Keyboard question - UK

[Azlan]

Alright ya Brits, got a question for you as I haven't been able to obtain a satisfactory answer from my UK vendor Misco/Systemax or HP itself.

Is there a functional, or key option difference in QUERTY keyboards between UK and US layouts?

[superluser]

Is there a functional, or key option difference in QUERTY keyboards between UK and US layouts?

Well, we have QWERTY, while you seem to have QUERTY... 

Do you have a US keyboard or a UK keyboard?  Are you trying to connect it to software that expects a US or UK layout?

Here's the keyboard layout from Wikipedia.  You can see that there is a difference between the right alt and the left alt, though the same is technically true of all 101-key keyboards, as anyone who had to do the three finger salute in the olden days can attest.

So if you're trying to connect a UK keyboard to something that expects a US layout, I think the only difference is that you won't be able to access the UK keys that require AltGr, while if you're trying to connect a US keyboard to something that expects a UK layout, you'll probably want to buy some labels for the keys that are different.

[Tapewolf]

Is there a functional, or key option difference in QUERTY keyboards between UK and US layouts?

Just checking, you do mean 'QWERTY', right?  'QUERTY' isn't a layout I know of, and if that is what you mean I can't help you.

In a nutshell, US/UK keyboards are slightly different, yes.  There's an extra key between ';' and Enter which produces a # or ~.  The other immediate difference is that shift-3 will produce a pound sign.  @ and " are swapped over.
There's a few other minor differences to do with where symbols are located.

*EDIT*
And as Superluser says, the ALT handling is different.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

In my experience, the Alt handling is identical. Maybe I just haven't run across a requirement for AltGr, or maybe Linux just Does The Right Thing in both cases...

The labels are different, but the uses are pretty much identical. Windows, of course, is a law unto itself...

[Azlan]

Thanks.  Yes, QWERTY... typo on my part.

[Sofox]

I was always irritated on US keyboards that there wasn't a backslash key next to the left shift. The US keyboard literally doesn't have a key there, just an extra big shift key (then I laughed when I saw a high tech keyboard where you could change what letter was displayed on each key... that still had that extra big shift key and was useless to most people outside America [who also have a similar physical keyboard layout])

Keep in mind, there's a difference between a keyboards physical layout, and key layout.
The physical layout determines the amount of keys and their shape and position.
Wheras key layout can mean that pressing a single key may give one symbol or another.

[superluser]

In my experience, the Alt handling is identical. Maybe I just haven't run across a requirement for AltGr, or maybe Linux just Does The Right Thing in both cases...

The labels are different, but the uses are pretty much identical. Windows, of course, is a law unto itself...

In my case, both alt keys are labeled the same, but do different things.  X11 treats both Alt and AltGr the same way when switching between X and the console, but the console treats them as different keys and won't let you switch between consoles if you try to use AltGr.

Now, can we discuss relegating Caps Lock to the Scroll Lock position?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

In my case, both alt keys are labeled the same, but do different things.  X11 treats both Alt and AltGr the same way when switching between X and the console, but the console treats them as different keys and won't let you switch between consoles if you try to use AltGr.

Alt+F1-F12, AltGr+F1-F12, Alt+Shift+F1-F12, AltGr+Shift+F1-F12 is, if I remember correctly, the sequence. So AltGr won't work unless you have >12 ttys set up - and the default is just six. Or if you set up tty13-24, even if you've got less than 12, I suppose.

And, of course, Alt+Left and Alt+Right to cycle through them.


... I used to have a lot of consoles, and didn't run X most of the time. Not least because I was waiting for it to compile... back on my old P150 with a massive 64Mb RAM. As I recall, it was something like 12-24 hours to compile X. And then, I think, it didn't work due to what eventually turned out to be a config error. That's back a few years, now, though. I think that was XFree86 R3 or so.


Sorry. Slightly distracted. Where were we?

[Tapewolf]

I've had keyboards which treat both ALT keys the same, and keyboards which treat them different.  Then again, I did once have a US keyboard so that may have been one of them.

At the time we got the US keyboard for only about £40 because no-one wanted them in the UK.  In 1989 that was considered something of a bargain, and it was useful too because now I can use US and UK keyboard layouts with nearly equal faculty.  This is handy for unconfigured machines and when XP at work forgets what layout it was told to use, something it does with horrifying regularity.

AltGr won't work unless you have >12 ttys set up - and the default is just six. Or if you set up tty13-24, even if you've got less than 12, I suppose.

Sorry. Slightly distracted. Where were we?

You were about to tell me how to configure the number of consoles in linux 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

You were about to tell me how to configure the number of consoles in linux 

... You don't know? /etc/inittab, like so:

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6
7:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty7
...

.. and then "telinit q"

I believe the system can deal with up to 64 or so, but I don't think I've had more than 24 because I couldn't figure out which keystroke was required for 25 and up (so my previous list was incorrect. I think.)

Do note that X will use one of the ttys, so if you have X running, skip #7 - and if you shut down X before you edit it, you can quite happily use 7, because X picks the first unused one - this has interesting effects when you're running more than one copy of X on a box, although that's kind of interesting as well because you get other effects in the graphics cards, but, once again, I digress...

... okay, now I'm going to go poke about and see if I can figure out that keystroke.

[Tapewolf]

... You don't know?

No, and I've never been able to find any documentation related to it.  This is of particular use when dealing with distros that have capped it to four or even one single VT...

/etc/inittab, like so:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6
7:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty7
...

.. and then "telinit q"

Cool, thanks.  Actually that looks familiar so I may have discovered the trick and forgotten it again...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

If you want to use more than  24 of them, look into man keymaps to figure out how to add more consoles to the keys - you can specify which are which - looking at my setup here, only the first 24 are configured.

It looks reasonably trivial to write an addition which sets alt+shift and altgr+shift; anyone who can't figure that out is welcome to come back to me and I'll go through it...