Text 25475, 93 rader
Skriven 2008-12-31 12:16:35 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Keyboards (was: God vs Science!)
========================================
Hello Robert,

On Tuesday December 30 2008 09:41, you wrote to me:

 MV>> I very much doubt your keyboard has extra keys. Extra physical
 MV>> keys that is. I think that your keyboard had the exact same amount
 MV>> of keys as mine and that it only differs in the inscripions on the
 MV>> key caps.

 RB> I seem to remember that there are a couple of extra keys, but can't
 RB> say positively, as I have no US keyboard to compare.

My memory says that the German keyboards I saw have no extra keys. But.. my
memory is notoriously unreliable as well, so let us try to find some hard
evidence. Here is a picture of a standard 104 key IBM AT keyboard:

http://watch.impress.co.jp/pc/docs/article/20000726/ibm101.jpg

The only thing in which it differs from modern keyboards are the three "windows
keys" in the bottom row.

Compare it with your keyboard and tell us if (other than the three window keys
in the bottom row) it has extra keys for the special German characters.

 RB>>> An interesting side comment has to do with IBM Thinkpad laptops:
 RB>>> There are a lot of them in Germany with US keyboards, so what do
 RB>>> people do? They buy labels with the German characters printed on
 RB>>> them and stick them to the appropriate keys. Presto-changeo,
 RB>>> you've got a German keyboard, and it works perfectly when you use
 RB>>> the German keyboard drivers.

 MV>> Exactly as a said: the keyboards are the same, the difference are
 MV>> the inscriptions on the caps and the keyboard driver.

 RB> Trouble is that the Thinkpad keyboard is differently arranged than a
 RB> standard keyboard,

That goes for (allmost) all laptops.

 MV>> Except of course that a laptop keyboard misses the nummeric
 MV>> keyboard and the associated extra keys, so the have the function
 MV>> keys to add "virtual" keys.

 RB> In the Thinkpads, they have function keys like everywhere else, but
 RB> also a "Fn" key on the lower left where the Ctrl key is on a standard
 RB> keyboard.

That is what I meant. It has that in common with almost all laptops. My Compaq
has the blue FN key in the lower left as well.

It may differ in what extra functions arre assigned to what keys however.

 RB>  Press that together with one of the function keys and you
 RB> can, for example, put the computer into hibernation.

Yes,it does that, but it also serves to comibie some of the normal keyboard
functions in one key. E.g. the Print screen, Scroll lock, pause, sysreq,
numlock and break functions are obtained by pressing the Fn key together with
Insert, Home, Page up, delete, end or page down key.

The Fn key also servers to create a "nummeric keyboard" using the

              789
              UIO
              JKL
               M

                       block of keys. That makes it a bit akward to use the Alt
nummeric keyboard method to produce special characters as one has to activate
numlock and then push the Fn and Alt keys simultaneously with the required
"nummeric"keys to produce the combination.

 MV>> I experimented quite a bit with relabelling keys, but I never
 MV>> found labels that did not rub off.

 MV>> Looks like someone finally found a way to do it...

 RB> The ones I bought and applied (from Ebay) appear to have no problems
 RB> in this respect. As I wrote, I suspect the difference to be laser
 RB> printing rather than just normal ink printing.

I suspect the secret is not ink vs laser, but an extra protective layer.

The best results I ever got is finishing the new labels with transparent nail
polish. It does not look very nice, but it lasts longer than anything else I
tried.

Have a nice Silvester.

Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20070503
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