Keyboard layout

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.
 is the actual positioning of keys on a keyboard. is the arrangement of the legends (labels, markings, engravings) that appear on those keys. is the arrangement of the key-meaning association or keyboard mapping, determined in software, of all the keys of a keyboard: it is this (rather than the legends) that determines the actual response to a key press.
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.
Key types.
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.
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.
Character keys.
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.
Modifier keys.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 dashboard widgets, controlling the volume, or handling exposé. key can be also found on smaller Windows and Linux laptops and tablets, where it serves a similar purpose.
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 .
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.
Dead keys.
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 .
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.
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.
Compose key.
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).
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.
System command keys.
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.
SysRq and PrtSc.
The System request (SysRq) and Print screen (PrtSc) 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.
Break key.
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.
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.
Escape key.
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): LET ME ESCAPE.
Another common application today of the Esc key is to trigger the Stop button in many web browsers.
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 (ca 1963) and its descendant Emacs (ca 1985) use the Esc key extensively.
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.
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.
Enter key.
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.
Shift key.
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).
Menu key, Command key, Windows key.
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).
The Windows key opens the 'Start' (applications) menu.
History.
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.
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.
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 used a layout similar to a piano keyboard.
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, who laid out the keys 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, and laid 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. Although it has been demonstrated that the QWERTY layout is not the most efficient layout for typing, it remains the standard.
Sholes chose the size of the keys to be on three-quarter [¾, 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".
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.
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 wasn't 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.
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.
The standard 101/102-key PC keyboard layout was invented by Mark Tiddens of Key Tronic Corporation in 1982. IBM adopted the layout on the PS/2 in 1987 (after previously using an 84-key keyboard which did not have separate cursor and numeric key pads).
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.
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.
Physical, visual, and functional layouts.
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.
Physical layouts.
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 have plug'n'play, so that they communicate their visual layout to the OS when connected (but the user continues to have the ability to reset this at will).
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.
Visual layouts.
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.
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.
Functional layouts.
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 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.
Customized functional layouts.
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.
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.
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.
National variants.
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.
The United States keyboard layout is used as default in some Linux distributions.
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.
Size variation.
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. The most common choice is to not include the numpad, which can usually be fully replaced by the alphanumeric section. Laptops and wireless peripherals often lack duplicate keys and ones seldom used. Function and arrow keys are nearly always present.
Latin-script keyboard layouts.
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.
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:
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.
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.
QWERTY.
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.
QÜERTY (Azeri).
Azeri 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.
ÄWERTY (Turkmen).
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).
QWERTZ.
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" is usually a "shift lock" as in AZERTY (see below).
AZERTY.
The AZERTY layout is used in France, Belgium, and some African countries. It differs from the QWERTY layout thus:
ĄŽERTY (Lithuanian).
Lithuanian keyboards use a 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. Besides ĄŽERTY, the Lithuanian QWERTY keyboard is also used. It is standardized as LST 1582
QZERTY.
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.
Apple supported QZERTY layout in its early Italian keyboards, and currently iPod Touch also has it available.
Sámi Extended.
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.
Other Latin-script keyboard layouts.
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.
Dvorak.
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).
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.
Colemak.
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.
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.
Operating systems such macOS, Linux, Android, Chrome OS, 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.
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.
Workman.
Workman is an English layout supported out-of-the-box in Linux/X11 systems.
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.
Another principle applied is that it is more natural and less effort to curl in or stretch out fingers rather than rotate
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.
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.
Other English layouts.
There are many other layouts for English, each developed with differing basic principles. The CarpalX study lists many of these alternatives and analyses their relative strengths based on certain parameters.
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.
"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.
Further variations were created using the keyboard layout optimizer.
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.
"Qwpr" is a layout which changes only 11 basic keys from their QWERTY positions, with only 2 of them changing 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.
In Canada, the CSA keyboard is designed to write several languages, especially French.
Sholes 2nd Layout.
Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the QWERTY layout, created his own alternative in 1898. The patent was granted in 1896.
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.
JCUKEN (Latin).
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.
Neo.
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.
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.
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:
BÉPO.
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.
Typing tutors exist to ease the transition.
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. However, the use of the BÉPO layout remains marginal.
Dvorak-fr.
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.
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.
Turkish (F-keyboard).
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.
ŪGJRMV.
The ŪGJRMV layout is specifically designed for the Latvian language.
Malt.
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.
Modified Blickensderfer.
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.
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.
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.
Hexagon.
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.
Alphabetical Layout.
A few companies offer "ABC" (alphabetical) layout keyboards.
Chorded keyboards and mobile devices.
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.
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.
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.
Other original layouts and layout design software.
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 and Workman); 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.
Maltron also has a single-handed keyboard layout.
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),
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
layouts) or modify existing ones (for example, the
Latin American Extended or
Gaelic
layouts). Such editors can also construct complex key sequences using dead keys or key.
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.
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).
Non-QWERTY layouts were also used with specialized machines such as the 90-key Linotype type setting machine.
Keyboard layouts for non-Latin alphabetic scripts.
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.
This is not a general rule, and many non-Latin keyboard layouts have been invented from scratch.
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.
Brahmic scripts.
Bengali.
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.
Dhivehi.
Dhivehi Keyboards have two layouts. Both are supported by Microsoft Windows (Windows XP and later only).
InScript.
InScript is the standard keyboard for 12 Indian scripts including Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu etc.
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.
An InScript keyboard is inbuilt in most modern operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. It is also available in some mobile phones.
Khmer.
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 ល is typed on the same key as the letter L on the English-based qwerty.
Since Khmer has no capitalization, but many more letters than Latin, the shift key is used to select between two distinct letters. For most consonants, the shift key selects between a "first series" consonant (unshifted) and the corresponding "second series" consonant (shifted), e.g., ត () and ទ (dto) on the T key, or ប (baw) and ព (bpo) on the B key. For most vowels, the two on the key are consecutive in the Khmer alphabet.
Although Khmer has no capital or lowercase, per se, there are two forms for consonants. All but one (ឡ) have a second, "subscript", form to be used when it occurs as the second (or, rarely, third) letter in a consonant cluster. The glyph below the letter ញ on the J key cap produces a non-printing character, U+17D2, which functions to indicate that the following Khmer letter is to be rendered subscripted.
Khmer is written with no spaces between words, but lines may only be broken at word boundaries. The spacebar therefore produces a zero width space (non-printable U+200B) for invisible word separation. SHIFT+SPACE produces visible spaces (U+0020) which are used as punctuation, e.g., to separate items in lists, etc.
There are five vowel signs that appear on the key caps, and are considered single letters in the Khmer alphabet, but are not assigned to unicode code points. They are instead represented by two consecutive vowel sign codes, the glyphs of which combine to make the vowel's glyph, e.g., េះ (eh) is stored as េ (ay) U+17C1 followed by ះ (ah) U+17C7. The Khmer keyboard map does not send the code pair sequence, however. It sends one officially-unassigned code (from the Khmer block). It is up to the running application to recognize these codes and insert the appropriate code pair into the document.
Thai.
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.
Lao.
The keyboard layout used for Lao language.
Sinhala.
The Sinhala keyboard layout is based on the Wijesekara typewriter for Sinhala script.
Tibetan.
Tibetan (China).
The Chinese National Standard on Tibetan Keyboard Layout standardises a layout for the Tibetan language in China.
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.
Tibetan (International).
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.
Dzongkha (Bhutan).
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.
Arabic.
This layout was developed by Microsoft from the classic Arabic typewriter layout and is used by IBM PCs. There is also a 102-key variant and a 102-key phonetic variant that maps to AZERTY.
For Apple keyboards there is a different layout.
For Chrome a 1:1 layout also exists.
Armenian.
The Armenian 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.
In the pre-computer times Armenian keyboards had quite a different layout, more suitable for producing letter combinations inherent to the language.
Several attempts have been made to create innovative ergonomical layouts, some of them inspired by Dvorak.
Cyrillic.
Bulgarian.
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).
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".
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.
Russian.
JCUKEN.
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.
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.
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.
Russian QWERTY/QWERTZ-based phonetic layouts.
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.
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.
The images of AATSEEL "Student", YaZhERT (яжерт) and YaWERT (яверт) are shown on this page.
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.
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.
Virtual (on-screen) Russian keyboards allow entering Cyrillic directly in a browser without activating the system layout. This virtual keyboard offers YaZhERT (яжерт) variant. Another virtual keyboard supports both traditional ("MS Windows" and Typewriter) and some phonetic keyboard layouts, including AATSEEL "Student", Mac OS X Phonetic Russian layout and the RUSSIANEASY 1:1 keyboard for chrome.
Serbian (Cyrillic).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ukrainian.
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.
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).
Georgian.
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 didn't 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 didn't exist in the Cyrillic or Latin alphabets were substituted by letters that didn't exist in Georgian alphabet. Today the most commonly used layout follows the QWERTY pattern with some changes.
Greek.
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).
Greek has two fewer letters than English, but has two accents 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.
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.
Hebrew.
All keyboards in Israel are fitted with both Latin and Hebrew letters. Trilingual editions including either Arabic or Cyrillic also exist.
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.
Certain Hebrew layouts are extended with niqqud symbols (vowel points), which require Alt+Shift or similar key combination in order to be typed.
Inuktitut.
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.
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.
Cherokee.
The Cherokee language uses an 86-character Syllabary. The keyboard is available for the iPhone and iPad and is supported by Google.
Tifinagh.
Tamazight (Berber).
The "Tamazight (Tifinagh)" standards-compliant layout is optimised for a wide range of Tamazight (Berber) language variants, and includes support for Tuareg variants. AZERTY-mapped, it installs as "Tamazight F" and can be used both on the French locale and with Tamazight locales. QWERTY and QWERTZ adaptations are available for the physical keyboards used by major Amazigh (Berber) communities around the world.
Non-standards-compliant but convenient combined AZERTY Latin script layouts exist which also allow typing in Tifinagh script without switching layout:
A non-standards-compliant but convenient combined AZERTY-mapped Tifinagh layout exists which also allows typing in Latin script without switching layout:
All the above layouts were designed by the Universal Amazigh Keyboard Project and are available from there.
Morocco.
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.
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 there.
East Asian languages.
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.
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).
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. .
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.
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).
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.
Hangul (for Korean).
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.
Dubeolsik.
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.
Sebeolsik 390.
Sebeolsik 390 (세벌식 390; 3-set 390) was released in 1990. It is based on Dr. Kong Byung Woo'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.
Sebeolsik Final.
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. Kong Pyŏng'u, 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.
Sebeolsik Noshift.
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.
Chinese.
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.
People's Republic of China.
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.
Taiwan.
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.
The codes of three input methods are typically printed on the Chinese (traditional) keyboard: Zhuyin (upper right); Cangjie (lower left); and Dayi (lower right).
Hong Kong and Macau.
In Hong Kong, both Chinese (Taiwan) and US keyboards are found. Japanese keyboards are occasionally found, and UK keyboards are rare.
For Chinese input, Shape-based input methods such as Cangjie (pronounced "cong1 kit3" in Cantonese) or Chinese handwriting recognition are the most common input method. The use of phonetic-based input method is uncommon due to the lack of official standard for Cantonese romanisation and people in Hong Kong almost never learn any romanisation schemes in schools. An advantage of phonetic-based input method is that most Cantonese speakers are able to input Traditional Chinese characters with no particular training at all where they spell out the Cantonese sound of each character without tone marks, e.g. 'heung gong' for 香港(; Hong Kong) and to choose the characters from a list. However, Microsoft Windows, which is the most popular operating system used in desktops, does not provide any Cantonese phonetic input method, requiring users to find and install third-party input method software. Also, most people find the process of picking characters from a list being too slow due to homonyms so the Cangjie method is generally preferred.
Although thorough training and practice are required to use Cangjie, many Cantonese speakers have taken Cangjie input courses because of the fast typing speed availed by the input method. This method is the fastest because it has the capability to fetch the exact, unambiguous Chinese character which the user has in mind to input, pinpointing to only one character in most cases. This is also the reason why no provision for an input of phonetic accent is needed to complement this Input Method. The Cangjie character feature is available on both Mac OS X and Windows. On Mac OS X, handwriting recognition input method is bundled with the OS.
Macau utilizes the same layouts as Hong Kong, with the addition of the Portuguese layout used in Portugal.
Japanese.
The JIS standard layout includes Japanese kana in addition to a QWERTY style layout. The shifted values of many keys (digits, together with ) are a legacy of bit-paired keyboards, dating to ASCII telex machines and terminals of the 1960s and 1970s.
For entering Japanese, the most common method is entering text phonetically, as romanized (transliterated) kana, which are then converted to kanji as appropriate by an input method editor. It is also possible to type kana directly, depending on the mode used. To type , "Takahashi", a Japanese name, one could type either () in Romanized (Rōmaji) input mode, or in kana input mode. Then the user can proceed to the conversion step to convert the input into the appropriate kanji.
The extra keys in the bottom row (muhenkan, henkan, and the Hiragana/Katakana switch key), and the special keys in the leftmost column (the hankaku/zenkaku key at the upper left corner, and the eisū key at the Caps Lock position), control various aspects of the conversion process and select different modes of input.
The Oyayubi Shifuto (Thumb Shift) layout is based on kana input, but uses two modifying keys replacing the space bar. When a key is pressed simultaneously with one of the keys, it yields another letter. Letters with the "dakuten" diacritic are typed with the opposite side "thumb shift". Letters with "handakuten" are either typed while the conventional pinky-operated shift key is pressed (that is, each key corresponds to a maximum of 4 letters), or, on the "NICOLA" variation, on a key which does not have a dakuten counterpart.
The key in the QWERTY layout individually yields は, but with the () key, yields み. Simultaneous input with () yields ば, which is the individually mapped letter with the aforementioned dakuten. While the pinky-operated key is pressed, the same key yields ぱ. (This same letter must be typed with () + on the NICOLA variant.)
Layout changing software.
The character code produced by any key press is determined by the keyboard driver software. A key press generates a scancode which is interpreted as an alphanumeric character or control function. Depending on operating systems, various application programs are available to create, add and switch among keyboard layouts. Many programs are available, some of which are language specific.
The arrangement of symbols of specific language can be customized. An existing keyboard layout can be edited, and a new layout can be created using this type of software.
For example, for Mac, The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator and open-source Avro Keyboard provide the ability to customize the keyboard layout as desired.


Thomas Downing

Thomas Downing (1928–1985) was an American painter, associated with the Washington Color Field Movement, which also featured
Sam Gilliam, Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring, Alma Thomas, and Paul Reed.
Life and work.
Thomas Downing was born in Suffolk, Virginia. He studied at Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948. He then studied at the Pratt Institute, a well-known art school in Brooklyn, New York, until 1950. That year he received a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, enabling him to travel to Europe, where he studied briefly at the Académie Julian in Paris.
In 1951 he returned to the United States, and after serving in the U.S. Army, settled in Washington, D.C., where he began to teach, in 1953. The following summer, he enrolled in a summer institute at Catholic University, studying under Kenneth Noland. He became a friend of Noland, who became a significant influence on Downing's art and who was one of the founders of the Washington Color Field Movement.
In the late 1950s, Downing shared a studio with Howard Mehring, another artist of the Washington Color School and Color Field painting. In 1964 Clement Greenberg included Noland, Mehring, Downing and others in his traveling museum exhibition called "Post-painterly Abstraction."
From 1965 to 1968, Downing taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. There he taught several people who in their turn became artists influenced by Downing's ideas.
His paintings to a large extent consisted of circles arranged in precise patterns on the canvas, with colors often chosen according to ideas of symmetry. Downing's "Spot Paintings" are his best known works.
In the last ten years of his life, Downing lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He died in October 1985 in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the age of 57. In its obituary the "Washington Times" characterized his death as mysterious. The newspaper was referring to the then recent demise of Washington Color Field artist Gene Davis (1920–1985) and to the earlier death of Howard Mehring (1931–1978), as well.


Pierre Clerk

Pierre Clerk (born 1928) is a contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and sculpture.
Life.
Clerk was born to Canadian parents in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was an architect. Clerk lived in Canada between 1932 and 1952. He studied fine arts at McGill University, Loyola College, and at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He also trained at the Académie Julian in Paris and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. Clerk moved to New York in 1959. His work has been widely recognized, and he has won grants from a number of institutions, including Canadian Council Awards; Tamarind Fel, Albuquerque, New Mexico; United States Information Service Exhibition Grant; Municipal Art Society Grant; and U.S. Department of State Travel Grant. Currently, he lives and works in Southwest France and in New York City.
Work.
Pierre Clerk's abstract, geometrical works are held in many museums and galleries in the United States and Canada, such as: Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenhiem Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Brooklyn Museum; Glasgow Art Museum, Scotland; New Mexico University, Albuquerque; Queens College, New York; and State University of New York, Purchase. Several of Clerk's paintings, serigraphs, and tapestries are in the collection of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and have been exhibited at the international arrivals building at John F. Kennedy International Airport and the World Trade Center. In addition, a collection of his papers (covering the years 1956 through 1982) are in the Smithsonian: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Clerk first came to national attention in the U.S. in the spring of 1956, when he was chosen as one of three artists to be featured in the Museum of Modern Art's 9th New Talent Exhibition. The New York Times described the show as "one of the best in this series" and went on to say: "Clerk's boldly colored and decorative non-objective oils are in the general tradition of Matisse and are laid out in deliberate patterns like those in an oriental rug, handsome and clear in their planning." Since the mid-1950s, his work has been included in many group and solo shows. In 2010, the gallery Cortex Athletico in Bordeaux, France, mounted a large show of paintings and smaller sculptures. Called 70/10, the show presented a dialogue between recent works and those of the 1970s. Speaking of his own work, Clerk cites Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Neoplasticism, Brâncuși, and the cubism of Picasso as major influences.
Monumental Sculpture.
In addition to painting, Clerk has also created monumental sculptures of note. In 1977, four of Clerk's large sculptures, which the artist crafted specifically for the location, were installed at Waterside Plaza, an apartment complex on Manhattan's East River. Sponsored by the Public Arts Council of the Municipal Art Society, the installation garnered a positive review in the New York Times. Of the large geometric pieces, Paul Goldberger wrote: "The success of the Clerk exhibition, which will remain at Waterside Plaza for an indefinite period, is an obvious reminder of the extent to which sculpture can assist in solving an architectural problem... The sculptures neither give in to the buildings nor fight them; instead they treat them almost playfully, teasing the towers' somber forms, yet never becoming shrill or unkind. It is the sort of balance more urban sculpture should strike."
Clerk's two-story City Candy (1983), described as a "commanding presence" by the "Toledo Blade", weighs 25,000 pounds. The red-and-white striped aluminum sculpture, which measures 42 feet by 48 feet by 24 feet and has one base inside a parking garage and the other on the adjacent sidewalk, was named by the winner of a 1984 "name the sculpture" contest. As the first city in Ohio to adopt a one percent for arts program, Toledo, Ohio boasts more than 80 examples of public, outdoor art, which include large sculptures, environmental structures, and murals. These works are organized into a number of tours. The Toledo Blade cites City Candy as being "among our favorites" on the Promenade Park–River Walk tour. But, as almost all public art does, City Candy has drawn its share of criticism, and it "continues to be a controversial sculpture with opinions being voiced strongly on both sides."
Civic Involvement.
In 1996, Clerk lead the SoHo Community Council, an ad hoc group of artists and other Soho residents who sued the New York State Liquor Authority for granting a liquor license to a nightclub on Grand Street in Manhattan. Opponents of the club, who included actor Willem Dafoe; Christopher Burge, the chairman of Christie's; along with the Soho Alliance, another community group; and the local community board; charged that the authority had broken a 1993 law which was intended to prevent residential neighborhoods from becoming over-saturated with bars and nightclubs. The case went to the State Supreme Court, where, in 1997 the judge ruled in favor of Clerk and the neighborhood groups. The judge ordered an immediate revocation of the club's liquor license. Clerk told the New York Times that the ruling "sends the message to the S.L.A. that it can not frivolously issue licenses in opposition to what the community wants, especially here in SoHo."


Alexander Camaro

Alexander Camaro (actual name Alphons Bernhard Kamarofski: 27 September 1901 – 20 October 1992) was a German artist (painter) and dancer.
Life.
Alphons Bernhard Kamarofski was born and grew up in Breslau (as Wrocław was known before) 1945). His education included violin lessons and training as an acrobat. While he was still young he joined a circus troupe and performed as a tightrope artist.
Between 1920 and 1925 Camaro studied painting at the , where his teachers included Otto Mueller. Later he attended the City Conservatory ("Städtisches konservatorium") in Breslau. During 1929 and 1930 he attended the "Wigman School", an expressionist dance school in Dresden. In 1930 he appeared as a soloist alongside Mary Wigman herself, in elaborate anti-war stage-drama "Totenmal". While Wigman led a line of grieving mothers in pastel-blue veils, Alexander Camaro, as the god of war, wore a face-mask that according to one commentator made him look like a cross between the high-profile heavy-weight boxer Max Schmeling and the pioneering stage director Paul Wegener. "Totenmal" made its mark with audiences, although the demanding requirements of the production led to a deficit on the production of a hundred thousand Marks. During the war years
While attending the "Wigman School", Camaro was undertaking a number of additional engagements as a dancer, using the name "Alexander Kamaroff". One of his dance partners was Gisa Ley. Jadwiga ("today Jadwiga Falk-Ley"), their daughter, was born in 1930.
Although, given the choice, Camaro later supported himself and expressed himself artistically primarily though his painting, during the twelve Nazi years, the authorities decided his work was "degenerate" and exhibition of his paintings was banned. He survived chiefly through dance. The National Socialists were able to take power in January 1933 and lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship Many things changed, but Camaro was neither Jewish nor a political activist, and was able to pursue a stage career. Liselore Bergmann became his regular dance partner and together they danced in a number venues across Germany, notably at the Residenztheater in Gotha. In 1939, as war broke out nearby, Camaro was dismissed from a position as ballet-master at Allenstein. During the war years Camaro and Bergmann undertook foreign tours in the Netherlands and in France. Later they were sent to give dance performances to entertain the forces on the Russian front and in Crete. In 1944 Camaro received the order to report for military service, so went into hiding for the rest of the war.
After the war Silesia was no longer in Germany so there was no question of going back to Breslau. Almost all his earlier paintings had been destroyed in the bombings. Camaro settled in Berlin where for him 1945 marked the start of a particularly productive phase as an artist. There were several exhibitions during the immediate postwar years and he became well known within Berlin's arts circles. In 1949 he was, with friends, a co-founder of the legendary, surrealistic and short-lived Berlin cabaret group, . He applied his creative energies to his work as a painter, as a dancer and even as a pantomime artist. He joined the newly re-established Deutscher Künstlerbund ("German artists' association") in 1950 and participated in their first postwar exhibition with four oil paintings, including the large-format "Rosa Dame" ("Pink lady").
Following a comprehensive exhibition of his surviving works to date at the in 1951 Camaro received the Berlin Arts Prize ("Berliner Kunstpreis") from the (West) German Academy of Arts. A year later he accepted a professorship in painting at the Berlin University of the Arts. The regular salary gave him a new level of financial security, but also reduced his public profile with art buyers because there was no longer a stream of new Camaro works appearing on the market. The extent to which, after 1952, Camaro became something of a hoarder of his own artwork would only become apparent to commentators after his death, at which point his estate contained well over 800 oil paintings, along with a substantial, collection of graphic art, drawings and sketches.
Personal.
Alexander Camaro married Renata Gentner (1934–2009), one of his most brilliant students who came, originally, from Herrenberg (near Stuttgart), in 1966. In 1971 the couple moved to a studio at Kampen on Sylt. After that Alexander Camaro worked alternately on Sylt and in Berlin.
Work.
Camaro was a relatively prolific artist. His output includes paintings, graphic pieces, drawings and collages, along with contributions in the worlds of dance and of film. His early works focused, in particular, on themes involving circus, vaudeville and theatre settings. That reflected the world in which he was living and working at the time, but as his career progressed beyond stage performing, those themes nevertheless remained integral to his output, though they were no longer always to the fore.
The image cycle "Das Hölzerne Theater" ("The Wooden Theatre") of 1945/46 established Camaro as part of the postwar "Berlin arts scene". It demonstrates his sense of space and perspective, with bold shapes and slanted surfaces set in staggered overlapping compositions. Till the end of the 1940s Camaro's approach was mainly figurative, his paintings communicating a narrative that in part operates below the surface, but which also evokes a melancholy poeticism. In the rather cautious colour selections, shades of brown predominate, off-setting contrasting bright accents.
In the 1950s Camaro's focus switched to more starkly abstract paintings. Sharply delineated forms and symbols with mathematical precision characterise this work. The "Instrumentenbildern" ("literally "instrument pictures"") of the 1960s took him back to more figurative elements. In his search for a life in harmony with nature, he found in Sylt a special source of inspiration for depictions of natural landscapes and lighting. Bright colours, notably shades of white, dominate the large-format canvases of his later work, in some of which he revives devices from his earlier periods such as collage techniques.
In 1955 Camaro started to receive commissions for public art. Probably the best known example was his collaborative project with his then partner, the ceramics artist Susanne Riée, for a permanent work created from strongly coloured glass blocks at the Berliner Philharmonie (concert hall) (1963). There were further works of the same kind produced for public buildings, now in collaboration with Renata Camaro, notably at the (1974/75) and at the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum (1980/81).
Alexander and Renata Camaro foundation.
The Alexander and Renata Camaro foundation was founded in Berlin by Renata Camaro in 2009 to manage the couple's artistic legacy, which is made accessible to the public through publications and exhibitions in "Camaro House" and other accessible locations. The foundation also supports contemporary painting, dance, literature, film and music in connection with Alexander Camaro's multi-faceted work.


Pablo Serrano

Pablo Serrano Aguilar, (8 March 1908, Crivillén, Teruel – 26 November 1985, Madrid) was a Spanish abstract sculptor.
Personal life.
1920–1925. Pablo Serrano studied as a boarder in the Escuelas Profesionales Salesianas in Sarriá (Barcelona).
1935–1954. He settled in Montevideo (Uruguay), Serrano had the opportunity to meet Joaquín Torres García and Lucio Fontana.
1955. Pablo Serrano was now to become a force within the Spanish artistic avant-garde. As evidence of this, in that same year, he won the III Biennial of Spanish American Art in Barcelona.
1957. His first solo exhibition was held at the Atheneum of Madrid. Together with Juana Francés and artists such as Manolo Millares and Antonio Saura he collaborated with El Paso Group.
1957–1958. The reflections that arose as a result of these series of pieces gave birth to a new project, which he christened Drama of the Object and Burning of the Object. In 1958, he exhibited in the Eduard Loeb Gallery in Paris and was invited to take part in the Art du XXI Siècle which was held in Charleroi, Belgium.
Serrano's abstract introspection reached its zenith with the series Rhythms in Space, dynamic compositions constructed from stainless steel rods. In 1959, while taking part in one of Pierre Schaeffer's experimental music projects, Serrano presented his working models for these series, as well as the first Burning of an object entitled The Dis-occupation of the Space or the Presence of the Absence in the Galleria del Disegno in Milan, Italy.
1960. The reputation that he had by now firmly established lead him to be selected to take part in the New Spanish Painting and Sculpture exhibition that was on show for two years at first in MOMA in New York and later in Washington, Chicago and New Hampshire. He also took part in Current Art in Aschaffenburg, Germany.
Pablo Serrano was invited in 1961 to The Pittsburg International in the Carnegie Institute in the United States, and to the II Exposition Internationale de Sculpture Contemporaine in the Rodin Museum in Paris. He received the González Critics Prize in the Saloon of May in Barcelona.
He entered 23 pieces for the XXXI International Biennial in Venice in 1962, only to find himself a mere one vote short of the First Prize for Sculpture, which was to be won by Alberto Giacometti.
1967. Portrayal of Milton Rua. Concurrently, and in keeping with the aesthetic and philosophical line he had started at the beginning of the decade, he produced Men with Door, a logical continuation of his earlier Men-Vault. In this new period the character of Serrano's work became even more dichotomic. He participated in the Sculpture from Twenty Nations exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
1969. The Juana Mordó Gallery in Madrid publishes Calvin Cannon's book Serrano in the Sixties.
1975. His sculptures were exposed in the Sala Gaudí Barcelona gallery, today Gaudifond Arte gallery, which collaborated exhibiting a sculpture in the famous La Rambla central Barcelona street and still owns several artworks of his.
1976. The series Yoke-Unit paved the way for the numerous sculptural projects like the piece entitled Spiritu mundi, Open Yoke-Unit sculpted for the University of Houston, Texas.
1982. That same year he was awarded the inaugural Príncipe de Asturias award for Art. Later he was to exhibit in the Hermitage Museum, in Leningrad.
1985. Serrano exhibited pieces from these last series at the Juana Mordó Gallery in Madrid, as well as their original plaster versions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Pablo Serrano died in Madrid on 26 November at the age of seventy seven.
1994. 27 May, the Foundation-Museum Pablo Serrano in Saragossa was officially opened.
Work in museums.
America
Europe


Salomon Plessner

Salomon Plessner (; – ) was a German Jewish translator and "maggid".
Biography.
Salomon Plessner was born in Breslau to Rabbi Yehuda Plesner, who died when Salomon was young. Having to support his mother and himself, Plessner engaged in business, but found time to study Hebrew, rabbinics, and German, under Wessely's influence. He published in 1819 a Hebrew translation of the Apocryphal additions to the Book of Esther, under the title "Hosafah li-Megillat Ester", with a literary-historical introduction.
At the same time he became known as an eloquent "maggid". Many of his sermons were published, among them his funeral oration on the death of , under the title "Zekher Tzaddik li-Brakhah" (1821). Through his sermons and his close association with Rabbi Akiva Eger, Plessner became known as a defender of Orthodox Judaism against the growing Reform movement. Forbidden by the police from delivering sermons, he in 1823 settled in Festenberg, Silesia. He presented a defense of the Talmud to the Posen government in 1826, prompting the government to revoke a decree forbidding Talmudic instruction in schools.
Pressner moved to Berlin in 1830, where he earned a livelihood by lecturing in the Berlin "beit midrash". In 1832 his "Nozelim min Lebanon" was published, consisting of a Hebrew translation of a part of the Apocrypha, with an appendix, entitled "Duda'im", containing exegetical notes, verses in Hebrew and German, and sermons. The following year he was invited to dedicate the new synagogue at Bromberg, for which occasion he composed poems in Hebrew and in German, which were published under the title S"hirim la-Ḥanukkat Bet ha-Tefillah" (1834). He left Berlin and settled in Posen in 1843, where he remained active as a "maggid", chiefly at the Neuschul.


Abd al-Wahhab Abu Zayd

Abd al-Wahhab Khalil Abu Zayd (Arabic: ) is a Saudi translator and poet. He publishes his poetic, literary, and translational works in Saudi newspapers. Among his best-known translations are works by the American singer and poet Bob Dylan.