On the US keyboard, when a key has two characters depicted on it, the upper character always refers to the SHIFT+KEY or NUMLOCK+KEY. Is the same true for French and German keyboards? I’m looking at a photo of a French keyboard right now, and the number keys have the numbers on top. Also, one would think that the “ù” character would be typed more often than the “%” character, yet the former appears on the bottom and the latter on top.
Finally, on the French keyboard, how do you type the capitalized versions of the accented characters? Are accented characters never capitalized in French?
I haven’t used a French keyboard specifically so what I tell you is about German keyboards.
If there’s one character at the bottom and one at the top you get the upper one with Shift.
However, if there’s one character in the lower-right then you get that one with AltGr which is equivalent to Alt+Ctrl. See @ on the Q key, € on the E key, or the symbols ²³{[]}\ on the number row. Is the % and ù case you’re talking about perhaps the same thing?
German keyboards also have dedicated umlaut keys, and the accent keys are “dead keys” which wait for a second key before they display a character, so you can type ` and then a to get à.
French does have capitalized accented characters, though whether you use them is a question of style. I would assume you just get them in the normal way – by pressing Shift in addition to the vowel or accented character key.
Another question, this time about the new Apple keyboards.
The new keyboards have a row of 19 function keys along the top. Most of these keys have an additional hardware function assigned to them. Obviously, you press the “fn” key to get the other action, but which of the two sets of actions is performed by default (i.e. without pressing the “fn” key)?
Finally, the option keys also have the word “alt” printed along the top. Does this reflect a second function for the keys, or is it just an alternate name?
It’s a software setting – in the Keyboard & Mouse system preferences pane, there’s a “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” checkbox that controls the default behavior.
If it’s checked, you get F1/F2/F3/etc by default. If it’s un-checked, you get the hardware functions.
I believe the default is un-checked, so the hardware functions happen by default.
It’s just an alternate name; if you’re booted into Windows or Linux or something, or you’re using X11, ‘alt’ is going to be more meaningful than ‘option’.
More questions. What are the Spanish names for the “Left”, “Right”, “Up”, “Down”, “Space”, “Super” (“Windows” or “Start”) and “Menu” keys? I can’t find a reference online that spells out the actual names instead of the icons/symbols. Thanks.
