT codes for the non-English letters.

Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?

Heinrich Pesch — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 06:09:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: Do You Often Switch Keyboard Layout?
Poster: Heinrich Pesch

Do you always keep the same keyboard layout regardless of your target language? Probably this depends on the languages involved, as you cannot write let's say Russian on an English keyboard layout. If you have to switch, does it often result in typing errors or not?
I'm so used to FIN/SWE keyboards that I also type German on it, but the differences are minor, Y and Z interchanged. For the ß I have a shortcut in Word, otherwise I use Alt+255, and ü I do with two strokes. But I wonder how an Spanish-Polish-Spanish translator would manage all the different special characters, and typing Russian would require complete re-training of my hands.