Native language interface

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Minskleip

31 Jan 2011, 20:17

Started a new thread instead of polluting the suggestions thread.

Do you native languagelise your software? I always found Norwegian interfaces to look completely stupid and out of place, and thus does not use Norwegian for either software and hardware. (I do have some old Norwegian rubber domes, but they are from a time before I knew of ANSI and key switches. My first "ANSI" exposure was actually the Norwegian keyboard on my laptiop, which was ANSI with Norwegian key caps + an additional key to the left of space. Quite smart for a laptop keyboard.)

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webwit
Wild Duck

31 Jan 2011, 20:26

I always use the English version.

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sixty
Gasbag Guru

31 Jan 2011, 20:31

Same here, English for everything. I dislike most German software a lot. I think the reason I originally started to use English software was that when I was a teenager, looking for tutorials online, everything was in English and I never managed to find my way around with my German software.

By now its just a matter of preference, some words just seem very out of place and just sound odd in German translations. I also use the ANSI layout with the US International driver, allöwing mé tö still äccêss umlauts whèn I neëd them.

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Minskleip

31 Jan 2011, 20:40

For my keyboard I plan to have a Alt Gr key and use it with Allchars as a Compose key for writing Norwegian letters.

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sixty
Gasbag Guru

31 Jan 2011, 20:43

Minskleip wrote:For my keyboard I plan to have a Alt Gr key and use it with Allchars as a Compose key for writing Norwegian letters.
Looking at the documentation, it seems that by default Allchars works entirely like the US international keyboard layout driver, just that you have to press CTRL before. With the US international driver it works like this: I type the " key, then the o and I get ö. It took about a week or so to fully adjust to it, but by now it just seems natural when typing German.

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Minskleip

31 Jan 2011, 20:49

sixty wrote:
Minskleip wrote:For my keyboard I plan to have a Alt Gr key and use it with Allchars as a Compose key for writing Norwegian letters.
Looking at the documentation, it seems that by default Allchars works entirely like the US international keyboard layout driver, just that you have to press CTRL before. With the US international driver it works like this: I type the " key, then the o and I get ö. It took about a week or so to fully adjust to it, but by now it just seems natural when typing German.
The documentation on the webpage is outdated. I read on their forum on sourceforge that you can use Alt Gr instead of Ctrl or Esc etc.. anyway, Compose workes like you describe except that you have to press the compose key before arpeggiating the keys; isn't there a control/initiator key with US International?

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webwit
Wild Duck

31 Jan 2011, 20:52

That is the standard behavior for the Dutch version of Windows. I can't stand it because of my programming. You have to type " twice for ".

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sixty
Gasbag Guru

31 Jan 2011, 20:55

I only ever used the default US-Int. driver, as far as I know there is no indicator key, if I actually need quotes, I have to type them twice or continue typing with an unsupported char or space.

Speaking of international US layouts... I have these cool (but sadly rare) Cherry keycaps.

Image

The board they originally came on is not PC compatible, so I'm not sure how you were to access the extra chars on the keyboard. There is no Alt Gr key on this one even...

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Minskleip

31 Jan 2011, 21:02

Ah I see. That's too much hassle for me as I type quotes much more than I do Norwegian letters.

On Norwegian keyboards there's one Alt on the left side and Alt Gr on the right side which is used to get the third symbol on some of the number keys etc. I'll get a 'Function Kit' from the Doubleshot Third Round, which contains a Compose keycap; what scancode the key sends doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't interfer with anything else.

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sixty
Gasbag Guru

31 Jan 2011, 21:05

Well, if you are on Windows you can always quickly simply change your entire keyboard layout (for example from US International to US) by simply pressing left alt + shift.

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Minskleip

31 Jan 2011, 21:13

That's what I'm doing now, but because the different layouts not only change some letters, but also the position of other characters, this interfers with Autohotkey when I use it for virtual arrows etc. My Autohotkey-layer cannot use such characters which change position. And when I use Greek layout it ofcourse doesn't work at all. (Firefox with the Vimperator plugin doesn't work well with Greek layout either.)

It would be good to use scancodes in Autohotkey instead of characters, but that didn't work when I tried.

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lowpoly

02 Feb 2011, 21:19

ANSI + US intl. here too. The umlaut-instead-of-quotes thing gets me from time to time. Still the best compromise for me. ANSI is more convenient than ISO. And Ctrl-Z is where it belongs.

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7bit

02 Feb 2011, 23:37

lowpoly wrote:ANSI + US intl. here too. The umlaut-instead-of-quotes thing gets me from time to time. Still the best compromise for me. ANSI is more convenient than ISO. And Ctrl-Z is where it belongs.
I never used anything but US-layout or DE-layout. I used to switch to US-layiout whenever I did programming.
My first computer was a PC with only 512kbytes main memory. I found out, that the German keyboard driver was not necessary and threw it out and had 460kbytes. From that moment on, I always used US-layout, typing umlauts using ALT+char-code.

What annoys me about German layout is the totally unnecessary swap of Y and Z plus the fact that I can't reach [] {} | \ so easy. The worst thing are those stupid dead keys. This kills also the US-international layout for me.

Nowadays, for typing umlauts, I use the Compose button, or just type \"u in \latex.

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webwit
Wild Duck

02 Feb 2011, 23:48

I wonder if it will have effect on the language. Here in the Netherlands, we have some words with umlauts for example. We have a plural form of adding -en. So shoe is schoen, and shoes is schoenen. However, idea is idee, which turns ideas into ideeen. Eeeeee! We use the umlaut to keep the e's apart: ideeën. Or better, used to. On the internet, most people just write ideeen.

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sixty
Gasbag Guru

02 Feb 2011, 23:49

Yeah, yeah... the good old Z and Y swap. I remember my cousin being unable to ever quit out of some dos games when we were like 7 or 8, not knowing about the swap. "Do you want to quit? Y/N" *reset button*

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Minskleip

03 Feb 2011, 00:05

sixty wrote:Yeah, yeah... the good old Z and Y swap. I remember my cousin being unable to ever quit out of some dos games when we were like 7 or 8, not knowing about the swap. "Do you want to quit? Y/N" *reset button*
Hah that's funny. My best memory of dos games is the fucking frogs "game". That reminds me, there might an old model m in the attic. I have to check next time I'm home. It's probably rotten though :(

Norwegian has no umlauts or anything like that, except maybe some exceptions which noone knows or uses. This way you can't look at a word and know how to pronounce it; esoteric ;)

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Taietzel

10 Mar 2011, 16:47

You get so used to the English layout from your daily computer experience that everything seems hard coded into your brain. Most actions I do are out of reflex, click-clack, done! My sw or hw interactivity decreases drastically when switching to anything else ( native language - I'm looking at you :evil: )

Flongo

18 Mar 2011, 17:37

On the hardware scene I always choose a danish keyboard layout since I really need the æøå characters to write in danish. On the software side however I always choose english since danish translations are not available for all programs and it seems awkward to have english and danish side by side in my OS. Also I find it helpful to use english since troubleshooting problems will be easier due to the larger userbase with english software.

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