[TxMt] Re: US keymap

[Thorsten Hamann]

Allan,

Allan Odgaard schrieb:
>> wow, just wow. :) [...] if I have to choose between some minor  
>> inconvenience in one or two applications [and] having to learn  
>> shortcuts for common characters of my native language  [...] I'll  
>> choose the inconvenience of sometimes having to use the mouse [...]
> 
> For those of us working a lot in the shell or writing source code or  
> similar, most European keyboards are a MAJOR inconvenience, hopefully  
> people are not switching keyboard layout just to make ⌘/ easier, but  
> because they type a lot of {, }, [, ], /, \, |, etc.  The ratio of  
> before mentioned characters and Danish accented characters is probably  
> 1:1,000…

I couldn't find the keymap Apple uses for Danish keyboards, but the PC 
ones are very similar to the German ones, only our äöü replaced with 
your equivalents, so I'm not far off your layout.

Frankly I don't see any problems with [] and {}, they're just Alt-5/6 
and Alt-8/9, | is Alt-7 and the \ is the most complicated one with 
Alt-Shift-7, resulting in the key "7" to hold all three slashes, which 
is nice.

While I agree that I write more parantheses (and kinds thereof) than 
Umlauts when I program, I don't program *all the time*. Actually I spend 
just as much time, if not more, writing e-mails and documentation, 
creating presentations, drawing diagrams and so on.

So looking at the total time spent with my computer, the German layout 
is of hindrance in Textmate only (which, again, doesn't bother me all 
that much), but helps me all the rest of my day. Just remapping the 
shortcuts I need in one application is much easier than having to deal 
with another layout only I have and having to adapt every time I'm not 
using my own machine.

Hans' mileage obviously varies. I figure he programs a lot more than I 
do. :)

May I ask why you didn't make the shortcuts so that they worked on both 
US and European keyboards, if you have one yourself? (I assume the 
decision wasn't an easy one, and I'd like to know why.)

Thorsten
-- 
Jesus saves. Buddha makes incremental backups.