Re: Optimus keyboard

From: William J Poser (wjposer@ldc.upenn.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 28 2007 - 21:17:22 CST

  • Next message: Jonathan Rosenne: "RE: Optimus keyboard"

    Doug Ewell wrote:
    >But ordinary people don't do it, just "Unicode geeks" like me and others
    >who haunt this list.

    Is that really true? I'm a Unix person who rarely useds MS Windows or
    Mac OS, but as I recall on both there is a keyboard chooser from which
    you can select a keyboard for French or Greek or whatever, and both
    have maps of these keyboards that you can keep displayed. A quick google
    on "French keyboard" obtained instructions for switching to a French
    keyboard under MS Windows as the first hit, which makes me think this
    can't be all that obscure or rarely used.

    On X Windows I've had my keyboard remapped for two decades.
    Back in those days there was no Unicode, but I would remap if for
    no other reason than to get the Control key back where it was meant
    to be and to get rid of the infernal CAPS LOCK key (which I make
    into an additional Control key).

    >Are those solutions as easy or convenient?

    The Optimus approach is surely the easiest and most convenient - I
    don't think one can challenge that - but I don't see that some of the
    alternatives are all that inferior. My point is not that the Optimus
    keyboard is useless - I'd be glad to have one - but that I am skeptical
    as to whether the lack of such a keyboard is the sticking point for
    wider use of minority languages. It seems to me that displaying a keyboard
    map on your monitor or putting a set of covers over your existing
    keys is not that big a problem.

    Bill



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