Keyboard layout
Computers and other
typing devices offer many different
keyboard layouts for inputting data in different
languages. The standard
English keyboard layout is known as
QWERTY. Various alternatives to the QWERTY layout have been suggested, many claiming advantages such as higher typing speeds. The most famous alternative is the
Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.
Keys labelled with only a
capital letter can type both small and capital letters. To type the symbol at the top left of a key, the
shift key, often labelled "↑", is used. To type the symbol at the bottom right of a key, the
AltGr key is used. (Further symbols are available on the smaller keyboards of
laptop computers, which require further keystroke combinations.)
The standard keyboard structure also includes the
control,
alternative, and
function keys. These keys are commonly known as
modifier keys.
Dead key
A dead key produces no output when it is pressed, but modifies the output of the next key pressed after it.
Many languages include characters additional to the standard upper and lower case 26-letter alphabet, such as accented characters, that do not easily fit onto a standard English-language keyboard (UK, US or other varieties). Typing accented characters is made easier by using the
dead key feature. When a dead key is pressed, nothing happens on the screen, but then pressing the character to be accented makes the desired accented character appear on the screen. For example, typing the acute accent dead key followed by the letter a gives á. To type a
diacritical mark on its own, it needs to be followed by a space.
In the
Mac OS, dead keys are accessed with the option (alt) key as follows:
| ´ | option-e | | ` | option-` |
| ¨ | option-u |
| ^ | option-i |
| ~ | option-n |
which is then followed by the letter the accent is intended for. For example, the keypresses
option-e e results in the é character. In
Mac OS X, pressing one of these key combinations creates the accent and hi-lights it, then produces the finalized character when a vowel is pressed, or simply leaves the accent if a consonant is pressed.
The following layouts assume that the physical locations of the keys are the same as on a US 102-key
PC/AT keyboard. In practice, keyboards from other countries may have keys in slightly different locations. However, on a US 102-key PC/AT keyboard with an
operating system configured for a non-English language, the keys will be placed as follows. "Dead keys" (
see above) appear in red. Characters accessed using the AltGr key appear at the bottom right of the corresponding key, or in some images in blue.
Although there are a large number of different keyboard layouts used for different languages written in Roman script, most of these layouts are quite similar. They can be divided into three main families according to where the Q, A, Z, M, and Y keys are placed on the keyboard. These are usually named after the first six letters.
While the core of the keyboard, the alphabetic section, remains fairly constant, and the numbers from 1-9 are almost invariably on the top row, keyboards differ vastly in:
* the placement of punctuation characters,
* which punctuation characters are included,
* whether numbers are accessible directly or in a shift-state,
* the presence and placement of accent deadkeys and accented characters.
QWERTY
By far the most widespread, the only one not confined to a particular geographical area. Keys like "enter" and "caps lock" have not been translated from the language of the keyboard in question.
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Canadian French keyboard layout |
linux configuration code: ca_enhanced
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Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard layout |
United States keyboards are also used in Canada.
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Portuguese (Portugal) keyboard layout |
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Portuguese (Brazil) keyboard layout |
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Norwegian keyboard layout |
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Swedish/Finnish keyboard layout |
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United Kingdom keyboard layout |
The United Kingdom layout is similar to the United States layout.
Hong Kong uses US and Chinese (Traditional) keyboards rather than UK ones. See the article
British and American keyboards for details. See also
Technical standards in colonial Hong Kong.
Note:
* the key to the immediate left of numeral 1 (backtick,
`) gives (logical NOT,
¬) when shifted (instead of
~) and with AltGr either
** vertical bar
| (
OS/2's UK166 keyboard layout,
Linux UK keyboard layout, and as usually printed on the key on keyboards sold in the UK),
or
** broken vertical bar
¦ (
Microsoft Windows' UK keyboard layout);
* the key to the immediate left of Z gives, when shifted, either
** broken vertical bar
¦ (
OS/2's UK166 keyboard layout and as usually printed on the keytop on keyboards sold in the UK),
or
** vertical bar
| (
Microsoft Windows' UK keyboard layout and
Linux UK keyboard layout).
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Middle North American keyboard layout |
The US keyboard layout does not use AltGr or any dead keys, and thus offers no way of inputting any sort of diacritic or accent; this makes it unsuitable for all but a handful of languages.
U.S. keyboards are used not only in the United States, but also in most
English-speaking countries, e.g.
Canada,
Australia, and
New Zealand. In the
United Kingdom, UK keyboards are used. See
British and American keyboards for details.
US-International
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US-International keyboard layout |
QWERTZ
The QWERTZ layout is fairly widely used in Germany and much of Central Europe. The main difference between it and QWERTY is that Y and Z are swapped, and most special characters such as brackets are replaced by German special characters.
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German keyboard layout |
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Swiss keyboard layout |
Luxembourg does not have a keyboard layout of its own. Public education uses the Swiss-French keyboard, whereas the banking sector prefers the Belgian layout. Other places use either, or the US layout.
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Romanian keyboard layout |
AZERTY
The AZERTY layout is used in
France,
Belgium and some neighbouring countries. It differs from the QWERTY layout thus:
* A and Q are swapped
* Z and W are swapped
* M is moved from the right of N to the right of L [where colon/semicolon is on a US keyboard]
* The digits 0 to 9 are on the same keys, but to be typed the shift key must be pressed. The unshifted positions are used for accented characters.
The French AZERTY keyboard also has special characters used in the French language, such as ç, à é, è, and other characters such as &, " ,' ,§, , all located under the numbers.
Some French people use the
Canadian Multilingual standard keyboard. The
Portuguese (Portugal) keyboard layout is also be preferable, as it provides all French accents (acute, grave, tréma, tilde, circumflex, cedilla, and also quotation marks «») and its dead-letter option for all the accent keys allow for easy input of all the possibilities in French and most other languages(áàäãâéèëêíìïîóòöõôúùüû). Ç is, however, a separate key, as can be seen above.
The Belgian AZERTY was developed from the French AZERTY but some adaptions were made in the 1980s. All letters remain the same as on the French keyboard, but some signs (? ! @ - _ + = §) are on different locations.
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KeyboardLayout-French.png |
QZERTY
The QZERTY layout is used mostly, if not exclusively, in Italy, where it is very common on
typewriters. Computer keyboards are usually QWERTY, although non-
alphanumeric characters vary.
* Z and W are swapped
* M is moved from the right of N to the right of L, as in AZERTY
Dvorak and others
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Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout |
There are also keyboard layouts that do not resemble QWERTY/QWERTZ/AZERTY very closely, if at all. Best-known among these is the
Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout (named after its inventor, not the key order), which reduces finger movement and is claimed by some proponents to offer higher typing speed along with
ergonomic benefits. Some languages use the Roman script but with non-QWERTY-based keyboard layouts, such as Latvian and Turkish (the majority of Turkish keyboards are QWERTY, though the "Turkish-F keyboard layout"[
1] is older and said to be better suited to the language).
A
syllabic chord keyboard is a keyboard with three sets of keys that are used to type in a single syllable with one (combined) keystroke.
Besides Dvorak, other keyboard layouts include:
QWERTY-based
*
Colemak [
2] (2006)
*
XPeRT [
3] (2003)
*
Asset (2004)
QWERTY- and Dvorak-based
*
Qwerak (2002)
Original
*
Michael Capewell's evolved layout (2005)
*
NEO layout [
4] (2004)
*
Plum [
5] (2003)
*
Arensito (2001)
*
Peter Klausler's evolved layout (2002)
*
Maltron layout [
6] (1977)
*
HCESAR (1937)
* Roy E. Hoke's layout (U.S. patent 1,506,426, 1924)
* Sidney W. Rowell's layout (U.S. patent 943,466, 1909)
*
DHIATENSOR layout (1893)
Some keyboard layouts for non-Roman alphabetic scripts, most notably the Greek layout, are based on the QWERTY layout, in that glyphs are assigned as far as possible to keys that bear similar-sounding or appearing glyphs in QWERTY. This saves learning time for those familiar with QWERTY.
This is not a general rule, and many non-Roman keyboard layouts have been invented from scratch.
Most non-Roman keyboard layouts have the capacity to be used to input Roman letters as well as the script of the language, for example, when typing in URLs or names. This may be done through a special key on the keyboard devoted to this task, or through some special combination of keys, or through software programs that do no interact with the keyboard much.
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Arabic keyboard layout |
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Armenian keyboard layout |
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Greek keyboard layout |
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Hebrew keyboard layout |
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Russian keyboard layout |
People who do not have a Cyrillic keyboard sometimes use a phonetic (transliterated) layout where 'А' is obtained by pressing 'A', Russian 'Б' by pressing 'B', '"' by pressing 'D', 'О' by pressing 'O' etc. See also
Russian keyboard: standard and phonetic.
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Bulgarian BDS keyboard layout |
The Bulgarian BDS layout.
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Bulgarian Phonetic keyboard layout |
The Bulgarian Phonetic layout. Although not standard, this layout is widespread because of its similarity to the QWERTY layout. It is a
Phonetic not
Transliteration layout, and produces cyrillic symbols.
Both layouts are in widespread use.
Transliteration using
Roman script is used only in informal electronic written communication, mainly because of a long history of compatibility issues with different encodings, history of lack of native OS support and user laziness.
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Sanskrit keyboard layout |
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Thai keyboard layout |
Chinese and
Japanese require special input methods, often abbreviated to
CJK IMEs (with the K standing for
Korean, which, in contrast to Chinese and Japanese, is alphabetical and therefore easy to type), due to the thousands of possible characters in these languages. Various methods have been invented to fit all these possibilities into a normal QWERTY keyboard, so East Asian keyboards are essentially the same as those in other countries. However, their input methods are considerably more complex, without one-to-one mappings between keys and characters.
In general, first the range of possibilities is narrowed down (most often by entering the desired character's pronunciation), then, if there remains more than one possibility, selecting the desired
ideogram either by typing the number before the character, or using a graphical menu to select it. The computer assists the typist by using
heuristics to guess which character is most likely desired. Although this may sound clumsy, East Asian input methods are today sufficiently sophisticated that for both beginners and experts, and typing in these languages is only slightly slower than typing English.
In Japanese, the QWERTY-based
JIS keyboard layout is used, and the pronunciation of each character is entered using
Hepburn romanization or
Kunrei-shiki romanization. There are several
kana-based typing methods.
See also Japanese language and computers.
Chinese has the most complex and varied input methods. Characters can be entered by pronunciation (like Japanese and Korean) or by structure. Most of the structural methods are the most difficult to learn, but they are extremely fast for experienced typists, as they do away with the need for selecting characters from a menu. For a detailed treatment, see
Chinese input methods for computers.
There exist a variety of other, slower ways a character may be entered. If the pronunciation of a character is not known, the selection can be narrowed down by giving its component shapes,
radicals, and
stroke count. Also, many input systems include a "drawing pad" permitting "handwriting" of a character using a
mouse. Finally, if the computer does not have CJK software installed, it may be possible to enter a character directly through its
encoding number (e.g.
Unicode).
In contrast to Chinese and Japanese, Korean is typed the same way as Western languages. There are two major kinds of keyboard layouts: dubeolsik and sebeolsik. Dubeolsik, based on the QWERTY keyboard, is more commonly used. While Korean consonants and vowels (
jamo) are grouped together into syllabic characters when written, the language itself is actually alphabetical, and therefore typing in Korean is quite simple for someone who understands the Korean alphabet
Hangul. Each
jamo is assigned to a single key. As the user types letters, the computer automatically groups them into syllabic characters. Given a sequence of
jamo, there is only one unambiguous way letters can be validy grouped into syllables, so this grouping is done seamlessly by the computer, with the result that Korean can be typed in the same way as English or any other alphabetical language.
=Chinese (traditional)
=Computers in the
Republic of China (Taiwan) often use
Zhuyin (bopomofo) style keyboards (US keyboards with bopomofo labels), many also with
Cangjie method key labels, as Cangjie is the standard method for speed-typing in Traditional Chinese. The bopomofo style keyboards are in
lexicographical order, top-to-bottom left-to-right.::
|
Chinese (traditional) keyboard layout, a US keyboard with Zhuyin, Cangjie and Dayi key labels |
The codes of three input methods are typically printed on the Chinese (traditional) keyboard: Zhuyin (upper right); Cangjie (lower left); and
Dayi (lower right).
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Chinese (traditional) keyboard layout from Taiwan for Cangjie and Zhuyin |
This is an example with Cangjie (blue) and Bopomofo/Zhuyin (red).
In
Hong Kong, both
Chinese (Traditional) and
US keyboards are found.
Japanese keyboards are occasionally found, but
UK keyboards are rare.
See also
British and American keyboards,
Technical standards in colonial Hong KongA Chinese (Traditional) keyboard has a US layout with Chinese input method labels printed on the keys. These keyboards can be used for Roman characters, provided that
US keyboard layout is selected in the
operating system.
=Chinese (simpified)
=Keyboards used in the
mainland of the
People's Republic of China typically use a
US keyboard and input Chinese characters using
Hanyu pinyin, which represents the sounds of Chinese characters using Latin letters.
See the section on Chinese languages above, and also
Chinese input methods for computers.
=Dubeolsik
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Dubeolsik Hangul keyboard layout |
Dubeolsik(두벌식) is the most common Hangul keyboard layout in use in South Korea. Pressing the Ha/En key once switches between Hangul as shown, and English. There is another key to the right of the Ha/En key for
Hanja input. If using a standard 104-key keyboard, the right Alt key will become the Ha/En key, and the right Ctrl key will become the Hanja key. Alternate keyboard styles exist, such as those used by IBM mainframes, but these are rarely used.
Consonants occupy the left side of the layout, while
vowels are on the right.
=Sebeolsik 390
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Sebeolsik 390 Hangeul keyboard layout |
(Syllable-initial consonants are on the right(green), and syllable-final consonants and consonant clusters are on the left(red).)
Sebeolsik 390(세벌식 390) is based on Dr. Kong's work of unified key layout in 1986, this layout focused on the compatibility with the IBM PC keyboard a little bit more than ideal Hangeul typing. All symbols are available, and numbers are placed by three rows.
=Sebeolsik Final
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Sebeolsik Final Hangul keyboard layout |
Sebeolsik Final(세벌식 최종) is another Hangul keyboard layout in use in South Korea. Syllable-initial consonants are on the right, and syllable-final consonants and consonant clusters are on the left. Vowels are in the middle. It is more ergonomic than the dubeolsik, but is not in wide use.
=Sebeolsik Noshift
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Sebeolsik Noshift Hangeul keyboard layout |
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Japanese keyboard layout with Hiragana keys (unfinished) |
Usually the JIS keyboard is used. Some people type Hiragana directly, but most people prefer typing Latin alphabets, which are automatically converted to Hiragana. In both cases, the Alt+Zen/Han key combination is used to switch on
input method editor. Some people prefer the US layout, in which case Alt+` does the role, or
Cmd-Space for Macs.
See the section on
East Asian languages above, also
Japanese language and computers and
Japanese input methods.
*
Language code*
Chinese input methods for computers*
Japanese language and computers*
Technical standards in colonial Hong Kong*
British and American keyboards*
On-Screen Windows Keyboard*
Unicode*
True type*
On-Screen Windows Keyboard.
*
IBM's database of keyboard layouts*
IBM site about keyboard layouts*
Multilingual Windows keyboards in both QWERTY and Dvorak layouts*
Variant Windows keyboards, U.S. and non-U.S.*
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (free)
*
Ukelele a
Mac OS X Keyboard Layout Editor (free)
*
Creating custom keyboard layouts in Linux/UNIX*
Optimus Keyboard Currently in the design stage, Optimus could be configured for any layout
*
PowerTyping - Flash-based Online Typing Tutor for Qwerty and Dvorak
*
Gate2Home.com - Onscreen Virtual Keyboard with Multilingual layouts
*
JavaScript Virtual Keyboard - Lightweight, zero-configuration script for use on the web (free)
*
Esperanto keyboard*
Apple Powerbook Keyboard Layout*
Diktor Keyboard Layout '
