Title: Never buy a German keyboard!
Date: June 9, 2006
Timestamp: 1149841020
Author: sjs
Tags: apple, apple, german, keyboard
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  <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060927224310/http://sami.samhuri.net/admin/content/edit/424" class="admintools" id="admin_article" style="display: none;">edit</a>
  <h2>Never buy a German keyboard!</h2>
  <p class="auth"><!-- Posted by <a href="mailto:sjs@uvic.ca">Sami Jensen Samhuri</a> -->
  <span class="typo_date" title="Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:17:00 GMT">on Friday, June 09, 2006</span></p>
  <p>Nothing personal, but the backtick/tilde is located where the rest of the left shift key should be, and the return key is double-height, forcing the backslash/bar to the right of the dash/underscore (that’d be the apostrophe/double quote for pretty much everyone else who types qwerty). Note that I’m talking about using a German keyboard with an English layout. The German layout is flat out impossible for coding.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060927224310/http://sami.samhuri.net/files/keyboard.jpg"><img src="./Never buy a German keyboard! - samhuri.net_files/keyboard_sm.jpg" title="German Apple Keyboard" alt="German Apple Keyboard"></a></p>


	<p>For some reason it gets even worse with a German Apple keyboard. Square brackets, where for art though? Through trial and error I found them using Alt/Opt+5/6… non-Apple German keyboards I’ve seen use Alt Gr+8/9, which is just as bad but at least they were <strong>labeled</strong>. I know why coders here don’t use the German layout! I feel uneasy just talking about it.</p>


	<p>Here’s a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060927224310/http://sami.samhuri.net/files/german_keys.txt">text file</a> with each character of the 4 rows in it, normal and then shifted, in qwerty, qwertz, and dvorak. I personally think that some ways the German keys change must be some sick joke (double quote moved up to shift-2, single quote almost staying put, angle brackets being shoved aside only to put the semi-colon and colon on different keys as well). If you ask me lots of that could be avoided by getting rid of the key that replaced the backtick/tilde, and putting the 3 vowels with the umlaut (ü, ö, and ä) on Alt Gr/Opt+&lt;a, o, u&gt;. But hey, I don’t type in German so what do I know.</p>

