Add guidance for keyboard shortcuts for international keyboards #11986
Labels
documentation
enhancement
tag:Accessibility
tag:Documentation
tag:Keyboard
Compatibility issues with keyboards, including locale-specific and layout-specific issues
Related indirectly to #7579.
Document best practices for selecting a keyboard shortcut for a new command. In particular, favor using letters A–Z and digits 0–9 and avoid using symbols such as backtick, tilde, and brackets.
Problem
There are hundreds of keyboard layouts that are in use in the world, representing a combination of countries, languages, operating systems, and user preferences (QWERTY vs. Dvorak, for example). Many European keyboards have both a
SHIFT
key and anALT GR
(distinct fromALT
) key which are used to produce an alternate symbol. Common programming symbols such as{
and}
require a US English keyboard user to pressSHIFT
and a key, but a Norwegian user would have to pressALT GR
and a key. The backtick key may be present only as a "grave accent" dead key, which requires a user to press a second key to display anything (e.g.,grave accent, E
producesè
).Proposed Solution
Amend the documentation to recommend that when users add a new keyboard shortcut for their command, they use only letters A–Z or digits 0–9, avoiding symbols, as symbols may not be available on all international keyboards.
Additional context
Many keyboard layouts are available on-line, such as the Norwegian keyboard layout mentioned above.
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