Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by thaumasiotes 3377 days ago
I wouldn't want to make that bet, considering a US keyboard has no AltGr key.

It might work with a US keyboard as long as your computer was configured for an Italian keyboard, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key suggests that from the keyboard's perspective, AltGr and right Alt are the same thing. Really, no keyboard allows any character -- they just send key codes (and modifier codes), and it's on your software to interpret those. But typing ² is not part of the normal, expected functioning of a US keyboard.

Edit: it occurs to me that perhaps I should gloss "it's on your software to interpret those" as "it is the responsibility of your software to interpret those".

1 comments

You're right, US keyboards do not support AltGr! I have always used european keyboards and every one of them supports AltGr, so I assumed that US keyboards did the same.

Just for testing, I installed a few new keyboards on my KDE desktop, and I can confirm that French, German, Spanish, and Greek keyboards have support for AltGr combinations to get superscripts/fractions/other characters.

I've never required that a keyboard could allow any character. However, this is indeed possible today, as Shift+Ctrl+u+HexNumber allows to quickly insert any Unicode character. (This works under Xfce and KDE, and probably other DEs.)

Nevertheless, I think that a 100-and-more-keys keyboard should support a subset of the most useful ones. I am a physicist and an Italian, so having quick keyboard combinations for exponents, fractions, and the euro sign € is extremely handy for my everyday activities.

I think what you are looking for is the us international keyboard layout, which has support for altgr combinations