title: CN Tower

text: The idea for the main level in its current form evolved around this time, but the Space Deck (later renamed SkyPod) was not part of the plans until some time later. One engineer, in particular, felt that visitors would feel the higher observation deck would be worth paying extra for, and the costs in terms of construction were not prohibitive. It was also some time around this point that it was realized that the tower could become the world's tallest free-standing structure to improve signal quality and attract tourists, and plans were changed to incorporate subtle modifications throughout the structure to this end.


title: CN Tower

text: The CN Tower was built by Canada Cement Company (also known as the Cement Foundation Company of Canada at the time), a subsidiary of Sweden's Skanska, a global project-development and construction group.


title: CN Tower

text: Construction began on February 6, 1973, with massive excavations at the tower base for the foundation. By the time the foundation was complete, of earth and shale were removed to a depth of in the centre, and a base incorporating of concrete with of rebar and of steel cable had been built to a thickness of . This portion of the construction was fairly rapid, with only four months needed between the start and the foundation being ready for construction on top.


title: CN Tower

text: To create the main support pillar, workers constructed a hydraulically raised slipform at the base. This was a fairly unprecedented engineering feat on its own, consisting of a large metal platform that raised itself on jacks at about per day as the concrete below set. Concrete was poured Monday to Friday (not continuously) by a small team of people until February 22, 1974, at which time it had already become the tallest structure in Canada, surpassing the recently built Inco Superstack in Sudbury, which was built using similar methods.


title: CN Tower

text: The tower contains of concrete, all of which was mixed on-site in order to ensure batch consistency. Through the pour, the vertical accuracy of the tower was maintained by comparing the slip form's location to massive plumb bobs hanging from it, observed by small telescopes from the ground. Over the height of the tower, it varies from true vertical accuracy by only .


title: CN Tower

text: In August 1974, construction of the main level commenced. Using 45 hydraulic jacks attached to cables strung from a temporary steel crown anchored to the top of the tower, twelve giant steel and wooden bracket forms were slowly raised, ultimately taking about a week to crawl up to their final position. These forms were used to create the brackets that support the main level, as well as a base for the construction of the main level itself. The Space Deck (currently named SkyPod) was built of concrete poured into a wooden frame attached to rebar at the lower level deck, and then reinforced with a large steel compression band around the outside.


title: CN Tower

text: While still under construction, the CN Tower officially became the world's tallest free-standing structure on March 31, 1975.


title: CN Tower

text: The antenna was originally to be raised by crane as well, but during construction, the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane helicopter became available when the United States Army sold one to civilian operators. The helicopter, named "Olga", was first used to remove the crane, and then flew the antenna up in 36 sections.


title: CN Tower

text: The flights of the antenna pieces were a minor tourist attraction of their own, and the schedule was printed in the local newspapers. Use of the helicopter saved months of construction time, with this phase taking only three and a half weeks instead of the planned six months. The tower was topped-off on April 2, 1975, after 26 months of construction, officially capturing the height record from Moscow's Ostankino Tower, and bringing the total mass to .


title: CN Tower

text: Two years into the construction, plans for Metro Centre were scrapped, leaving the tower isolated on the Railway Lands in what was then a largely abandoned light-industrial space. This caused serious problems for tourists to access the tower. Ned Baldwin, project architect with John Andrews, wrote at the time that "All of the logic which dictated the design of the lower accommodation has been upset," and that "Under such ludicrous circumstances Canadian National would hardly have chosen this location to build."


title: CN Tower

text: The CN Tower opened on June 26, 1976. The construction costs of approximately ($ in dollars) were repaid in fifteen years.


title: CN Tower

text: From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the CN Tower was practically the only development along Front Street West; it was still possible to see Lake Ontario from the foot of the CN Tower due to the expansive parking lots and lack of development in the area at the time. As the area around the tower was developed, particularly with the completion of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (north building) in 1984 and SkyDome in 1989 (renamed Rogers Centre in 2005), the former Railway Lands were redeveloped and the tower became the centre of a newly developing entertainment area. Access was greatly improved with the construction of the SkyWalk in 1989, which connected the tower and SkyDome to the nearby Union Station railway and subway station, and, in turn, to the city's Path underground pedestrian system. By the mid-1990s, it was the centre of a thriving tourist district. The entire area continues to be an area of intense building, notably a boom in condominium construction in the first quarter of the 21st century, as well as the 2013 opening of the Ripley's Aquarium by the base of the tower.


title: CN Tower

text: When the CN Tower opened in 1976, there were three public observation points: the SkyPod (then known as the Space Deck) that stands at , the Indoor Observation Level (later named Indoor Lookout Level) at , and the Outdoor Observation Terrace (at the same level as the Glass Floor) at . One floor above the Indoor Observation Level was the Top of Toronto Restaurant, which completed a revolution once every 72 minutes.


title: CN Tower

text: The tower would garner worldwide media attention when stuntman Dar Robinson jumped off of the CN Tower on two occasions in 1979 and 1980. The first was for a scene from the movie "Highpoint", in which Robinson received $250,000 ($ in dollars) for the stunt. The second was for a personal documentary. Both stunts used a wire decelerator attached to his back as a safety measure.


title: CN Tower

text: On June 26, 1986, the ten-year anniversary of the tower's opening, high-rise firefighting and rescue advocate Dan Goodwin, in a sponsored publicity event, used his hands and feet to climb the outside of the tower, a feat he performed twice on the same day. Following both ascents, he used multiple rappels to descend to the ground.


title: CN Tower

text: A glass floor at an elevation of was installed in 1994. Canadian National Railway sold the tower to Canada Lands Company prior to privatizing the company in 1995, when it divested all operations not directly related to its core freight shipping businesses. The tower's name and wordmark were adjusted to remove the CN railways logo, and the tower was renamed Canada's National Tower (from Canadian National Tower), though the tower is commonly called the CN Tower.


title: CN Tower

text: Further changes were made from 1997 to January 2004, TrizecHahn Corporation managed the tower and instituted several expansion projects including a entertainment expansion and revitalization that included the 1997 addition of two new elevators (to a total of six) and the consequential relocation of the staircase from the north side leg to inside the core of the building, a conversion that also added nine stairs to the climb. TrizecHahn also owned the Willis Tower (Sears Tower at the time) in Chicago approximately at the same time.


title: CN Tower

text: In 2007, light-emitting diode (LED) lights replaced the incandescent lights that lit the CN Tower at night, the reason cited being that LED lights are more cost and energy efficient than the incandescent lights. The colour of the LED lights can change, compared to the constant white colour of the incandescent lights. On September 12, 2007, Burj Khalifa, then under construction and known as Burj Dubai, surpassed the CN Tower as the world's tallest free-standing structure. In 2008, glass panels were installed in one of the CN Tower elevators, which established a world record (346 m) for highest glass floor panelled elevator in the world.


title: CN Tower

text: On August 1, 2011, the CN Tower opened the EdgeWalk, an amusement in which thrill-seekers can walk on and around the roof of the main pod of the tower at , which is directly above the 360 Restaurant. It is the world's highest full-circle, hands-free walk. Visitors are tethered to an overhead rail system and walk around the edge of the CN Tower's main pod above the 360 Restaurant on a metal floor. The attraction is closed throughout the winter and during periods of electrical storms and high winds.


title: CN Tower

text: One of the notable guests who visited EdgeWalk was Canadian comedian Rick Mercer as featured as the first episode of the ninth season of his CBC Television news satire show, "Rick Mercer Report". There, he was accompanied by Canadian pop singer Jann Arden. The episode first aired on April 10, 2013.


title: CN Tower

text: The tower and surrounding areas were prominent in the 2015 Pan American Games production. In the opening ceremony a pre-recorded segment featured track-and-field athlete Bruny Surin passing the flame to sprinter Donovan Bailey on the EdgeWalk and parachuting into Rogers Centre. A fireworks display off the tower concluded both the opening and closing ceremonies.


title: CN Tower

text: On July 1, 2017, as part of the nationwide celebrations for Canada 150, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, fireworks were once again shot from the tower in a five-minute display coordinated with the tower lights and music broadcast on a local radio station.


title: CN Tower

text: The CN Tower consists of several substructures. The main portion of the tower is a hollow concrete hexagonal pillar containing the stairwells and power and plumbing connections. The tower's six elevators are located in the three inverted angles created by the Tower's hexagonal shape (two elevators per angle). Each of the three elevator shafts is lined with glass, allowing for views of the city as the glass-windowed elevators make their way through the tower. The stairwell was originally located in one of these angles (the one facing north), but was moved into the central hollow of the tower; the tower's new fifth and sixth elevators were placed in the hexagonal angle that once contained the stairwell. On top of the main concrete portion of the tower is a tall metal broadcast antenna, carrying television and radio signals. There are three visitor areas: the Glass Floor and Outdoor Observation Terrace, which are both located at an elevation of , the Indoor Lookout Level (formerly known as "Indoor Observation Level") located at , and the higher SkyPod (formerly known as "Space Deck") at , just below the metal antenna. The hexagonal shape is visible between the two areas; however, below the main deck, three large supporting legs give the tower the appearance of a large tripod.


title: CN Tower

text: The main deck level has seven storeys, some of which are open to the public. Below the public areas — at — is a large white donut-shaped radome containing the structure's UHF transmitters. The glass floor and outdoor observation deck are at . The glass floor has an area of and can withstand a pressure of . The floor's thermal glass units are thick, consisting of a pane of laminated glass, airspace and a pane of laminated glass. In 2008, one elevator was upgraded to add a glass floor panel, believed to have the highest vertical rise of any elevator equipped with this feature. The Horizons Cafe and the lookout level are at . The 360 Restaurant, a revolving restaurant that completes a full rotation once every 72 minutes, is at . When the tower first opened, it also featured a disco named Sparkles (at the Indoor Observation Level), billed as the highest disco and dance floor in the world.


title: CN Tower

text: The SkyPod was once the highest public observation deck in the world until it was surpassed by the Shanghai World Financial Center in 2008.


title: CN Tower

text: A metal staircase reaches the main deck level after 1,776 steps, and the SkyPod above after 2,579 steps; it is the tallest metal staircase on Earth. These stairs are intended for emergency use only and are not open to the public, except for charity stair-climb events two times during the year. The average climber takes approximately 30 minutes to climb to the base of the radome, but the fastest climb on record is 7 minutes and 52 seconds in 1989 by Brendan Keenoy, an Ontario Provincial Police officer. In 2002, Canadian Olympian and Paralympic champion Jeff Adams climbed the stairs of the tower in a specially designed wheelchair. The stairs were originally on one of the three sides of the tower (facing north), with a glass view, but these were later replaced with the third elevator pair and the stairs were moved to the inside of the core. Top climbs on the new, windowless stairwell used since around 2003 have generally been over ten minutes.


title: CN Tower

text: A freezing rain storm on March 2, 2007, resulted in a layer of ice several centimetres thick forming on the side of the tower and other downtown buildings. The sun thawed the ice, and winds of up to blew some of it away from the structure. There were fears that cars and windows of nearby buildings would be smashed by large chunks of ice. In response, police closed some streets surrounding the tower. During morning rush hour on March 5 of the same year, police expanded the area of closed streets to include the Gardiner Expressway away from the tower as increased winds blew the ice farther away, as far north as King Street West, away, where a taxicab window was shattered. Subsequently, on March 6, 2007, the Gardiner Expressway reopened after winds abated.


title: CN Tower

text: On April 16, 2018, falling ice from the CN Tower punctured the roof of the nearby Rogers Centre stadium, causing the Toronto Blue Jays to postpone the game that day to the following day as a doubleheader; this was the third doubleheader held at the Rogers Centre. On April 20 of the same year, the CN Tower reopened.


title: CN Tower

text: In August 2000, a fire broke out at the Ostankino Tower in Moscow killing three people and causing extensive damage. The fire was blamed on poor maintenance and outdated equipment. The failure of the fire-suppression systems and the lack of proper equipment for firefighters allowed the fire to destroy most of the interior and spark fears the tower might even collapse.


title: CN Tower

text: The Ostankino Tower was completed nine years before the CN Tower and is only shorter. The parallels between the towers led to some concern that the CN Tower could be at risk of a similar tragedy. However, Canadian officials subsequently stated that it is "highly unlikely" that a similar disaster could occur at the CN Tower, as it has important safeguards that were not present in the Ostankino Tower. Specifically, officials cited:


title: CN Tower

text: Officials also noted that the CN Tower has an excellent safety record, although there was an electrical fire in the antennae on August 16, 2017 — the tower's first fire. Moreover, other supertall structures built between 1967 and 1976 — such as the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), the World Trade Center (until its destruction on September 11, 2001), the Fernsehturm Berlin, the Aon Center, 875 North Michigan Avenue (formerly the John Hancock Center), and First Canadian Place — also have excellent safety records, which suggests that the Ostankino Tower accident was a rare safety failure, and that the likelihood of similar events occurring at other supertall structures is extremely low.


title: CN Tower

text: The CN Tower was originally lit at night with incandescent lights, which were removed in 1997 because they were inefficient and expensive to repair. In June 2007, the tower was outfitted with 1,330 super-bright LED lights inside the elevator shafts, shooting over the main pod and upward to the top of the tower's mast to light the tower from dusk until 2 a.m. The official opening ceremony took place on June 28, 2007 before the Canada Day holiday weekend.


title: CN Tower

text: The tower changes its lighting scheme on holidays and to commemorate major events. After the 95th Grey Cup in Toronto, the tower was lit in green and white to represent the colours of the Grey Cup champion Saskatchewan Roughriders. From sundown on August 27, 2011, to sunrise the following day, the tower was lit in orange, the official colour of the New Democratic Party (NDP), to commemorate the death of federal NDP leader and leader of the official opposition Jack Layton. When former South African president Nelson Mandela died, the tower was lit in the colours of the South African flag. When former federal finance minister under Stephen Harper's Conservatives Jim Flaherty died, the tower was lit in green to reflect his Irish Canadian heritage. On the night of the attacks on Paris on November 13, 2015, the tower displayed the colours of the French flag. On June 8, 2021, the tower displayed the colours of the Toronto Maple Leafs' archrivals Montreal Canadiens after they advanced to the semifinals of 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs. The CN Tower was lit in the colours of the Ukrainian flag during the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022.


title: CN Tower

text: Programmed remotely from a desktop computer with a wireless network interface controller in Burlington, Ontario, the LEDs use less energy to light than the previous incandescent lights (10% less energy than the dimly lit version and 60% less than the brightly lit version). The estimated cost to use the LEDs is $1,000 per month.


title: CN Tower

text: During the spring and autumn bird migration seasons, the lights would be turned off to comply with the voluntary Fatal Light Awareness Program, which "encourages buildings to dim unnecessary exterior lighting to mitigate bird mortality during spring and summer migration."


title: CN Tower

text: The CN Tower is the tallest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere. As of 2013, there were two other freestanding structures in the Western Hemisphere exceeding in height: the Willis Tower in Chicago, which stands at when measured to its pinnacle, and One World Trade Center in New York City, which has a pinnacle height of , or approximately shorter than the CN Tower. Due to the symbolism of the number 1776 (the year of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence), the height of One World Trade Center is unlikely to be increased. The proposed Chicago Spire was expected to exceed the height of the CN Tower, but its construction was halted early due to financial difficulties amid the Great Recession, and was eventually cancelled in 2010.


title: CN Tower

text: "Guinness World Records" has called the CN Tower "the world's tallest self-supporting tower" and "the world's tallest free-standing tower". Although Guinness did list this description of the CN Tower under the heading "tallest building" at least once, it has also listed it under "tallest tower", omitting it from its list of "tallest buildings." In 1996, Guinness changed the tower's classification to "World's Tallest Building and Freestanding Structure". Emporis and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat both listed the CN Tower as the world's tallest free-standing structure on land, and specifically state that the CN Tower is not a true building, thereby awarding the title of world's tallest building to Taipei 101, which is shorter than the CN Tower. The issue of what was tallest became moot when Burj Khalifa, then under construction, exceeded the height of the CN Tower in 2007 (see below).


title: CN Tower

text: Although the CN Tower contains a restaurant, a gift shop and multiple observation levels, it does not have floors continuously from the ground, and therefore it is not considered a building by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) or Emporis. CTBUH defines a building as "a structure that is designed for residential, business, or manufacturing purposes. An essential characteristic of a building is that it has floors." The CN Tower and other similar structures—such as the Ostankino Tower in Moscow, Russia; the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, China; The Strat in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France—are categorized as "towers", which are free-standing structures that may have observation decks and a few other habitable levels, but do not have floors from the ground up. The CN Tower was the tallest tower by this definition until 2010 (see below).


title: CN Tower

text: Taller than the CN Tower are numerous radio masts and towers, which are held in place by guy-wires, the tallest being the KVLY-TV mast in Blanchard, North Dakota, in the United States at tall, leading to a distinction between these and "free-standing" structures. Additionally, the Petronius Platform stands above its base on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, but only the top of this oil and natural gas platform are above water, and the structure is thus partially supported by its buoyancy. Like the CN Tower, none of these taller structures are commonly considered buildings.


title: CN Tower

text: On September 12, 2007, Burj Khalifa, which is a hotel, residential and commercial building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and was formerly known as Burj Dubai before opening, passed the CN Tower's 553.33-metre height. The CN Tower held the record of tallest freestanding structure on land for over 30 years.


title: CN Tower

text: After Burj Khalifa had been formally recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's tallest freestanding structure, Guinness re-certified CN Tower as the world's tallest freestanding tower. The tower definition used by Guinness was defined by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat as 'a building in which less than 50% of the construction is usable floor space'. "Guinness World Records" editor-in-chief Craig Glenday announced that Burj Khalifa was not classified as a tower because it has too much usable floor space to be considered to be a tower. CN Tower still held world records for highest above ground wine cellar (in 360 Restaurant) at 351 metres, highest above ground restaurant at 346 metres (Horizons Restaurant), and tallest free-standing concrete tower during Guinness's recertification. The CN Tower was surpassed in 2009 by the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China, which stands at tall, as the world's tallest tower; which in turn was surpassed by the Tokyo Skytree in 2011, which currently is the tallest tower at in height. The CN Tower, as of 2018, stands as the ninth-tallest free-standing structure on land, remains the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere, and is the third-tallest tower.


title: CN Tower

text: The CN Tower has been and continues to be used as a communications tower for a number of different media and by numerous companies.


title: CN Tower

text: There is no AM broadcasting on the CN Tower. The FM transmitters are situated in a metal broadcast antenna, on top of the main concrete portion of the tower at an elevation above .


title: CN Tower

text: The CN Tower has been featured in numerous films, television shows, music recording covers, and video games. The tower also has its own official mascot, which resembles the tower itself.


title: Keyboard layout

text: A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Modern computer keyboards are designed to send a scancode to the operating system (OS) when a key is pressed or released: this code reports only the key's row and column, not the specific character engraved on that key. The OS converts the scancode into a specific binary character code using a "scancode to character" conversion table, called the keyboard mapping table. This means that a physical keyboard may be dynamically mapped to any layout without switching hardware components—merely by changing the software that interprets the keystrokes. Often, a user can change keyboard mapping in system settings. In addition, software may be available to modify or extend keyboard functionality. Thus the symbol shown on the physical key-top need not be the same as appears on the screen or goes into a document being typed. Some settings enable the user to type supplementary symbols which are not engraved on the keys used to invoke them. Modern USB keyboards are plug and play; they communicate their (default) visual layout to the OS when connected (though the user is still able to reset this at will).


title: Keyboard layout

text: A computer keyboard consists of "alphanumeric" or "character keys" for typing, "modifier keys" for altering the functions of other keys, "navigation keys" for moving the text cursor on the screen, "function keys" and "system command keys"—such as and —for special actions, and often a "numeric keypad" to facilitate calculations.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There is some variation between different keyboard models in the physical layout—i.e., how many keys there are and how they are positioned on the keyboard. However, differences between national layouts are mostly due to different selections and placements of symbols on the character keys.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The core section of a keyboard consists of character keys, which can be used to type letters and other characters. Typically, there are three rows of keys for typing letters and punctuation, an upper row for typing digits and special symbols, and the on the bottom row. The positioning of the character keys is similar to the keyboard of a typewriter.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Besides the character keys, a keyboard incorporates special keys that do nothing by themselves but modify the functions of other keys. For example, the key can be used to alter the output of character keys, whereas the ("control"), ("alternate") and ("alternative graphic") keys trigger special operations when used in concert with other keys. (Apple keyboards have differently labelled but equivalent keys, see below).


title: Keyboard layout

text: Typically, a modifier key is held down while another key is struck. To facilitate this, modifier keys usually come in pairs, one functionally identical key for each hand, so holding a modifier key with one hand leaves the other hand free to strike another key.


title: Keyboard layout

text: An alphanumeric key labelled with only a single letter (usually the capital form) can generally be struck to type either a lower case or capital letter, the latter requiring the simultaneous holding of the key. The key is also used to type the upper of two symbols engraved on a given key, the lower being typed without using the modifier key.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Latin alphabet keyboard has a dedicated key for each of the letters A–Z, keys for punctuation and other symbols, usually a row of function keys, often a numeric keypad and some system control keys. In most languages except English, additional letters (some with diacritics) are required and some are present as standard on each national keyboard, as appropriate for its national language. These keyboards have another modified key, labelled (alternative graphic), to the right of the space-bar. (US keyboards just have a second key in this position). It can be used to type an extra symbol in addition to the two otherwise available with an alphanumeric key, and using it simultaneously with the key usually gives access to a fourth symbol. These third-level and fourth-level symbols may be engraved on the right half of the key top, or they may be unmarked. Cyrillic alphabet and Greek alphabet keyboards have similar arrangements.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Instead of the , and keys seen on commodity keyboards, Apple Keyboards have ("command") and keys. The key is used much like the , and the key like the and , to access menu options and shortcuts. Macs have a key for compatibility with programs that expect a more traditional keyboard layout. It is especially useful when using a terminal, X11 (a Unix environment included with OS X as an install option) or MS Windows. The key can generally be used to produce a secondary mouse click as well. There is also a key on modern Mac keyboards, which is used for switching between use of the , , etc. keys either as function keys or for other functions like media control, accessing Spotlight, controlling the volume, or handling Mission Control. key can be also found on smaller Windows and Linux laptops and tablets, where it serves a similar purpose.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Many Unix workstations (and also home computers like the Amiga) keyboards placed the key to the left of the letter , and the key in the bottom left. This position of the key is also used on the XO laptop, which does not have a . The UNIX keyboard layout also differs in the placement of the key, which is to the left of .


title: Keyboard layout

text: Some early keyboards experimented with using large numbers of modifier keys. The most extreme example of such a keyboard, the so-called "space-cadet keyboard" found on MIT LISP machines, had no fewer than "seven" modifier keys: four control keys, , , , and , along with three shift keys, , , and . This allowed the user to type over 8000 possible characters by playing suitable "chords" with many modifier keys pressed simultaneously.


title: Keyboard layout

text: A dead key is a special kind of a modifier key that, instead of being held while another key is struck, is "pressed and released" before the other key. The dead key does not generate a character by itself, but it modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after, typically making it possible to type a letter with a specific diacritic. For example, on some keyboard layouts, the grave accent key is a dead key: in this case, striking and then results in ("a" with grave accent); followed by results in ("E" with grave accent). A grave accent in isolated form can be typed by striking and then .


title: Keyboard layout

text: A key may function as a dead key by default, or sometimes a normal key can temporarily be altered to function as a dead key by simultaneously holding down the secondary-shift key— or : a typical example might be will produce (assuming the "6" key is also the "^" key). In some systems, there is no indication to the user that a dead key has been struck, so the key appears dead, but in some text-entry systems the diacritical mark is displayed along with an indication that the system is waiting for another keystroke: either the base character to be marked, an additional diacritical mark, or to produce the diacritical mark in isolation.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Compared with the secondary-shift modifier key, the dead-key approach may be a little more complicated, but it allows more additional letters. Using AltGr, only one or (if used simultaneously with the normal shift key) two additional letters with each key, whereas using a dead key, a specific diacritic can be attached to a range of different base letters.


title: Keyboard layout

text: A Compose key can be characterized as a generic dead key that may in some systems be available instead of or in addition to the more specific dead keys. It allows access to a wide range of predefined extra characters by interpreting a whole sequence of keystrokes following it. For example, striking followed by (apostrophe) and then results in "á" ("a" with acute accent), followed by and then results in "æ" ("ae" ligature), and followed by and then results in © (circled "c", copyright symbol).


title: Keyboard layout

text: The key is supported by the X Window System (used by most Unix-like operating systems, including most Linux distributions). Some keyboards have a key labeled "Compose", but any key can be configured to serve this function. For example, the otherwise redundant right-hand key may, when available, be used for this purpose. This can be emulated in Windows with third party programs, for example WinCompose.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Depending on the application, some keyboard keys are not used to enter a printable character but instead are interpreted by the system as a formatting, mode shift, or special commands to the system. The following examples are found on personal computer keyboards.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The system request () and print screen ( or on some keyboards e.g. ) commands often share the same key. SysRq was used in earlier computers as a "panic" button to recover from crashes (and it is still used in this sense to some extent by the Linux kernel; see Magic SysRq key). The print screen command used to capture the entire screen and send it to the printer, but in the present it usually puts a screenshot in the clipboard.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Break key/Pause key no longer has a well-defined purpose. Its origins go back to teleprinter users, who wanted a key that would temporarily interrupt the communications line. The Break key can be used by software in several different ways, such as to switch between multiple login sessions, to terminate a program, or to interrupt a modem connection.


title: Keyboard layout

text: In programming, especially old DOS-style BASIC, Pascal and C, Break is used (in conjunction with Ctrl) to stop program execution. In addition to this, Linux and variants, as well as many DOS programs, treat this combination the same as Ctrl+C. On modern keyboards, the break key is usually labeled Pause/Break. In most Microsoft Windows environments, the key combination brings up the system properties.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The escape key (often abbreviated Esc) "nearly all of the time" signals "Stop" "QUIT" let me "get out of a dialog" (or pop-up window):.


title: Keyboard layout

text: ESC was part of the standard keyboard of the Teletype Model 33 (introduced in 1964 and used with many early minicomputers). The DEC VT50, introduced July 1974, also had an Esc key. The TECO text editor (c. 1963) and its descendant Emacs () use the Esc key extensively.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Historically it also served as a type of shift key, such that one or more following characters were interpreted differently, hence the term escape sequence, which refers to a series of characters, usually preceded by the escape character.


title: Keyboard layout

text: On machines running Microsoft Windows, prior to the implementation of the Windows key on keyboards, the typical practice for invoking the "start" button was to hold down the control key and press escape. This process still works in Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10.


title: Keyboard layout

text: An "enter" key may terminate a paragraph of text and advance an editing cursor to the start of the next available line, similar to the "carriage return" key of a typewriter. When the attached system is processing a user command line, pressing "enter" may signal that the command has been completely entered and that the system may now process it.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Shift key: when one presses shift and a letter, it will capitalize the letter pressed with the shift key. Another use is to type more symbols than appear to be available, for instance the semi-colon key is accompanied with a colon symbol on the top. To type a semi-colon, the key is pressed without pressing any other key. To type a colon, both this key and the Shift key are pressed concurrently. (Some systems make provision for users with mobility impairment by allowing the Shift key to be pressed first and then the desired symbol key).


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Menu key or Application key is a key found on Windows-oriented computer keyboards: on Apple keyboard the same function is provided by the Command key (labelled ⌘). It is used to launch a context menu with the keyboard rather than with the usual right mouse button. The key's symbol is usually a small icon depicting a cursor hovering above a menu. On some Samsung keyboards the cursor in the icon is not present, showing the menu only. This key was created at the same time as the Windows key. This key is normally used when the right mouse button is not present on the mouse. Some Windows public terminals do not have a Menu key on their keyboard to prevent users from right-clicking (however, in many Windows applications, a similar functionality can be invoked with the Shift+F10 keyboard shortcut).


title: Keyboard layout

text: Keyboard layouts have evolved over time, usually alongside major technology changes. Particularly influential have been: the Sholes and Glidden typewriter (1874, also known as Remington No. 1), the first commercially successful typewriter, which introduced QWERTY; its successor, the Remington No. 2 (1878), which introduced the shift key; the IBM Selectric (1961), a very influential electric typewriter, which was imitated by computer keyboards; and the IBM PC (1981), namely the Model M (1985), which is the basis for many modern keyboard layouts.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Within a community, keyboard layout is generally quite stable, due to the high training cost of touch-typing, and the resulting network effect of having a standard layout and high switching cost of retraining, and the suboptimal QWERTY layout is a case study in switching costs. Nevertheless, significant market forces can result in changes (as in Turkish adoption of QWERTY), and non-core keys are more prone to change, as they are less frequently used and less subject to the lock-in of touch-typing. The main, alphanumeric portion is typically stable, while symbol keys and shifted key values change somewhat, modifier keys more so, and function keys most of all: QWERTY dates to the No. 1 (1874) (though 1 and 0 were added later), shifted keys date in some cases to the No. 2 (1878), in other cases to the Selectric (1961), and modifier key placement largely dates to the Model M (1985); function key placement typically dates to the Model M, but varies significantly, particularly on laptops.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The earliest mechanical keyboards were used in musical instruments to play particular notes. With the advent of the printing telegraph, a keyboard was needed to select characters. Some of the earliest printing telegraph machines either used a piano keyboard outright or else a layout similar to a piano keyboard. The Hughes-Phelps printing telegraph piano keyboard laid keys A-N in left-to-right order on the black piano keys, and keys O-Z in right-to-left order on the white piano keys below.


title: Keyboard layout

text: In countries using the Latin script, the center, alphanumeric portion of the modern keyboard is most often based on the QWERTY design by Christopher Sholes. Sholes' layout was long thought to have been laid out in such a way that common two-letter combinations were placed on opposite sides of the keyboard so that his mechanical keyboard would not jam. However, evidence for this claim has often been contested. In 2012, an argument was advanced by two Japanese historians of technology showing that the key order on the earliest Sholes prototypes in fact followed the left-right and right-left arrangement of the contemporary Hughes-Phelps printing telegraph, described above. Later iterations diverged progressively for various technical reasons, and strong vestiges of the left-right A-N, right-left O-Z arrangement can still be seen in the modern QWERTY layout. Sholes' chief improvement was thus to lay out the keys in rows offset horizontally from each other by three-eighths, three-sixteenths, and three-eighths inches to provide room for the levers and to reduce hand-movement distance. Although it has been demonstrated that the QWERTY layout is not the most efficient layout for typing, it remains the standard.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Sholes chose the size of the keys to be on three-quarter [, or 0.75] inch centers (about 19 mm, versus musical piano keys which are 23.5 mm or about 0.93 inches wide). 0.75 inches has turned out to be optimum for fast key entry by the average size hand, and keyboards with this key size are called "full-sized keyboards".


title: Keyboard layout

text: On a manual typewriter, the operator could press the key down with a lighter touch for such characters as the period or comma, which did not occupy as much area on the paper. Since an electric typewriter supplied the force to the typebar itself after the typist merely touched the key, the typewriter itself had to be designed to supply different force for different characters. To simplify this, the most common layout for electric typewriters in the United States differed from that for the one most common on manual typewriters. Single-quote and double-quote, instead of being above the keys for the digits 2 and 8 respectively, were placed together on a key of their own. The underscore, another light character, replaced the asterisk above the hyphen.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The ASCII communications code was designed so that characters on a mechanical teletypewriter keyboard could be laid out in a manner somewhat resembling that of a manual typewriter. This was imperfect, as some shifted special characters were moved one key to the left, as the number zero, although on the right, was low in code sequence. Later, when computer terminals were designed from less expensive electronic components, it was not necessary to have any bits in common between the shifted and unshifted characters on a given key. This eventually led to standards being adopted for the "bit-pairing" and "typewriter-pairing" forms of keyboards for computer terminals.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The typewriter-pairing standard came under reconsideration, on the basis that typewriters have many different keyboard arrangements. The U.S. keyboard for the IBM PC, although it resembles the typewriter-pairing standard in most respects, differs in one significant respect: the braces are on the same two keys as the brackets, as their shifts. This innovation predated the IBM Personal Computer by several years.


title: Keyboard layout

text: IBM adopted the 101/102 key layout on the PS/2 in 1987 (after previously using an 84-key keyboard which did not have separate cursor and numeric key pads).


title: Keyboard layout

text: Most modern keyboards basically conform to the layout specifications contained in parts 1, 2, and 5 of the international standard series ISO/IEC 9995. These specifications were first defined by the user group at AFNOR in 1984 working under the direction of Alain Souloumiac. Based on this work, a well known ergonomic expert wrote a report which was adopted at the ISO Berlin meeting in 1985 and became the reference for keyboard layouts.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The 104/105-key PC keyboard was born when two keys and a key were added on the bottom row (originally for the Microsoft Windows operating system). Newer keyboards may incorporate even further additions, such as Internet access (World Wide Web navigation) keys and multimedia (access to media players) buttons.


title: Keyboard layout

text: As noted before, the "layout" of a keyboard may refer to its physical (arrangement of keys), visual (physical labeling of keys), or functional (software response to a key press or release) layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Physical layouts only address tangible differences among keyboards. When a key is pressed, the keyboard does not send a message such as "the A-key is depressed" but rather "the left-most main key of the home row is depressed". (Technically, each key has an internal reference number, the scan code, and these numbers are what is sent to the computer when a key is pressed or released.) The keyboard and the computer each have no information about what is marked on that key, and it could equally well be the letter "A" or the digit "9". Historically, the user of the computer was requested to identify the "functional layout" of the keyboard when installing or customizing the operating system. Modern USB keyboards are plug and play; they communicate their visual layout to the OS when connected (though the user is still able to reset this at will).


title: Keyboard layout

text: Today, most keyboards use one of three different physical layouts, usually referred to as simply "ISO" (ISO/IEC 9995-2), "ANSI" (ANSI-INCITS 154-1988), and "JIS" (JIS X 6002-1980), referring roughly to the organizations issuing the relevant worldwide, United States, and Japanese standards, respectively. (In fact, the physical layouts referred such as "ISO" and "ANSI" comply to the primary recommendations in the named standards, while each of these standards in fact also allows the other.) "Keyboard layout" in this sense may refer either to this broad categorization or to finer distinctions within these categories. For example, , Apple Inc produces ISO, ANSI, and JIS desktop keyboards, each in both extended and compact forms. The extended keyboards have 110, 109, and 112 keys (ISO, ANSI, and JIS, respectively), and the compact models have 79, 78, and 80.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The visual layout includes the symbols printed on the physical keycaps. Visual layouts vary by language, country, and user preference, and any one physical and functional layout can be employed with a number of different visual layouts. For example, the "ISO" keyboard layout is used throughout Europe, but typical French, German, and UK variants of physically identical keyboards "appear" different because they bear different legends on their keys. Even blank keyboards—with no legends—are sometimes used to learn typing skills or by user preference.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Some users choose to attach custom labels on top of their keycaps. This can be, e.g., for masking foreign layouts, adding additional information such as shortcuts, learning aid, gaming controls, or solely for decorational purposes.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The "functional layout" of the keyboard refers to the mapping between the physical keys, such as the key, and software events, such as the letter "A" appearing on the screen. Usually the functional layout is set (in the system configuration) to match the visual layout of the keyboard being used, so that pressing a key will produce the expected result, corresponding to the legends on the keyboard. However, most operating systems have software that allow the user to easily switch between functional layouts, such as the language bar in Microsoft Windows. For example, a user with a Swedish keyboard who wishes to type more easily in German may switch to a functional layout intended for German—without regard to key markings—just as a Dvorak touch typist may choose a Dvorak layout regardless of the visual layout of the keyboard used.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Functional layouts can be redefined or customized within the operating system, by reconfiguring operating system keyboard driver, or with a use of a separate software application. Transliteration is one example of that whereby letters in other language get matched to visible Latin letters on the keyboard by the way they sound. Thus, a touch typist can type various foreign languages with a visible English-language keyboard only.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Mixed hardware-to-software keyboard extensions exist to overcome above discrepancies between functional and visual layouts. A "keyboard overlay" is a plastic or paper masks that can be placed over the empty space between the keys, providing the user with the functional use of various keys. Alternatively, a user applies keyboard stickers with an extra imprinted language alphabet and adds another keyboard layout via language support options in the operating system. The visual layout of any keyboard can also be changed by simply replacing its keys or attaching labels to them, such as to change an English-language keyboard from the common QWERTY to the Dvorak layout, although for touch typists, the placement of the tactile bumps on the home keys is of more practical importance than that of the visual markings.


title: Keyboard layout

text: In the past, complex software that mapped many non-standard functions to the keys (such as a flight simulator) would be shipped with a "keyboard overlay", a large sheet of paper with pre-cut holes matching the key layout of a particular model of computer. When placed over the keyboard, the overlay provided a quick visual reference as to what each key's new function was, without blocking the keys or permanently modifying their appearance. The overlay was often made from good-quality laminated paper and was designed to fold up and fit in the game's packaging when not in use.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The U.S. IBM PC keyboard has 104 keys, while the PC keyboards for most other countries have 105 keys. In an operating system configured for a non-English language, the keys are placed differently. For example, keyboards designed for typing in Spanish have some characters shifted, to make room for Ñ/ñ; similarly those for French or Portuguese may have a special key for the character Ç/ç. Keyboards designed for Japanese may have special keys to switch between Japanese and Latin scripts, and the character ¥ (Japanese yen or Chinese yuan currency symbol) instead of \ (backslash, which may be replaced by the former in some codepages). Using a keyboard for alternative languages leads to a conflict: the image on the key does not correspond to the character. In such cases, each new language may require an additional label on the key, because the standard keyboard layouts do not even share similar characters of different languages.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Most operating systems allow switching between functional keyboard layouts, using a key combination involving register keys that are not used for normal operations (e.g. Microsoft reserve or register control keys for sequential layout switching; those keys were inherited from old DOS keyboard drivers). There are keyboards with two parallel sets of characters labeled on the keys, representing alternate alphabets or scripts. It is also possible to add a second set of characters to a keyboard with keyboard stickers manufactured by third parties.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Modern keyboard models contain a set number of total keys according to their given standard, described as 104, 105, etc., and sold as "full-size" keyboards. This number is not always followed, and individual keys or whole sections are commonly skipped for the sake of compactness or user preference. Consequently, generic keyboard mappings may not be completely effective on unusual layouts.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Although there are a large number of keyboard layouts used for languages written with Latin-script alphabets, most of these layouts are quite similar. They can be divided into three main families according to where the , , , , and keys are placed on the keyboard. These layouts are usually named after the first six letters on the first row: AZERTY, QWERTY, QWERTZ, QZERTY and national variants thereof.


title: Keyboard layout

text: While the central area of the keyboard, the alphabetic section, remains fairly constant, and the numbers from 1–9 are almost invariably on the row above, keyboards may differ in:


title: Keyboard layout

text: The physical keyboard is of the basic ISO, ANSI, or JIS type; pressing a key sends a scan code to the operating-system or other software, which in turn determines the character to be generated: this arrangement is known as the keyboard mapping. It is customary for keyboards to be engraved appropriately to the local default mapping. For example, when the and numeric keys are pressed simultaneously on a US keyboard; "@" is generated, and the key is engraved appropriately. On a UK keyboard this key combination generates the double-quote character, and UK keyboards are so engraved.


title: Keyboard layout

text: In the keyboard charts listed below, the primary letters or characters available with each alphanumeric key are often shown in black in the left half of the key, whereas characters accessed using the key appear in blue in the right half of the corresponding key. Symbols representing dead keys usually appear in red.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The QWERTY layout is, by far, the most widespread layout in use, and the only one that is not confined to a particular geographical area. In some territories, keys like and are not translated to the language of the territory in question. In other varieties such keys have been translated, like and , on Spanish computer keyboards respectively for the example above. On Macintosh computers these keys are usually just represented by symbols without the word "Enter", "Shift", "Command", "Option/Alt" or "Control", with the exception of keyboards distributed in the US and East Asia.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Azerbaijani keyboards use a layout known as QÜERTY, where Ü appears in place of W above S, with W not being accessible at all. It is supported by Microsoft Windows.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Turkmen keyboards use a layout known as ÄWERTY, where Ä appears in place of Q above A, Ü appears in place of X below S, Ç appears in place of C, and Ý appears in place of V, with C, Q, V, and X not being accessible at all. It is supported by Microsoft Windows (Vista and later only).


title: Keyboard layout

text: The QWERTZ layout is the normal keyboard layout in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It is also fairly widely used in Czechia, Slovakia and other parts of Central Europe. The main difference between it and QWERTY is that and are swapped, and some special characters such as brackets are replaced by diacritical characters like Ä, Ö, Ü, ß. In Czechia and Slovakia diacritical characters like Ě, Š, Č, Ř, Ž, Ý, Á, Í also replace numbers. "Caps lock" can be a "shift lock" as in AZERTY (see below).


title: Keyboard layout

text: The AZERTY layout is used in France, Belgium, and some African countries. It differs from the QWERTY layout thus:


title: Keyboard layout

text: As standardized in LST 1582, Lithuanian keyboards have a defined layout known as ĄŽERTY, where Ą appears in place of Q above A, Ž in place of W above S, and Ū in place of X below S, with Q, W, and X being available either on the far right-hand side or by use of the AltGr key. However instead of ĄŽERTY, the Lithuanian QWERTY keyboard is universally used.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The QZERTY layout was used mostly in Italy, where it was the traditional typewriter layout. In recent years, however, a modified QWERTY layout with stressed keys such as à, è, ò, has gained widespread usage throughout Italy. Computer keyboards usually have QWERTY, although non-alphanumeric characters vary.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Apple supported QZERTY layout in its early Italian keyboards, and currently iPod Touch also has it available.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Sámi keyboards use a layout known as the Sámi Extended, where Á appears in place of Q above A, Š appears in place of W above S, Č appears in place of X to the left of C, and Ŧ appears in place of Y to the right of T, with Q, W, X, and Y being available by use of the AltGr key. Also, Å is to the right of P (to match the Norwegian and Swedish/Finnish keyboards), Ŋ is to the right of Å, and Đ is to the right of Ŋ. It is different in Norway than in Sweden and Finland, because of the placement of the letters different between Norwegian and Swedish/Finnish (Ä, Æ, Ö, and Ø), which are placed where they match the standard keyboard for the main language spoken in the country. It is supported by Microsoft Windows (Windows XP SP2 and later only). Microsoft Windows also has Swedish with Sami, Norwegian with Sami and Finnish with Sami layouts, which match the normal Swedish, Norwegian, or Finnish keyboards, but has additional Sami characters as AltGr-combinations.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There are also keyboard layouts that do not resemble traditional typewriter layouts very closely, if at all. These are designed to reduce finger movement and are claimed by some proponents to offer higher typing speed along with ergonomic benefits.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Dvorak layout was named after its inventor, August Dvorak. There are also numerous adaptations for languages other than English, and single-handed variants. Dvorak's original layout had the numerals rearranged, but the present-day layout has them in numerical order. Dvorak has numerous properties designed to increase typing speed, decrease errors, and increase comfort. Research has found a 4% average advantage to the end user in typing speed. The layout concentrates the most used English letters in the home row where the fingers rest, thus having 70% of typing done in the home row (compared to 32% in QWERTY).


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Dvorak layout is available out-of-the-box on most operating systems, making switching through software very easy. "Hardwired" Dvorak keyboards are also available, though only from specialized hardware companies.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Colemak layout is another popular alternative to the standard QWERTY layout, offering a more familiar change for users already accustomed to the standard layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: It builds upon the QWERTY layout as a base, changing the positions of 17 keys while retaining the QWERTY positions of most non-alphabetic characters and many popular keyboard shortcuts, supposedly making it easier to learn than Dvorak for people who already type in QWERTY without sacrificing efficiency. It shares several design goals with the Dvorak layout, such as minimizing finger path distance and making heavy use of the home row. An additional defining (albeit optional) feature of the Colemak layout is the lack of a caps lock key; an additional backspace key occupies the position typically occupied by Caps Lock on modern keyboards.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Operating systems such as macOS, Linux, Android, ChromeOS, and BSD allow a user to switch to the Colemak layout. A program to install the layout is available for Microsoft Windows, as well as a portable AutoHotKey implementation.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Colemak variants exist, including Colemak Mod-DH, which seeks to rectify concerns that the layout places too much emphasis on the middle-row centre-column keys (D and H), leading to awkward lateral hand movements for certain common English bigrams such as HE. Others seek to have more compatibility with other keyboard layouts.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Workman layout employs a hypothesis about the preferential movement of each finger rather than categorically considering the lowest letter row to be least accessible. Specifically, the index finger prefers to curl inwards rather than stretch outwards. So for the index finger, the position of second preference goes to the bottom row rather than the top row. Contrarily, the middle and ring fingers are relatively long and prefer to stretch out rather than curl in. Based on this, weighting is allotted to each key specifically rather than each row generically.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Another principle applied is that it is more natural and less effort to curl in or stretch out fingers rather than rotate


title: Keyboard layout

text: one's wrist inwards or outwards. Thus the Workman layout allots a lower priority to the two innermost columns between the home keys (G and H columns on a QWERTY layout), similarly to the Colemak-DH or "Curl" mods. Workman also balances the load quite evenly between both hands.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Workman layout is found to achieve overall less travel distance of the fingers for the English language than even Colemak. It does however generally incur higher same-finger n-gram frequencies; or in other words, one finger will need to hit two keys in succession more often than in other layouts.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The "Norman Layout", like Workman, deprioritizes the central columns but gives more load to the right hand with the assumption that the right hand is more capable than the left. It also gives importance to retaining letters in the same position or at least the same finger as QWERTY.


title: Keyboard layout

text: "MTGAP's Layout" for a Standard Keyboard / an Ergonomic Keyboard has the lowest finger travel for a standard keyboard, and travel distance for an ergonomic keyboard second only to Arensito keyboard layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Other layouts lay importance on minimal key deviation from QWERTY to give a reasonable increase in typing speed and ergonomics with minimal relearning of keys.


title: Keyboard layout

text: "Qwpr" is a layout that changes only 11 basic keys from their QWERTY positions, with only 2 keys typed with different fingers. Minimak has versions which changes four, six, eight, or twelve keys, all have only 3 keys change finger. These intend to offer much of the reduced finger movement of Dvorak without the steep learning curve and with an increased ability to remain proficient with a QWERTY keyboard. The Qwpr layout is also designed for programmers and multilingual users, as it uses Caps Lock as a "punctuation shift", offering quicker access to ASCII symbols and arrow keys, as well as to 15 dead keys for typing hundreds of different glyphs such as accented characters, mathematical symbols, or emoji.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the QWERTY layout, created his own alternative, and patented it in 1896.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Similar to Dvorak, he placed all the vowels on the home row, but in this case on the right hand. The layout is right-hand biased with both the vowels and many of the most common consonants on the right side of the layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The JCUKEN layout was used in the USSR for all computers (both domestically produced and imported such as Japan-made MSX-compatible systems) except IBM-compatible ES PEVM due to its phonetic compatibility with Russian ЙЦУКЕН layout (see right). The layout has the advantage of having punctuation marks on Latin and Cyrillic layouts mapped on the same keys. This Russian Typewriter layout can be found on many Russian typewriters produced before the 1990s, and it is the default Russian keyboard layout in the OpenSolaris operating system.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Neo layout is an optimized German keyboard layout developed in 2004 by the Neo Users Group, supporting nearly all Latin-based alphabets, including the International Phonetic Alphabet, the Vietnamese language and some African languages.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The positions of the letters are not only optimized for German letter frequency, but also for typical groups of two or three letters. English is considered a major target as well. The design tries to enforce the alternating usage of both hands to increase typing speed. It is based on ideas from de-ergo and other ergonomic layouts. The high frequency keys are placed in the home row. The current layout, Neo 2.0, has unique features not present in other layouts, making it suited for many target groups such as programmers, mathematicians, scientists or LaTeX authors. Neo is grouped in different layers, each designed for a special purpose.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Most special characters inherit the meaning of the lower layers—the character is one layer above the , or the Greek is above the character. Neo uses a total of six layers with the following general use:


title: Keyboard layout

text: The BÉPO layout is an optimized French keyboard layout developed by the BÉPO community, supporting all Latin-based alphabets of the European Union, Greek and Esperanto. It is also designed to ease programming. It is based on ideas from the Dvorak and other ergonomic layouts. Typing with it is usually easier due to the high frequency keys being in the home row.


title: Keyboard layout

text: In 2019, a slightly modified version of the BÉPO layout is featured in a French standard developed by AFNOR, along with an improved version of the traditional AZERTY layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Dvorak-fr layout is a Dvorak like layout specific to the French language, without concession to the use of programming languages, and published in 2002 by Francis Leboutte. Version 2 was released in June 2020. Its design meets the need to maximize comfort and prevent risks when typing in French.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Unlike Azerty, the characters needed for good French typography are easily accessible: for example, the quotation marks (« ») and the curved apostrophe are available directly. More than 150 additional characters are available via dead keys.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Turkish language uses the Turkish Latin alphabet, and a dedicated keyboard layout was designed in 1955 by İhsan Sıtkı Yener (). During its design, letter frequencies in the Turkish language were investigated with the aid of Turkish Language Association. These statistics were then combined with studies on bone and muscle anatomy of the fingers to design the Turkish F-keyboard (). The keyboard provides a balanced distribution of typing effort between the hands: 49% for the left hand and 51% for the right. With this scientific preparation, Turkey has broken 14 world records in typewriting championships between 1957 and 1995. In 2009, Recep Ertaş and in 2011, Hakan Kurt from Turkey came in first in the text production event of the 47th (Beijing) and 48th (Paris) Intersteno congresses respectively. Despite the greater efficiency of the Turkish F-keyboard however, the modified QWERTY keyboard ("Q-keyboard") is the one that is used on most computers in Turkey. The reason for the popularity of QWERTY in Turkey is that they were overwhelmingly imported since the beginning of the 1990s.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The HCESAR layout was a layout created in 1937 for typewriters during Portugal's Estado Novo. It was specifically designed for the Portuguese language. It is no longer used.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Malt layout—named for its inventor, South African-born Lilian Malt—is best known for its use on molded, ergonomic Maltron keyboards. Nevertheless, it has been adapted as well for flat keyboards, with a compromise involved: a flat keyboard has a single, wide space-bar, rather than a space button as on Maltron keyboards, so the E key was moved to the bottom row.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Blickensderfer typewriter, designed by George Canfield Blickensderfer in 1892, was known for its novel keyboard layout, its interchangeable font, and its suitability for travel. The Blickensderfer keyboard had three banks (rows of keys), with special characters being entered using a separate Shift key; the home row was, uniquely, the bottom one (i.e., the typist kept her hands on the bottom row). A computer or standard typewriter keyboard, on the other hand, has four banks of keys, with home row being second from bottom.


title: Keyboard layout

text: To fit on a Sholes-patterned (typewriter or computer) keyboard, the Blickensderfer layout was modified by Nick Matavka in 2012, and released for both Mac OS X and Windows. To accommodate the differences between Blickensderfer and Sholes keyboards ("not" the layouts, but the keyboards themselves), the order of the rows was changed and special characters were given their own keys.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The keyboard drivers created by Nick Matavka for the modified Blickensderfer layout (nicknamed the 'Blick') have several variations, including one that includes the option of switching between Blick and another keyboard layout and one that is internationalised, allowing the entry of diacritics.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The honeycomb layout has hexagon keys and was invented by Typewise in cooperation with the ETH Zurich in 2015 for smartphones. It exists for 40+ languages including English, German, Spanish, French and Afrikaans. The keys are arranged like those of the respective traditional keyboard with a few changes. Instead of the there are two smaller space bars in the middle of the keyboard. The is replaced by swiping up on keys and by swiping to the left on the keyboard. Diacritic characters can be accessed by holding on a key.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The layout can also be useful for people who do not type often or where using both hands is not practical, such as touchscreens.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Chorded keyboards, such as the Stenotype and Velotype, allow letters and words to be entered using combinations of keys in a single stroke. Users of stenotype machines regularly reach rates of 225 words per minute. These systems are commonly used for real-time transcription by court reporters and in live closed captioning systems. Ordinary keyboards may be adapted for this purpose using Plover. However, due to hardware constraints, chording three or more keys may not work as expected. Many high-end keyboards support "n"-key rollover and so do not have this limitation.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The multi-touch screens of mobile devices allow implementation of virtual on-screen chorded keyboards. Buttons are fewer, so they can be made larger. Symbols on the keys can be changed dynamically depending on what other keys are pressed, thus eliminating the need to memorize combos for characters and functions before use. For example, in the chorded GKOS keyboard which has been adapted for the Google Android, Apple iPhone, MS Windows Phone, and Intel MeeGo/Harmattan platforms, thumbs are used for chording by pressing one or two keys at the same time. The layout divides the keys into two separate pads which are positioned near the sides of the screen, while text appears in the middle. The most frequent letters have dedicated keys and do not require chording.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Some other layouts have also been designed specifically for use with mobile devices. The FITALY layout is optimised for use with a stylus by placing the most commonly used letters closest to the centre and thus minimising the distance travelled when entering words. A similar concept was followed to research and develop the MessagEase keyboard layout for fast text entry with stylus or finger. The ATOMIK layout, designed for stylus use, was developed by IBM using the Metropolis Algorithm to mathematically minimize the movement necessary to spell words in English. The ATOMIK keyboard layout is an alternative to QWERTY in ShapeWriter's WritingPad software. ASETNIOP is a keyboard layout designed for tablet computers that uses 10 input points, eight of them on the home row.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Several other alternative keyboard layouts have been designed either for use with specialist commercial keyboards (e.g. Maltron and PLUM) or by hobbyists (e.g. Asset, Arensito, Minimak, Norman, Qwpr, Workman as well as symmetric typing layouts Niro and Soul); however, none of them are in widespread use, and many of them are merely proofs of concept. Principles commonly used in their design include maximising use of the home row, minimising finger movement, maximising hand alternation or inward rolls (where successive letters are typed moving towards the centre of the keyboard), minimising changes from QWERTY to ease the learning curve, and so on.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Programs such as the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (basic editor, free, for use on MS Windows), SIL Ukelele (advanced editor, free, for use on Apple's Mac OS X),


title: Keyboard layout

text: KbdEdit (commercial editor, for Windows) and Keyman Developer (free, open source editor for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, or for sites on the web as virtual keyboards) make it easy to create custom keyboard layouts for regular keyboards; users may satisfy their own typing patterns or specific needs by creating new ones from scratch (like the IPA or pan-Iberian


title: Keyboard layout

text: Certain virtual keyboards and keyboard layouts are accessible online. With no hardware limitations, those online keyboards can display custom layouts, or allow the user to pre-configure or try out different language layouts. Resulting text can then be pasted into other web sites or applications flexibly with no need to reprogram keyboard mappings at all.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Some high end keyboards allow users flexibility to reprogram keyboard mappings at the hardware level. For example, the Kinesis Advantage contoured keyboard allows for reprogramming single keys (not key combinations), as well as creating macros for remapping combinations of keys (this however includes more processing from the keyboard hardware, and can therefore be slightly slower, with a lag that may be noticed in daily use).


title: Keyboard layout

text: Non-QWERTY layouts were also used with specialized machines such as the 90-key Linotype type setting machine.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Some keyboard layouts for non-Latin alphabetic scripts, most notably the Greek layout, are based on the QWERTY layout, in that glyphs are assigned as far as possible to keys that bear similar-sounding or appearing glyphs in QWERTY. This saves learning time for those familiar with QWERTY, and eases entry of Latin characters (with QWERTY) as well for Greek users.


title: Keyboard layout

text: All non-Latin computer keyboard layouts can also input Latin letters as well as the script of the language, for example, when typing in URLs or names. This may be done through a special key on the keyboard devoted to this task, or through some special combination of keys, or through software programs that do not interact with the keyboard much.


title: Keyboard layout

text: It is possible to type directly from one's keyboard without the need to use web applications which implement an input method. The Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout includes different sets of layout for different keyboard users: QWERTY, Capewell-Dvorak, Capewell-QWERF 2006, Colemak, and Dvorak, all of which work in both Microsoft Windows and Linux.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There are many different systems developed to type Bengali language characters using a typewriter or a computer keyboard and mobile device. There were efforts taken to standardize the input system for Bengali in Bangladesh ( Jatiyo layout), but still no input method has still been effectively adopted widely.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Dhivehi Keyboards have two layouts. Both are supported by Microsoft Windows (Windows XP and later only).


title: Keyboard layout

text: InScript is the standard keyboard for 12 Indian scripts including Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu etc.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Most Indian scripts are derived from Brahmi, therefore their alphabetic order is identical. On the basis of this property, the InScript keyboard layout scheme was prepared. So a person who knows InScript typing in one language can type in other scripts using dictation even without knowledge of that script.


title: Keyboard layout

text: An InScript keyboard is inbuilt in most modern operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. It is also available in some mobile phones.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Khmer uses its own layout designed to correspond, to the extent practicable, to its QWERTY counterpart, thus easing the learning curve in either direction. For example, the letter is typed on the same key as the letter L on the English-based qwerty. It also has many specifics due to its record number of vowels, consonants and punctuation signs as well as its cluster structure which bundles letters together in one.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Thai Kedmanee keyboard layout predominates. The Thai Pattachote keyboard layout is also used, though it is much less common. Infrequently used characters are accessed via the Shift key. Despite their wide usage in Thai, Arabic numerals are not present on the main section of the keyboard. Instead they are accessed via the numeric keypad or by switching to the Latin character set on keyboards without dedicated numeric keys.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Chinese National Standard on Tibetan Keyboard Layout standardises a layout for the Tibetan language in China.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The first version of Microsoft Windows to support the Tibetan keyboard layout is MS Windows Vista. The layout has been available in Linux since September 2007.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Mac OS-X introduced Tibetan Unicode support with OS-X version 10.5 and later, now with three different keyboard layouts available: Tibetan-Wylie, Tibetan QWERTY and Tibetan-Otani.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Bhutanese Standard for a Dzongkha keyboard layout standardizes the layout for typing Dzongkha, and other languages using the Tibetan script, in Bhutan. This standard layout was formulated by the Dzongkha Development Commission and Department of Information Technology in Bhutan. The Dzongkha keyboard layout is very easy to learn as the key sequence essentially follows the order of letters in the Dzongkha and Tibetan alphabet. The layout has been available in Linux since 2004.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Inuktitut has two similar, though not identical, commonly available keyboard layouts for Windows. Both contain a basic Latin layout in its base and shift states, with a few Latin characters in the AltGr shift states. The Canadian Aboriginal syllabics can be found in the Capslock and AltGr shift states in both layouts as well.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The difference between the two layouts lies in the use of as an alternate to AltGr to create the dotted, long vowel syllables, and the mapping of the small plain consonants to the Caps + number keys in the "Naqittaut" layout, while the "Latin" layout does not have access to the plain consonants, and can only access the long vowel syllables through the AltGr shift states.


title: Keyboard layout

text: This layout was developed by Microsoft from the classic Arabic typewriter layout and is used by . There is also a 102-key variant and a 102-key phonetic variant that maps to AZERTY.


title: Keyboard layout

text: All keyboards in Israel are fitted with both Latin and Hebrew letters. Trilingual editions including either Arabic or Cyrillic also exist.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Note that in the standard layout (but not all keyboards), paired delimiters—parentheses (), brackets [], and braces {}, as well as less/greater than <>—are in the opposite order from the standard in other left-to-right languages. This results in "open"/"close" being consistent with right-to-left languages (Shift-9 always gives "close parenthesis" U+0029, which visually looks like "open parenthesis" in left-to-right languages). This is shared with Arabic keyboards.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Certain Hebrew layouts are extended with niqqud symbols (vowel points), which require Alt+Shift or similar key combination in order to be typed.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Royal institute of the Amazigh culture (IRCAM) developed a national standard Tifinagh layout for Tamazight (Berber) in Morocco. It is included in Linux and Windows 8, and is available from IRCAM for the Mac and older versions of Windows.


title: Keyboard layout

text: A compatible, international version of this layout, called "Tifinagh (International)" exists for typing a wide range of Tamazight (Berber) language variants, and includes support for Tuareg variants. It was designed by the Universal Amazigh Keyboard Project and is available from its page on SourceForge.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Urdu has a standardized layout present, developed by the National Authority Language. More commonly, however, the phonetic keyboard is used on smartphones and desktops which align the Urdu letters with their Latin counterparts (for example, Pressing Q will write ق)


title: Keyboard layout

text: Another version of the keyboard, developed by Designer and Engineer Zeerak Ahmed, has witnessed an increase in usage among the younger generations. The keyboard, Matnsāz, is currently under development and available for beta testing in iOS.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Armenian language keyboard is similar to the Greek in that in most (but not all) cases, a given Armenian letter is at the same location as the corresponding Latin letter on the QWERTY keyboard. The illustrated keyboard layout can be enabled on Linux with: . Western and Eastern Armenian have different layouts.


title: Keyboard layout

text: In the pre-computer times Armenian keyboards had quite a different layout, more suitable for producing letter combinations inherent to the language.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Several attempts have been made to create innovative ergonomical layouts, some of them inspired by Dvorak.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The current official Bulgarian keyboard layout for both typewriters and computer keyboards is described in BDS (Bulgarian State/National Standard) 5237:1978. It superseded the old standard, BDS 5237:1968, on 1 January 1978. Like the Dvorak layout, it has been designed to optimize typing speed and efficiency, placing the most common letters in the Bulgarian language—О, Н, Т, and А—under the strongest fingers. In addition to the standard 30 letters of the Bulgarian alphabet, the layout includes the non-Bulgarian Cyrillic symbols Э and ы and the Roman numerals I and V (the X is supposed to be represented by the Cyrillic capital Х, which is acceptable in typewriters but problematic in computers).


title: Keyboard layout

text: There is also a second, informal layout in widespread use—the so-called "phonetic" layout, in which Cyrillic letters are mapped to the QWERTY keys for Latin letters that "sound" or "look" the same, with several exceptions (Я is mapped to Q, Ж is mapped to V, etc.—see and compare it to the standard QWERTY layout). This layout is available as an alternative to the BDS one in some operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux. Normally, the layouts are set up so that the user can switch between Latin and Cyrillic script by pressing "Shift + Alt", and between BDS and Phonetic by pressing "Shift + Ctrl".


title: Keyboard layout

text: In 2006, Prof. Dimiter Skordev from the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Sofia University and Dimitar Dobrev from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences proposed a new standard, prBDS 5237:2006, including a revised version of the old BDS layout, which includes the letter Ѝ and the capital Ы and replaces the letters I and V with the currency symbols of $ and € respectively, and a standardization of the informal "phonetic" layout. After some controversy and a public discussion in 2008, "the proposal was not accepted", although it had been already used in several places—the "Bulgarian Phonetic" layout in MS Windows Vista is based on it. There is a new "Bulgarian Phonetic" layout in MS Windows 7.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The most common keyboard layout in modern Russia is the so-called "Windows" layout, which is the default Russian layout used in the MS Windows operating system. The layout was designed to be compatible with the hardware standard in many other countries, but introduced compromises to accommodate the larger alphabet. The full stop and comma symbols share a key, requiring the shift key to be held to produce a comma, despite the high relative frequency of comma in the language.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There are some other Russian keyboard layouts in use: in particular, the traditional Russian Typewriter layout (punctuation symbols are placed on numerical keys, one needs to press Shift to enter numbers) and the Russian "DOS" layout (similar to the Russian Typewriter layout with common punctuation symbols on numerical keys, but numbers are entered without Shift). The Russian Typewriter layout can be found on many Russian typewriters produced before the 1990s, and it is the default Russian keyboard layout in the OpenSolaris operating system.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Keyboards in Russia always have Cyrillic letters on the keytops as well as Latin letters. Usually Cyrillic and Latin letters are labeled with different colors.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Russian phonetic keyboard layout (also called homophonic or transliterated) is widely used "outside" Russia, where normally there are no Russian letters drawn on keyboard buttons. This layout is made for typists who are more familiar with other layouts, like the common English QWERTY keyboard, and follows the Greek and Armenian layouts in placing most letters at the corresponding Latin letter locations. It is famous among both native speakers and people who use, teach, or are learning Russian, and is recommended—along with the Standard Layout—by the linguists, translators, teachers and students of AATSEEL.org. The earliest known implementation of the Cyrillic-to-QWERTY homophonic keyboard was by former AATSEEL officer Constance Curtin between 1972 and 1976, for the PLATO education system's Russian Language curriculum developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Curtin's design sought to map phonetically related Russian sounds to QWERTY keys, to map proximate phonetic and visual cues nearby one another, as well as to map unused positions in a mnemonically ideal way. Peter Zelchenko worked under Curtin at UIUC, and his later modifications to the number row for Windows and Macintosh keyboards follow Curtin's original design intent.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There are several different Russian phonetic layouts, for example YaZhERT (яжерт), YaWERT (яверт), and YaShERT (яшерт) suggested by AATSEEL.org and called "Student" layout. They are named after the first several letters that take over the 'QWERTY' row on the Latin keyboard. They differ by where a few of the letters are placed. For example, some have Cyrillic 'B' (which is pronounced 'V') on the Latin 'W' key (after the German transliteration of B), while others have it on the Latin 'V' key.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There are also variations within these variations; for example the Mac OS X Phonetic Russian layout is YaShERT but differs in placement of ж and э.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Windows 10 includes its own implementation of a mnemonic QWERTY-based input method for Russian, which does not fully rely on assigning a key to every Russian letter, but uses the sh, sc, ch, ya (ja), yu (ju), ye (je), yo (jo) combinations to input ш, щ, ч, я, ю, э, and ё respectively.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Virtual (on-screen) keyboards allow entering Cyrillic directly in a browser without activating the system layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Apart from a set of characters common to most Cyrillic alphabets, the Serbian Cyrillic layout uses six additional special characters unique or nearly unique to the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet: Љ, Њ, Ћ, Ђ, Џ, and Ј.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Due to the bialphabetic nature of the language, actual physical keyboards with the Serbian Cyrillic layout printed on the keys are uncommon today. Typical keyboards sold in Serbian-speaking markets are marked with Serbian Latin characters and used with both the Latin (QWERTZ) and Cyrillic layout configured in the software. What makes the two layouts this readily interchangeable is that the non-alphabetic keys are identical between them, and alphabetic keys always correspond directly to their counterparts (except the Latin letters Q, W, X, and Y that have no Cyrillic equivalents, and the Cyrillic letters Љ, Њ and Џ whose Latin counterparts are digraphs LJ, NJ and DŽ). This also makes the Serbian Cyrillic layout a rare example of a non-Latin layout based on QWERTZ.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Macedonian dze is on this keyboard despite not being used in Serbian Cyrillic. The gje and kje can be typed by striking the apostrophe key then striking the G or K key.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There is also a dedicated Macedonian keyboard that is based on QWERTY (LjNjERTDz) and uses Alt Gr to type the dje and tshe. However, the capital forms are next to the small forms. An alternative version of the layout is quite different and has no dje or tshe access. This alternative was not supported until Windows Vista.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Ukrainian keyboards, based on a slight modification of Russian Standard Layout, often also have the Russian Standard ("Windows") layout marked on them, making it easy to switch from one language to another. This keyboard layout had several problems, one of which was the omission of the letter Ґ, which does not exist in Russian. The other long-standing problem was the omission of the apostrophe, which is used in Ukrainian almost as commonly as in English (though with a different meaning), but which also does not exist in Russian. Both of these problems were resolved with the "improved Ukrainian" keyboard layout for Windows available with Vista and subsequent Windows versions.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There also exists an adapted keyboard for Westerners learning Ukrainian (mostly in the diaspora) which closely matches the qwerty keyboard, so that the letters either have the same sound or same shape, for example pressing the "v" on the Latin QWERTY produces the Cyrillic в (which makes roughly the same sound) and pressing the qwerty "w" key gives the Cyrillic ш (based on the similar shape). This is usually called a homophonic or phonetic layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: All keyboards in Georgia are fitted with both Latin and Georgian letters. As with the Armenian, Greek, and phonetic Russian layouts, most Georgian letters are on the same keys as their Latin equivalents. During the Soviet era, the Georgian alphabet was adapted to the Russian JCUKEN layout, mainly for typewriters. Soviet computers did not support Georgian keyboards. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union a large variety of computers were introduced to post-Soviet countries. The keyboards had QWERTY layout for Latin alphabet and JCUKEN for Cyrillic both printed on keys. Georgia started to adopt the QWERTY pattern. In both cases the letters which did not exist in the Cyrillic or Latin alphabets were substituted by letters that did not exist in Georgian alphabet. Today the most commonly used layout follows the QWERTY pattern with some changes.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The usual Greek layout follows the US layout for letters related to Latin letters (ABDEHIKLMNOPRSTXYZ, ΑΒΔΕΗΙΚΛΜΝΟΠΡΣΤΧΥΖ, respectively), substitutes phonetically similar letters (Φ at F; Γ at G) and uses the remaining slots for the remaining Greek letters: Ξ at J; Ψ at C; Ω at V; Θ at U).


title: Keyboard layout

text: Greek has two fewer letters than English, but has two diacritic marks which, because of their frequency, are placed on the home row at the U.K. ";" position; they are dead keys. Word-final sigma has its own position as well, replacing W, and semicolon (which is used as a question mark in Greek) and colon move to the position of Q.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Greek Polytonic layout has various dead keys to input the accented letters. There is also the Greek 220 layout and the Greek 319 layout.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The Cherokee language uses an 86-character Syllabary. The keyboard is available for the iPhone and iPad and is supported by Google.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The orthography used for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ("CJK characters") require special input methods, due to the thousands of possible characters in these languages. Various methods have been invented to fit every possibility into a QWERTY keyboard, so East Asian keyboards are essentially the same as those in other countries. However, their input methods are considerably more complex, without one-to-one mappings between keys and characters.


title: Keyboard layout

text: In general, the range of possibilities is first narrowed down (often by entering the desired character's pronunciation). Then, if there remains more than one possibility, the desired ideogram is selected, either by typing the number before the character, or using a graphical menu to select it. The computer assists the typist by using heuristics to guess which character is most likely desired. Although this may seem painstaking, East Asian input methods are today sufficient in that, even for beginners, typing in these languages is only slightly slower than typing an alphabetic language like English (where each phoneme is represented by one grapheme).


title: Keyboard layout

text: In Japanese, the QWERTY-based JIS keyboard layout is used, and the pronunciation of each character is entered using various approximations to Hepburn romanization or Kunrei-shiki romanization. There are several kana-based typing methods. .


title: Keyboard layout

text: Of the three, Chinese has the most varied input options. Characters can either be entered by pronunciation (like Japanese and Hanja in Korean), or by structure. Most of the structural methods are very difficult to learn but extremely efficient for experienced typists, as there is no need to select characters from a menu.


title: Keyboard layout

text: There exist a variety of other, slower methods in which a character may be entered. If the pronunciation of a character is not known, the selection can be narrowed down by giving its component shapes, radicals, and stroke count. Also, many input systems include a "drawing pad" permitting "handwriting" of a character using a mouse. Finally, if the computer does not have CJK software installed, it may be possible to enter a character directly through its encoding number (e.g., Unicode).


title: Keyboard layout

text: In contrast to Chinese and Japanese, Korean is typed similarly to Western languages. There exist two major forms of keyboard layouts: Dubeolsik (두벌식), and Sebeolsik (세벌식). Dubeolsik, which shares its symbol layout with the QWERTY keyboard, is much more commonly used. While Korean consonants and vowels ("jamo") are grouped together into syllabic grids when written, the script is essentially alphabetical, and therefore typing in Korean is quite simple for those who understand the Korean alphabet Hangul. Each "jamo" is assigned to a single key. As the user types letters, the computer automatically groups them into syllabic characters. Given a sequence of "jamo", there is only one unambiguous way letters can be validly grouped into syllables, so the computer groups them together as the user types.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Pressing the Han/Eng() key once switches between Hangul as shown, and QWERTY. There is another key to the left of the space bar for Hanja( or ) input. If using an ordinary keyboard without the two extra keys, the right Alt key will become the Ha/En key, and the right Ctrl key will become the Hanja key. Apple Keyboards do not have the two extra keys.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Dubeolsik (두벌식; 2-set) is by far the most common and the sole national standard of Hangul keyboard layout in use in South Korea since 1969. Consonants occupy the left side of the layout, while vowels are on the right.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Sebeolsik 390 (세벌식 390; 3-set 390) was released in 1990. It is based on Dr. 's earlier work. This layout is notable for its compatibility with the QWERTY layout; almost all QWERTY symbols that are not alphanumeric are available in Hangul mode. Numbers are placed in three rows. Syllable-initial consonants are on the right (shown green in the picture), and syllable-final consonants and consonant clusters are on the left (shown red). Some consonant clusters are not printed on the keyboard; the user has to press multiple consonant keys to input some consonant clusters, unlike Sebeolsik Final. It is more ergonomic than the dubeolsik, but is not in wide use.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Sebeolsik Final (세벌식 최종; 3-set Final) is another Hangul keyboard layout in use in South Korea. It is the final Sebulsik layout designed by Dr. , hence the name. Numbers are placed on two rows. Syllable-initial consonants are on the right, and syllable-final consonants and consonant clusters are on the left. Vowels are in the middle. All consonant clusters are available on the keyboard, unlike the Sebeolsik 390 which does not include all of them. It is more ergonomic than the dubeolsik, but is not in wide use.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Sebeolsik Noshift is a variant of sebeolsik which can be used without pressing the shift key. Its advantage is that people with disabilities who cannot press two keys at the same time will still be able to use it to type in Hangul.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Chinese keyboards are usually in US layout with/without Chinese input method labels printed on keys. Without an input method handler activated, these keyboards would simply respond to Latin characters as physically labelled, provided that the US keyboard layout is selected correctly in the operating system. Most modern input methods allow input of both simplified and traditional characters, and will simply default to one or the other based on the locale setting.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Keyboards used in the People's Republic of China are standard or slightly modified English US (QWERTY) ones without extra labelling, while various IMEs are employed to input Chinese characters. The most common IMEs are Hanyu pinyin-based, representing the pronunciation of characters using Latin letters. However, keyboards with labels for alternative structural input methods such as Wubi method can also be found, although those are usually very old products and are extremely rare, as of 2015.


title: Keyboard layout

text: Computers in Taiwan often use Zhuyin (bopomofo) style keyboards (US keyboards with bopomofo labels), many also with Cangjie method key labels, as Cangjie is a popular method for typing in Traditional Chinese. The bopomofo style keyboards are in lexicographical order, top-to-bottom left-to-right.


title: Keyboard layout

text: The codes of three input methods are typically printed on the Chinese (traditional) keyboard: Zhuyin (upper right); Cangjie (lower left); and Dayi (lower right).


title: Keyboard layout

text: In Hong Kong, both Chinese (Taiwan) and US keyboards are found. Japanese keyboards are occasionally found, and UK keyboards are rare.