From: david.brown@hesbynett.no   
      
   On 02/12/2025 18:55, Michael S wrote:   
      
   >   
   > I never used Western European keyboard, so probably don't understand   
   > something very basic.   
      
   Let me try to help you understand - that's why we are here!   
      
   > Suppose, you use Greek/Latin keyboard (or InScript/Latin, or   
   > Cyrillic/Latin, or Hebrew/Latin, Arabic/Latin, Thai/Latin,   
   > Vietnamese//Latin, etc ...). When you right code, you just switch the   
   > keyboard layout from Greek to English (US) or English (UK). It's easy.   
   > Tens of millions of programmers do it all the time, instinctively.   
   > Why Western Europeans can't do exactly the same? Just because their   
   > native scripts are also Latin-based? To me it does not sound as a   
   > meaningful reason :(   
      
   (They say that the best way to get an answer on the internet is not by   
   asking questions, but by posting something wrong and waiting for the   
   corrections :-) )   
      
      
   I was initially used to a UK English layout.  When I moved to Norway, I   
   learned to use the Norwegian layout.  It is the same QWERTY for the   
   common letters, but has punctuation moved around a bit and three keys   
   for the Norwegian letters Æ, Ø and Å as letters.  It also has dead keys   
   so that you can get accents and other diacriticals (though these are not   
   much used in Norwegian), and a number of extra symbols use AltGr rather   
   than shift.  With Windows, you can directly type several more symbols   
   than with the UK layout - with Linux, you can type a great many more   
   without having to use the compose key or other tools.   
      
   All in all, it is a far better keyboard layout than the standard UK   
   English (or slightly more limited, the standard US English).  It bears   
   more resemblance to the international English layouts.   
      
   So why on earth would I want to switch to an inferior layout when   
   writing code?  The disadvantage - the slightly more awkward brackets,   
   braces and complement operator are certainly not good enough reason to   
   have two sets of muscle memory for different tasks.   
      
   And what about situations where I want Norwegian letters and also   
   various symbols and punctuation?  What would you suggest I use when   
   writing Norwegian LaTeX?  Should I switch back and forth depending on   
   whether I want Norwegian letters or brace symbols?   
      
   People are likely to switch keyboard layouts if they often use a   
   completely different alphabet, but I seriously doubt that many switch   
   from other Latin layouts to US or UK layouts just for coding.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)