why so many different keyboard layouts for different countries

I am taking about countries that us an A-Z alphabet , like USA, EUROPE, AUSTRALIA, ect.

Are they really needed, why not just one layout , it would make it cheaper to be able to sell the same notebook, rather than umpteen keyboard layouts.

Thanks.

John.

 

I think in australia we have the US layout.

 

Yeah, I think so. The UK layout has the pound key (anything else? lol), and the European keyboards cater for letter accents. Probably wouldn't cost too much to change layouts as I think they just have to print different letters on the keys.

 

Because even though they use the roman alphabet for the most part, there are key differences and different characters used. For example, typing in spanish is a pita on my laptop. I am sure the situation is similar for other languages as well.

Also, the only difference between the keyboards are what is printed on them, so no, standardizing keyboards would not really save anyone money, especially since it would make them more difficult for people to work with.

 

I agree, make one layout. US/international is fine for me. All Windows versions can be English. This will make laptops cheaper and easier to import from other countries.

 

On NBR , all users use the standard A-Z and 0-9 and nobody has any problems, I don't see why keyboard cannot be the same, there should be a single keyboard layout.

 

That's because you don't know any other language, I presume. In many European languages (French, German, Spanish, Swedish, etc.) you need additional characters (such as ß, ä, ö, ü, to take German as an example) that are not part of the English keyboard layout. Believe it or not, citizens of these countries still sometimes do need to write documents in their native languages...

 

Indeed, the US international keyboard isn't bad, but it's certainly not as efficient as a French or Bilingual layout when doing accents. Also, if you use standard US English layout, you have to type atl+138 on the numberpad to get an accent on the 'e' like this: è. However on a French keyboard, you have a key with the accent and you just press that before the 'e' key and it makes that. It also works for every letter requiring said accent such as à or ì or è On laptops especially(where there's no numberpad half the time), this is especially useful.

 

Depending on the program, this is pretty easy on a USA layout. Languages that are mostly Latin-based aren't so bad. Ctrl + ` , e or Ctrl + ' , e, or whatever else might be on top or bottom. It's when you get non-Latin letters or uncommon characters that there's a bigger issue.

 

My point is, people have different comfort levels with different things. That's why there's so many layouts and programming settings for keyboards. I'm always pro-choice so forcing something as subjective as the comfort of typing on everyone is a no-no to me.

That's like saying everyone has similar shaped butts, we should only manufacture 1 kind of chair for those people and then leave people with special needs on their other kinds of chair.

 

It's truly painful to use an American keyboard to type long texts in French; the opposite isn't true btw so we should replace the american qwerty keyboard by the french azerty as the worldwide standard .

Seriously,I need é, è, ç, à, ù, ê, ï all the time. I certainly don't want those keys to become combo.

In fact, we have French Belgian keyboard which isn't the same as the French "from France" keyboard.

 

In Spain we have ñ

 

ão and ç in Portuguese

 

i think in the Asia Pacific region US layout is standard.. its is so in india and singapore i think..

from the US to UK keyboard , its a mighty difference for me.. no $ sign etc and different fn's etc so i prefer US keyboard always.

 

This is like asking "Why doesn't everyone in the world just speak and write English only". Sure it would make your life easier, but it's not going to work out for everyone else in the world. A lot of languages have different symbols and it is a lot easier with their keyboard layout.

 

I think all answers have been given now. Thread will be closed.