Talk:German keyboard layout

Apple[edit]

You should mention that Apple computers (MacBook etc.) and keyboards doesn't follow the standardization and have a own, incompatible (weird, imho) layout. --37.60.0.227 (talk) 20:52, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Typing German[edit]

I would find this article really useful if it pointed to a page that would help me type German in another keyboard, I guess I should google for this, but it is hard to find this info. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ralfx (talk • contribs) 21:00, 29 September 2015 (UTC) heibe — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.70.142.235 (talk) 14:39, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Circumventing Patents?[edit]

The article currently states, unsourced, that a reason for switching the z and the y "is that to enable German manufacturers to circumvent patents which included the QWERTY layout, at least one position had to be changed". I would very much like to see proof of this theory.

The other reason the article hints at is much more plausible. The "Y" is one of the least frequently used letters of the German alphabet, why should it have such a prominent place on the keyboard as in English? That doesn't make any sense at all. Not only is the "Z" a much more common letter in German than the "Y" as the article correctly states, the combinations "TZ" and "ZU" also are very common so it makes sense to have those letters next to each other. --91.34.38.41 (talk) 00:47, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

AltGr[edit]

Section 1: "Alternatively Strg+Alt and pressing the respective key also produce the alternative characters on some operating systems." Changed to "in some applications"; if anyone feels it should be reverted, please add a reference to an authoritative specification of that behaviour in some operating system (particularly Windows). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Towopedia (talk • contribs) 12:12, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Added ref. — Hnvnc (talk) 22:39, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Grave / backtick / single quote[edit]

On T2 layout, do the "combining diacritic" keys ever produce stand-alone characters? It seems not, because there is a separate tilde and combining tilde. But I don't see separate grave / backtick or circumflex keys?

Also, are the single quotation marks on 1 and B, the same character?

165.73.112.105 (talk) 10:04, 6 March 2021 (UTC) thanks, Ian[reply]

Regarding the first question: To produce the stand-alone characters, apply the diacritic on a space. This is in accordance with ISO/IEC 9995-11. There is a separate combining tilde (as the original Alt Gr + "+" is not a dead key), while the "^" key is a dead key, and it was a design request that nothing present on the predecessor standard keyboard will be changed.

Regarding the second question: Yes, the keys yield the same Unicode character. This was done to give the frequent apostrophe a user friendly position, while the rare English single closing quotation mark (which is not used in German, which uses low-9 as opening and high-6 as closing mark) can be entered according to the opening one, also for user friendliness. -- Karl432 (talk) 14:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]