News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on New Surface Pro. Parent comment

Re:New Surface Pro by adambyrtek on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @05:14PM (#14405413)
There are two separate issues that need to be distinguished:

1. Physical keyboard layout (how keys are placed). There are two primary standards: ANSI (mostly US) and ISO (most of Europe). The most notable difference is the shape of the Enter key (L-shaped on an ISO keyboard and straight on an ANSI one). ISO keyboards also have one extra key and a shorter left Shift to make space for it.

2. Logical keyboard layout (how key presses are interpreted). This is what is printed on key caps, but it doesn't have any relation to the actual scan codes being sent. Many languages use their own accented characters (e.g. ąęćłóńżź for Polish) and historical preferences (e.g. QWERTY/QWERTZ/AZERTY), but this is implemented in software.

Logical layout can be easily configured in the operating system, and for touch typists it doesn't really matter what is printed on the keys, but differences in physical layout can take some time to get used to.

PS. I'm Polish, I live in the UK, and I type on a US mechanical keyboard with ANSI layout :)

https://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New Surface Pro by abritinthebay on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @08:13PM (#14406588)
The ISO layout is pretty superior in many small ways for non-english speakers but that's a really nice description of it in that link there.

As a UK->US transplant I really miss the Enter key shape. :(

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New Surface Pro by hifigi on Wednesday May 24, 2017 @12:34AM (#14407639)
I miss this even as an American. The old 8088 computers I grew up with had reverse-L enter keys.
[ Parent | on HN ]