On 19-Jun-07 12:23:36, Ruth Bygrave wrote:
One of the things that drives me insane about OS X is that I actually had to download a tiny home-made hack to get the keyboard layout I was used to (" on shift-2, @ next to ;, # next to return).
Apple's idea of a British keyboard is: £ on shift 3, but all the others of those keys in what I think of as 'American' places.
Adrian and I both instantly thought this was to do with Apple having such an identity as a Californian company it's too arrogant to get its localisations right.
I whinged about this at the local Mac user group, and they all said it was the normal British keyboard layout.
Is this because: a) the Mac users are not touch-typists. b) the Mac users grew up to use computers on the Mac platform, so they assume the Apple way is the normal way (my 'Apple imperialism' argument) or c) Adrian and I both spent 20 years on MS platforms before I switched to Mac, and the Mac users are right (their 'MS imperialism' argument).
If any of you can remember the layout for typewriters before the IBM PC came along, it might settle the question, but also some of you are touch-typists and you're not using a MS platform, so that's another way of thinking about it.
Who's right?
That's a very interesting question! I've dug out an old Epson QX10 (CP/M machine) keyboard from somewhere around 1980. This at least does duty as a "UK" keyboard since it has a "£" on it!
The layout is:
ESC ! " £ $ % & ' ( ) _ = ~ | BS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - ^ \
TAB Q W E R T Y U I O P ` { } LF @ [ ]
CTR A S D F G H J K L + * RETURN ; :
SHIFT Z X C V B N M < > ? SHIFT , . /
so all the rows differ in various respects from the now standard UK keyboard. In particular there is no "#" marked on any key. The number of keys that are marked with printable characters is 47, as opposed to the now current 49.
I also have an old Sharp MZ80-B, which is different again.
Somewhere I have a real mechanical typewriter, but can't remember where! However, this would probably not agree with the UK keyboard for computers, since (depending on the model) you possibly did not have some or all of "#", "^", "~", "", "{", "}", "<", ">".
At
http://mrtypewriter.tripod.com/olympiasm9french.htm
I have found pictures of an old-style Olympia typewriter with what looks like an English keyboard. It's a bit beyond my eyesight to see all the characters on the keys (the clear picture of the English keyboard is only partial), but I reckon there are only 44 (maybe 45) keys with printable characters on them, so it's different again! In any case, one can see that there are keys for the fractions "1/4", "1/2", which are not part of the "UK keyboard".
So it looks as though it was "anarchy" until the PC standardised things. Which of course is to Apple as a red rag to a bull ...
For what it's worth: I have a friend who is assertively proud of his Apple (with some justification ... ). When I was looking at it the other day I indeed wondered where the "#" was on the keyboard, and asked.
He eventually found out how to do it -- after an extensive tour of the internals!
Best wishes, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-Jun-07 Time: 14:19:39 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------