Talk:QWERTY

An illustration of the first keyboard

Here is an illustration of keybord, on page 195 http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6212491s/f211.image They say that before, some keyboards were circular.

Titre : La Télégraphie à l'exposition universelle de 1867 
Éditeur : imp. Impériale (Paris)
Date d'édition : 1869
Type : monographie imprimée
Langue : Français
Format : Gr. in-8° (4°)
Format : application/pdf
Droits : domaine public
Identifiant : ark:/12148/bpt6k6212491s
Source : Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Littérature et art, V-17654
Relation : http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb336228498
Provenance : bnf.fr
Date de mise en ligne : 16/07/2012

Qwerty and Azerty

Artile gives:

  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -
    A E I . ? Y U O ,
B C D F G H J K L M
Z X W V T S R Q P N

(...)

  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - ,
Q W E . T Y I U O P
Z S D F G H J K L M
A X & C V B N ? ; R

It is often say that Azerty comes from Qwerty. But it looks closer from the previous one, no?

  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - ,
A Z E R T Y I U O P
Q S D F G H J K L M
W X C V B N

Effect of caps lock as opposed to shift in different layouts

It should be clarified somewhere what's the effect of caps lock in combination with keys where shift+key is not the capitalized version of the letter. For example, in the Italian layout (where shift+è = é) it is stated that it is not possible to write an uppercase È in MS Windows, but that this is possible in Linux by pressing è with caps lock on. Is this not the case for Windows as well? Or does Caps Lock + è simply produce the same result as Shift + è (i.e., é)? If so, that should be clarified (since I would expect Caps Lock to actually capitalize letters, not just swap the shift state, and if that is not the case it should be clarified). —Cousteau (talk) 13:09, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I for one would expect Caps Lock to behave exactly the same as Shift+. People with certain manual impairments need it to do this. If Linux really behaves as you say, I find that surprising indeed. Capitalisation is the main – but not the only – function of the shift key, do you really want your keys to come with "reflected objects are closer than they may seem"-type disclaimers? A given key can be modified using shift+, alt+,AltGr+, alt+shift+, AltGr+shift+ Should all be engraved? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:48, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

EurKEY WP: advocacy?

Hello, I've added the EurKEY entry to QWERTY. The goal of this discussion is to clarify if this is a case of WP: advocacy. The concerns are, that it is not the standard of any country or region, if I understood it correctly. The concerns are based on the fact (if I understand it correctly) that EurKEY is not a standard of any country or region. As a counterargument I see that EurKEY is available for both Mac OS X and Windows and comes preinstalled with Linux. (Same as for Colemak keyboard layout which has its own entry in keyboard layout). Maybe the naming of the EurKEY entry in QWERTY has to be criticized, because the entry is "European (EurKEY)" and can be misleading. The idea behind that was to name it according to the other entries of QWERTY#International_variants which are always named according to a country or language, but to prevent misunderstanding just name it "EurKEY" could be better. Besides, all those keyboard layouts have no name or they are named like the language or country itself (so if it would be just EurKEY, it would also be named accordingly to the rest of the article.--Wikirofl (talk) 22:35, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 September 2020

Should the heading "International variants" not be changed. Most keyboards (except EurKEY, Latin America, United Kingdom and US-International) are in only national variants. It can just be argued, that the Canadian multilingual and the Finnish multilingual are international layouts as well, but the others are strictly speaking only national variants.

Suggestion: It could be made the difference between "national variants" and "international variants" or between "monolingual and multilingual" or this point could be called "country and region-specific variants". --Wikirofl (talk) 09:05, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree completely. This is an Americanism (national is here, everywhere else is international) and needs to be corrected. I will change as it is just wrong. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:43, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

National, International, multilingual

this was originally a run-on from the preceding discussion but given its own title as it has general interest

Thank you for the change, now it would make sense to add a section called "International variants" with the following Keyboard layouts, EurKEY, Latin America, United Kingdom and US-International, wouldn't it? And it is at least debatable if the Canadian multilingual and the Finnish multilingual are international layouts as well. --Wikirofl (talk) 12:29, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

This is where it gets a bit more difficult and risks WP:OR/WP:SYNTH violation. Starting from the easy ones

• the UK/Ireland physical keyboard engravings is a trivial case of international with just two participants. AFIK, that layout is not sold outside the British Isles.
  • the UK-extended keyboard mapping is designed to work with the UK/Ireland physical keyboard and its "target market" is foreign language students and speakers based in .UK and .IE.
• the US keyboard is engraved for US use; it has no diacritics nor any 'natural' way (like an AltGr key) to create them. It is certainly used internationally (indeed in many territories like .NL and .PL, it has a far larger market share than the national variant), but does that make it an "international keyboard". I don't see how we could say so without high quality citations.
  • the US-international keyboard mapping is designed to work with the US physical keyboard and its "target market" is foreign language students and speakers – and then only with a number of dead keys and awkward Ctrl+Alt+ piano chords. So international adoption is accidental rather than intentional
• Latin America: the article is a bit vague here but AFAICS, it just asserts that the Spanish national keyboard is sold as "Latin American" but in reality it is not very good at Portuguese and consequently is not used in Latin America's largest country (Brazil). Even so, I agree that it is de facto international since it covers everything else. I would prefer to see a citation though, as to say so is rather SYNTH.
• EurKey is certainly proposed as an international standard for all European countries but that's just it: it is proposed but does not have significant adoption right now. Its inclusion in the article at all borders on WP:advocacy, to make it the only example of a true international keyboard is definitely a step too far IMO.

But others may disagree? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:04, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

OK, I see the trouble the article could be running in. How would it be to name the section "Specific language variants" or just "Language variants". Thus, the subsections are already named accordingly to the language. Except the subsections UK and US have to changed to English, following chronologically after the subsection Dutch.

All the ones which don't fit in this section, could be taken into a new section called "multilingual variants", such as the

• Canadian Multilingual Standard
• EurKEY
• Finnish multilingual
• United Kingdom (Extended) Layout
• US-International
• US-International in the Netherlands

This could also lead to a more helpful article. Thus, if somebody speaks and writes two or more languages, he or she can use multilingual section to search the layout which suits best his needs. --Wikirofl (talk) 13:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

That might fly, can we have some other editors' opinions, please? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:54, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Ok, it looks like there is no objection to the change, if it stays like that way I will adapt the article next weekend. --Wikirofl (talk) 17:30, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Missing letter in Lithuanian QWERTY keyboard description

In the Lithuanian keyboard section the sentence: Ą, Č, Ę, Ė, Į, Š, Ų, Ū instead of their counterparts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

is missing a Lithuanian letter, and should be: Ą, Č, Ę, Ė, Į, Š, Ų, Ū, Ž instead of their counterparts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, =

as can be seen in the keyboard layout here: http://kbdlayout.info/KBDLT1/ Samgiz (talk) 01:20, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

 Done, thank you for bringing this to attention. --Wikirofl (talk) 17:52, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Is there a (negative) rationale for NM being out of order (alphabetically)?

In all the variants no one switch NM after they ended up paired? Are there any conceivable mechanical or ergonomic reasons or is it just a fluke? --72.173.4.14 (talk) 15:45, 21 January 2021 (UTC)