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What about £ sign? That is not a documented change at all on this page. It is clearly shown in the pitures but no one seems to mention that the US keyboard has no £ while the UK does?
It is quite important over this side of the pond to be able to write in our own currency...
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.117.8 ( talk) 17:27, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
This page seems to be very poorly written - it is rather difficult to follow what is being said. Besides this, it barely touches on the actual differences between the two types of keyboards. By far the worst is the swapping of " and @, particularly when a computer in Britain defaults to US keyboard, as one may be inputting scripts which require the " character, but through practice input @ instead!
Think I've taken care of all that, if briefly.
Why does the opening text state that accented vowels are needed in the UK? We type in the same language as you Americans.-- 193.195.185.254 02:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
The following comment from the page seems rather odd:
For its UK layout, Microsoft accordingly adds an AltGr key, maps the £ to where the US layout has a #, and adds a 102nd key to accommodate the #. A few other variations (the reversals of @ and ", and the movement of ~ to the # key to accommodate a ¬ on the backquote key) have also crept in between the two.
This seems to suggest Microsoft designed the respective PC keyboard layouts in the UK and USA, whilst I believe this was actually decided by IBM (based on typewriter layouts, I'd imagine), back in the 1980s; apart from the Windows and application keys, which Microsoft convinced most PC vendors to add for Windows 95. Microsoft do, of course, create the keyboard layouts used by Windows, but for the most part, these simply reflect the physical layouts used by the PC manufacturers, and not the other way round.
I'm not sure organizing this article by operating system makes sense, but no matter how it ends up, unix systems such as Sun hardware and PCs running Linux or BSD should be explained. Do they follow Windows or Mac more closely for instance? (And yes, I know Mac is now Unix-based, but the end result for the way the keyboard works is heavily influenced by the legacy of the earlier proprietary Mac system, so I think Mac will always deserve its own mention). 216.94.11.2 ( talk) 20:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
This piece seems to be written as a arbitrary list of what's available at a specific point in time (early 2000's). Typewriter keyboards in the two countries were established and standardised well before somewhat arbitrary Microsoft layouts. References to these, ideally with layouts is needed here I feel.
As an aside - the inability to map your own user preferences in the MS operating system keyboard (such as a UK user living in Germany might map alt-a to a-umlaut) severely limits friendliness/functionality compared to some other operating systems (Linux). Djp ( talk) 12:24, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Some of the differences are fairly self-explanatory, such as adding the £ sign, but can anyone add info on the reasons behind other changes, such as swapping " and @? Nick Fel ( talk) 10:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Having the " on 2, as in the UK version, is actually the more traditional typewriter position in all English-speaking countries (not that there were official standards for typewriters before the late-twentieth century). The change in America was brought about by the IBM Selectric typewriter in the Sixties. This isn't a fully satisfactory explanation because the Selectric had @ on 2, ^ on 6 and * on 8 compared to traditional typewriters generally having " on 2, _ on 6 and ' on 8. My best guess would be that because ' is easier to type if it's on the home row (and you type it more often than *), and that, when ISO-646 symbols were put on typewriter-style keyboards (rather than teleprinter-style keyboards), the ^ had to go on the main section of the keys anyway (rather than being an optional key), it made sense for manufacturers to slowly adopt most of the IBM Selectric changes in the British Isles, with the BSI standards catching up, but @ remains in it's traditional position. 94.194.152.34 ( talk) 21:04, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
Also, if anyone knows what ¬ actually is? -- Arkelweis ( talk) 20:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
The section on the US international layout mentions that certain keys become dead keys. Is there any way to type the characters that these keys were originally used for when using a US international layout? 80.0.68.41 ( talk) 12:30, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, use the space bar after the desired character. 82.170.250.105 ( talk) 12:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
More work needed! (than I am willing to do, lacking any subject knowledge). -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 10:27, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||
|
What about £ sign? That is not a documented change at all on this page. It is clearly shown in the pitures but no one seems to mention that the US keyboard has no £ while the UK does?
It is quite important over this side of the pond to be able to write in our own currency...
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.117.8 ( talk) 17:27, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
This page seems to be very poorly written - it is rather difficult to follow what is being said. Besides this, it barely touches on the actual differences between the two types of keyboards. By far the worst is the swapping of " and @, particularly when a computer in Britain defaults to US keyboard, as one may be inputting scripts which require the " character, but through practice input @ instead!
Think I've taken care of all that, if briefly.
Why does the opening text state that accented vowels are needed in the UK? We type in the same language as you Americans.-- 193.195.185.254 02:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
The following comment from the page seems rather odd:
For its UK layout, Microsoft accordingly adds an AltGr key, maps the £ to where the US layout has a #, and adds a 102nd key to accommodate the #. A few other variations (the reversals of @ and ", and the movement of ~ to the # key to accommodate a ¬ on the backquote key) have also crept in between the two.
This seems to suggest Microsoft designed the respective PC keyboard layouts in the UK and USA, whilst I believe this was actually decided by IBM (based on typewriter layouts, I'd imagine), back in the 1980s; apart from the Windows and application keys, which Microsoft convinced most PC vendors to add for Windows 95. Microsoft do, of course, create the keyboard layouts used by Windows, but for the most part, these simply reflect the physical layouts used by the PC manufacturers, and not the other way round.
I'm not sure organizing this article by operating system makes sense, but no matter how it ends up, unix systems such as Sun hardware and PCs running Linux or BSD should be explained. Do they follow Windows or Mac more closely for instance? (And yes, I know Mac is now Unix-based, but the end result for the way the keyboard works is heavily influenced by the legacy of the earlier proprietary Mac system, so I think Mac will always deserve its own mention). 216.94.11.2 ( talk) 20:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
This piece seems to be written as a arbitrary list of what's available at a specific point in time (early 2000's). Typewriter keyboards in the two countries were established and standardised well before somewhat arbitrary Microsoft layouts. References to these, ideally with layouts is needed here I feel.
As an aside - the inability to map your own user preferences in the MS operating system keyboard (such as a UK user living in Germany might map alt-a to a-umlaut) severely limits friendliness/functionality compared to some other operating systems (Linux). Djp ( talk) 12:24, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Some of the differences are fairly self-explanatory, such as adding the £ sign, but can anyone add info on the reasons behind other changes, such as swapping " and @? Nick Fel ( talk) 10:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Having the " on 2, as in the UK version, is actually the more traditional typewriter position in all English-speaking countries (not that there were official standards for typewriters before the late-twentieth century). The change in America was brought about by the IBM Selectric typewriter in the Sixties. This isn't a fully satisfactory explanation because the Selectric had @ on 2, ^ on 6 and * on 8 compared to traditional typewriters generally having " on 2, _ on 6 and ' on 8. My best guess would be that because ' is easier to type if it's on the home row (and you type it more often than *), and that, when ISO-646 symbols were put on typewriter-style keyboards (rather than teleprinter-style keyboards), the ^ had to go on the main section of the keys anyway (rather than being an optional key), it made sense for manufacturers to slowly adopt most of the IBM Selectric changes in the British Isles, with the BSI standards catching up, but @ remains in it's traditional position. 94.194.152.34 ( talk) 21:04, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
Also, if anyone knows what ¬ actually is? -- Arkelweis ( talk) 20:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
The section on the US international layout mentions that certain keys become dead keys. Is there any way to type the characters that these keys were originally used for when using a US international layout? 80.0.68.41 ( talk) 12:30, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, use the space bar after the desired character. 82.170.250.105 ( talk) 12:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
More work needed! (than I am willing to do, lacking any subject knowledge). -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 10:27, 13 November 2019 (UTC)