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by v-erne 1202 days ago
You just made me to get my MacBook out of closet :) (I stopped using it two months ago and moved to X1 carbon right before pandemic)

The ergonomic of \{X} is exactly the same on it as on my carbon x1, my keychron tls and four other keyboards I happen to have in my drawer.

Are You using modified Apple II like Rebecca Heineman or some kind of super small keyboard that looks like someone forgot to put all the keys in :) ?

Either way its on you not Java.

(Dont take this wrong way - this is an honest question - here in Poland almost all keyboard are backslash friendly and I would live to knowe where this is not the case)
1 comments
qw 1202 days ago
It's a standard full sized external Mac keyboard for Norway bought directly from the Apple store. We share the keyboard with Denmark too I think. The Swedes and Finns have different keyboards, but I think they use a similar combination for backslash.

So the Mac issue applies to 4 countries in the Nordics at least. Please note that traditional PC keyboards use a different layout for some characters and may in some cases have a dedicated key for backslash too, in case you Google Norwegian keyboards. It's one of those Mac vs PC things we are used to.

Before anyone starts suggesting connecting a PC keyboard to my MacBook Pro, keep in mind that I use the built in keyboard almost 50% of the time and having two different key mappings is a hassle

Regarding backslashes and other special characters, I never said it's on Java specifically, but the US centric culture in general. K&R used curly brackets when they designed C because they fit the US teletype character set of the 60s/70s, but that doesn't mean it's the best choice today.

I'm not suggesting we use special unicode symbols like arrows and emojis, but just pause for a minute and look beyond the US keyboard and see if we can find a solution that also works ergonomically for at least some non-US countries.

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v-erne 1202 days ago
Yeah, I agree that it would be nice to have option that works for all and takes all National quirks under consideration.

Do You have some specific way of template definition in mind that You think would work here?

And what about curly brackets, especially in context of templates, what would you use instead?

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