[RndTbl] Advice on finally buying my first laptop

[Gilbert E. Detillieux]

Actually, Brad, I'm with you on this one.  I don't remember every coming 
across an international or French-Canadian keyboard layout that I 
actually liked (or that was even familiar to me after learning to type 
on a bilingual typewriter).  There doesn't (didn't?) seem to be a 
standard layout even, and keys get shifted around from where I'm used to 
finding them.  It makes touch-typing very difficult.  (Add to that the 
fact that I have to work on a number of different systems with different 
keyboards, so I like to have a consistent layout, as much as possible. 
The fairly standard US English 104-key layout is what I'm most 
comfortable with.)

I prefer to have the few accented characters I need implemented through 
"dead keys" in standard locations, and I don't need key-top label to 
guide me, once I know where those locations are.

I'm probably not alone in this.  I'm guessing that's why the MS Office 
dev team put in their own dead-key support in the suite, rather than 
relying on the international keyboard support in the underlying Windows 
system.  (I'm a big fan of the Zombie Keys add-on for Firefox and TB, 
which embraces the same set of dead-key combinations as MS Office, and 
extends it further.  I wish someone would implement that at the system 
level in Windows, Linux, and macOS, so we could enjoy a consistent and 
usable standard everywhere!)

Gilbert

On 2020-09-29 1:43 a.m., Bradford Vokey wrote:
>> /On 2020-09-2=7 Trevor Coredes wrote: /
...
>>> /I would suggest, for a typer/programmer like you, that you 
>>> //*need*//a normal US keyboard and must eliminate all the bilingual 
>>> keyboards many brands force on you. If you've never typed with the 
>>> enter key 1.5cm further to the right, try it before you dare buy a 
>>> bilingual. For me keyboard is top priority. Also, for accounting you 
>>> might prefer a big laptop with a numeric keypad./
> Wow. I remember you telling me about this before, so I researched, 
> researched, and researched and found the G17 has *almost* a full normal 
> keyboard with a fairly good numeric keypad. And you are right. I use the 
> numeric keypad ALL THE TIME. Only the pageup/down, home/end, and 
> delete/insert keys were rearranged and combined on the G17, so I thought 
> I could live with that. But once I got it, whoa - tons of the "keycaps" 
> have been replaced with bilingual character ones - which are not at all 
> in the product photos on the Best Buy website. Bah! What a stupid way to 
> clutter up the look of a perfectly good keyboard.
> 
> Why are bilingual keyboards being forced upon us? If you want a 
> bilingual keyboard, buy one. Go ahead and charge more for all Canadian 
> laptops with the extra cost of stocking another SKU to keep the 
> Franco-phones happy if you need to, but don't make all of us use 
> keyboards we can't even understand.
> 
> Are we changing the ABC song to accommodate French characters next?
> 
> Some of my keys are just nuts! Many have 5 different symbols on them 
> like: "{^[[^" all one key!?! I have no idea how to access or use any of 
> them.
> 
> Alt+numpad and/or the windows character map app (which has been around 
> since XP days) work great for entering special characters. I don't need 
> a dedicated key that constantly shows me characters I will never ever use.
> 
> *** Sorry for the bilingual rant Gilbert! ***

-- 
Gilbert E. Detillieux        E-mail:  <gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Computer Science    Web:     http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/
University of Manitoba       Phone:   (204)474-8161
Winnipeg MB CANADA  R3T 2N2  Fax:     (204)474-7609