Polyglot friendly computer keyboards

[DaveBee]

There have been rumours that Apple are going to start integrating mini e-ink displays with future keyboards for reconfigurability, but I'm not sure if that's all the keys or just the function keys.

Personally, though, I'm happy with a print-out of the key layout stuck on my wall beside the screen when I'm learning to type on a new layout -- it's better practice than looking at your fingers all the time anyway...

The Matias Tactile Pro for Mac keyboard includes the alt/control characters on the relevant keys. Their PC equivalent doesn't.

[adam.libusa]

In case it helps somebody: http://polyglotkeyboard.com/

[israelrt]

Another approach is to use a perfectly blank keyboard and learn to touchtype your language of choice !

See https://www.daskeyboard.com/daskeyboard-4-ultimate/

[cjareck]

I do not look at the keyboard while writing. I am using Latin (English, Polish and German versions), Russian, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets regularly. More than my Linux can handle at once
All the Latin versions and a Hebrew one I use without any problem. With Russian and Arabic, I need to write just a few words to adjust to a new layout.

[Deinonysus]

Another approach is to use a perfectly blank keyboard and learn to touchtype your language of choice !

See https://www.daskeyboard.com/daskeyboard-4-ultimate/

That's what I have and I would strongly recommend it! Knowing how to touch type is fun and makes your life easier. I type with the Colemak keyboard layout; it has international support so I can use it to type almost any latin-alphabet language (a QWERTY international keyboard would also work for this). I also learned to touch type in Hebrew and Korean.

[Cavesa]

ok, i am one of those, who have learnt to touchtype in a foreign language. it is definitely possible, even though a few rarely used symbols are still a problem.

I can use my default Czech keyboard for Czech, English, German. The French one serves for French, Italian, and either would serve for Spanish, if three more symbols were there. But what if I manage to add another language?

And looking at my despair, whenever I consider learning the Spanish keyboard, I wonder: How on Earth do the polyglots do it. That's why I am partially sceptical about the advice to learn touchtyping in every language, a keyboard design solution can definitely help more

I wonder, whether there are people, who have mastered touchtyping fluently on more than three keyboards. This is a different kind of memory, more motoric one, so I have no clue what the limits are.

[Deinonysus]

ok, i am one of those, who have learnt to touchtype in a foreign language. it is definitely possible, even though a few rarely used symbols are still a problem.

I can use my default Czech keyboard for Czech, English, German. The French one serves for French, Italian, and either would serve for Spanish, if three more symbols were there. But what if I manage to add another language?

And looking at my despair, whenever I consider learning the Spanish keyboard, I wonder: How on Earth do the polyglots do it. That's why I am partially sceptical about the advice to learn touchtyping in every language, a keyboard design solution can definitely help more

I wonder, whether there are people, who have mastered touchtyping fluently on more than three keyboards. This is a different kind of memory, more motoric one, so I have no clue what the limits are.

In my experience, it only takes a few hours to learn to touch type in a new layout slowly. Getting from there to full speed is just a matter of practice (and lots of it). I think it took me a couple of weeks of typing in Colemak all day at work to get close to my full speed, and I had to make sure that I kept doing some typing in QWERTY so I didn't lose it.

I am "bilingual" in QWERTY and Colemak. I type around 70-80 WPM in both. I use QWERTY to type English on computers that aren't mine, and I use Colemak on my home and dedicated work computers, mostly for English but also for French, German, and any other Latin alphabet language I happen to be learning (I recently spent some time studing Spanish and had no problem typing it in Colemak with all the diacritics and punctuation). It isn't optimized for those languages, but I think it's worth it to avoid getting confused with similar layouts. Also, the French AZERTY layout is just bad. It is missing some major keys:

Layout of the French keyboard under Microsoft Windows
Missing elements

• Ever since the AZERTY keyboard was devised, a single key has been dedicated to the letter (ù), which occurs in only one word (où [where]); the œ is completely unrepresented, despite the fact that it is an integral part of the French language and occurs in many different words.
• æ, as in Lætitia [girl's name] or ex æquo [dead-heat].
• The non-breaking space, which prevents having punctuation characters in isolation at the ends or beginnings of lines.
  Guillemets – French language opening and closing quotation marks, « and ».
• The capital letters, É, Ç, Œ … (in the word Œdipe [Oedipus], for example), are available neither on the typewriter itself, nor using the operating system mentioned earlier.

It is possible to fill in these gaps by installing a keyboard driver that has been specially enriched for the French language.[7]

One can also use WinCompose in order to easily write all characters, the character Ç could be written by pressing ⎄ Compose , C or the character « with ⎄ Compose < <, there is also an option to allow to write accentuated capitals with ⇪ Caps Lock such that Ç is writable with ⇪ Caps Lock ç.

Some word-processing software packages sometimes address some of these gaps. The non-breaking space can be obtained by pressing the Ctrl key, followed by a space, in a word-processing package such as OpenOffice.org Writer, or by using Ctrl + Maj [Caps] + Espace [Spacebar] in Microsoft Word.

Apart from these gaps, the French AZERTY layout has some strange features which are still present in the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system:

• The combination Maj + ² does not generate any character at all.
• The presence of two "^" (one of which is a dead key and is located at the right of the "p", while the other – on the ç9 key — is not).
• When a ¦ is required, a | is generated.
• Typing a period or numerals requires pressing Shift, whereas some rarer characters (ù, the semicolon) do not. This has led to drives to reform the AZERTY keyboard (chiefly by doing away with the ù, which may be typed using AltGr+è and u anyway, and/or swapping the period and semicolon), although to date this has not been successful.

Government criticism
As of January 2016 the French Culture Ministry is looking to replace the AZERTY layout with one that will decrease the chance of typing mistakes.[6][8] This project, lead by the French national organization for standardization AFNOR, should release both an improved AZERTY and a BÉPO layout. Initially due in January 2018, the standard is now scheduled for June of that year.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY#La ... ft_Windows

I learned to touch type in Hebrew and Korean, although it's slow and they haven't really stuck yet due to a lack of practice. But I'm convinced that if I spend enough time with them I will become "fluent".

I also started learning the Greek and Russian keyboard layouts. The Greek layout was pretty easy because it was based heavily off of QWERTY. The standard Russian layout gave me a lot more trouble because the keys are placed very differently from either of the Latin keyboard layouts I know, but the Cyrillic alphabet is so similar to the Latin alphabet that I got a lot of interference. But I think if I actually studied Russian I would eventually figure it out. There is also a "phonetic" Russian keyboard that is based on QWERTY. I might have an easier time with that, although I'm more inclined to learn the more "authentic" layout.

[Cavesa]

In my experience, it only takes a few hours to learn to touch type in a new layout slowly. Getting from there to full speed is just a matter of practice (and lots of it). I think it took me a couple of weeks of typing in Colemak all day at work to get close to my full speed, and I had to make sure that I kept doing some typing in QWERTY so I didn't lose it.

I am "bilingual" in QWERTY and Colemak. I type around 70-80 WPM in both. I use QWERTY to type English on computers that aren't mine, and I use Colemak on my home and dedicated work computers, mostly for English but also for French, German, and any other Latin alphabet language I happen to be learning (I recently spent some time studing Spanish and had no problem typing it in Colemak with all the diacritics and punctuation). It isn't optimized for those languages, but I think it's worth it to avoid getting confused with similar layouts. Also, the French AZERTY layout is just bad. It is missing some major keys:

Layout of the French keyboard under Microsoft Windows
Missing elements

• Ever since the AZERTY keyboard was devised, a single key has been dedicated to the letter (ù), which occurs in only one word (où [where]); the œ is completely unrepresented, despite the fact that it is an integral part of the French language and occurs in many different words.
• æ, as in Lætitia [girl's name] or ex æquo [dead-heat].
• The non-breaking space, which prevents having punctuation characters in isolation at the ends or beginnings of lines.
  Guillemets – French language opening and closing quotation marks, « and ».
• The capital letters, É, Ç, Œ … (in the word Œdipe [Oedipus], for example), are available neither on the typewriter itself, nor using the operating system mentioned earlier.

It is possible to fill in these gaps by installing a keyboard driver that has been specially enriched for the French language.[7]

One can also use WinCompose in order to easily write all characters, the character Ç could be written by pressing ⎄ Compose , C or the character « with ⎄ Compose < <, there is also an option to allow to write accentuated capitals with ⇪ Caps Lock such that Ç is writable with ⇪ Caps Lock ç.

Some word-processing software packages sometimes address some of these gaps. The non-breaking space can be obtained by pressing the Ctrl key, followed by a space, in a word-processing package such as OpenOffice.org Writer, or by using Ctrl + Maj [Caps] + Espace [Spacebar] in Microsoft Word.

Apart from these gaps, the French AZERTY layout has some strange features which are still present in the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system:

• The combination Maj + ² does not generate any character at all.
• The presence of two "^" (one of which is a dead key and is located at the right of the "p", while the other – on the ç9 key — is not).
• When a ¦ is required, a | is generated.
• Typing a period or numerals requires pressing Shift, whereas some rarer characters (ù, the semicolon) do not. This has led to drives to reform the AZERTY keyboard (chiefly by doing away with the ù, which may be typed using AltGr+è and u anyway, and/or swapping the period and semicolon), although to date this has not been successful.

Government criticism
As of January 2016 the French Culture Ministry is looking to replace the AZERTY layout with one that will decrease the chance of typing mistakes.[6][8] This project, lead by the French national organization for standardization AFNOR, should release both an improved AZERTY and a BÉPO layout. Initially due in January 2018, the standard is now scheduled for June of that year.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY#La ... ft_Windows

I learned to touch type in Hebrew and Korean, although it's slow and they haven't really stuck yet due to a lack of practice. But I'm convinced that if I spend enough time with them I will become "fluent".

I also started learning the Greek and Russian keyboard layouts. The Greek layout was pretty easy because it was based heavily off of QWERTY. The standard Russian layout gave me a lot more trouble because the keys are placed very differently from either of the Latin keyboard layouts I know, but the Cyrillic alphabet is so similar to the Latin alphabet that I got a lot of interference. But I think if I actually studied Russian I would eventually figure it out. There is also a "phonetic" Russian keyboard that is based on QWERTY. I might have an easier time with that, although I'm more inclined to learn the more "authentic" layout.

œ is alt+o on macOS
æ is alt+a
the capital letters are annoying, true, but not unrepresented Ç is alt+ç qnd they are sometimes found with alt+an unexpected key

I am typing both the French azerty and Czech qwertz (based mostly on the English version) fluently and fast, I am "bikeyboardal" (haha, like bilingual. ok, my sense of humor may not be that great). But I struggle with a few rarely used keys and with switching, it always takes me a few mistakes to switch to the right memory pattern. And I struggle with accidentally writing my passwords on the wrong keyboard

It was not that hard to learn one foreign keyboard, true. A basic online course and getting used to it was all I needed. But I am not sure how many could I learn this way and still switch without a major problem. Let's imagine I would finally get time to learn Polish, Russian, and Greek. That would mean three new keyboards. And I am not even imagining learning Japanese! But your experience gives me hope. I already struggle with remembering where is + or % or > sometimes.

Let's become polytypers!

The phonetic Russian keyboard sounds good as long as you don't need to write on a local keyboard. I realised no such an option was sufficient for me during my Erasmus, where I was faced with local computers and keyboards at hospital. Functioning like a native means being able to use a keyboard common in the country in my opinion. It may be very hard and perhaps impossible after some point. But knowledge of a layout for foreigners (or do the Russians use the phonetic one too?) means being dependent on such a keyboard being always available.

[Cainntear]

it is definitely possible, even though a few rarely used symbols are still a problem.

In my experience, it only takes a few hours to learn to touch type in a new layout slowly.

For letters and common punctuation, this is true. I learned the Spanish keyboard layout when I lived in Spain and could switch relatively easily between Spanish and UK. At one point I decided to go full Spanish, even though I was back in the UK working at computers with UK keycaps.

However, I would stumble on rarer symbols - even moderately common ones like & and # would catch me out, and genuinely rare ones like |, { and } would get me every time. I switched to using variants of UK Extended for everything for German westwards (I had to add in a couple of things myself using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, but I could do French, Spanish, Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Italian and German all with the same layout, and there were a fair few other languages that could have been typed with the same set of keys.

[Serpent]

I can't handle switching between more than two layouts (well, one per alphabet). I just use Russian and Finnish, and a couple of additional tools like abcTajpu and something called James (I can't find where I downloaded it, but it's a very simple tool for inserting pre-defined ASCII characters).