left-quote ( ` ) on International keyboards [Prothon]

[Mark Hahn]

Can users with international keyboards tell me if they have problems typing
the left-quote ( ` ) character? It isn't used much in Python but we are
thinking of giving it a slightly more important role in Prothon. (I'm not
going to say what that role is here to avoid starting another 300 message
thread like I did last time :-) If you are curious you can go to the
Prothon mailing lists at http://prothon.org).

[Norbert Klamann]

"Mark Hahn" <ma**@prothon.o rg> wrote in message news:<ma******* *************** *************** @python.org>...

Tuure Laurinolli wrote:

Mark Hahn wrote:

What does deadkey mean?

The same as 'combined key' above. It doesn't immediately produce
output, instead you can press some other key after it, ` + a = à, and
you can produce the literal with ` + space.

Thanks. I can see where the name comes from.

I never thought of it being used as an accent mark. I always thought of it
as a crummy left-quote. That explains why it is always drawn so high.

We are thinking of using it as a marker for "symbols" in Prothon. They are
like strings but can only be legal variable labels: `var, `init_, `x,
`account_balanc e, etc. I think in our application they look good and won't
be mistaken for quotes since they don't come in pairs. They are readable
and distinquishable in this context. Also, symbols won't be used that
frequently so typing won't be too much of a pain.

Be aware of the dangers of bad typesetting ! I once had a hard time to
figure out unix commands where the ` was set as a ' in a commercial
book about unix!

All the best !
Norbert

[Tuure Laurinolli]

Mark Hahn wrote:

We aren't using any of the oddball symbols any more, so $ is free. I'm a
little wary of proposing using it though. The last time I proposed using $
Prothon was accused of being Perl :-)
I already said I dislike $ the las time i was tried to be used. The
reason for me is that $ looks just like any other letter whereas ` is
immediately recognizable as a special character.

THe other person who shared my opinion had much better argumentation
than my "it looks wrong", but basically it came down to the same thing.
Just with words such as "baseline" and "sigil":
Is $ easier to type on foreign keyboards?

I doubt that, probably almost every special character on non-US
keyboards requires two sequential keypresses or a combination. ` is `
followed by space, $ is altgr + 4. Personally I think ` is actually
easier ty type.

[Christophe Cavalaria]

Mark Hahn wrote:

Timo Virkkala wrote:

Mark Hahn wrote:

We are thinking of using it as a marker for "symbols" in Prothon.
They are like strings but can only be legal variable labels: `var,
`init_, `x, `account_balanc e, etc. I think in our application they
look good and won't be mistaken for quotes since they don't come in
pairs. They are readable and distinquishable in this context.
Also, symbols won't be used that frequently so typing won't be too
much of a pain.

Why not use something like $ or something? I'm not familiar with
Prothon, so I don't know if $ is already used for something, but it's
a character normally used with symbols/placeholders/etc.

We aren't using any of the oddball symbols any more, so $ is free. I'm a
little wary of proposing using it though. The last time I proposed using
$ Prothon was accused of being Perl :-)

I'll put it up for vote on the Prothon mailing list. You can come by and
vote for it :-)

Is $ easier to type on foreign keyboards?

$ is one of the only thing easy to type in a french keyboard. Thanks god
that we don't need to type too many {} in Python for they are the worst :)

Of course, I can't speak for other keyboard layouts.

[Timo Virkkala]

Mark Hahn wrote:

Is $ easier to type on foreign keyboards?

Well.. It's AltGr+4 on the Finnish keyboard, so not too hard. Easier than
{[]}\, since they are AltGr+7890+ and you can really do them with one hand,
whereas @£$ can be done with two hands.

--
Timo "WT" Virkkala

[Timo Virkkala]

Timo Virkkala wrote:

Mark Hahn wrote:

Is $ easier to type on foreign keyboards?

Well.. It's AltGr+4 on the Finnish keyboard, so not too hard. Easier
than {[]}\, since they are AltGr+7890+ and you can really do them with
one hand, whereas @£$ can be done with two hands.

.... reading that sentence and realizing that it's a bit strange:

It's not really the fact that it's one/two-handed, but with AltGr, I have to
twist my right hand to a strange angle with the one-handed chars. The
two-handed ones are faster to type.

--
Timo "WT" Virkkala

[Miki Tebeka]

Hello Mark,

Can users with international keyboards tell me if they have problems typing
the left-quote ( ` ) character?

No problem with Hebrew.

Bye.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miki Tebeka <mi*********@zo ran.com>
The only difference between children and adults is the price of the toys.

[Konstantin Veretennicov]

"Mark Hahn" <ma**@prothon.o rg> wrote in message news:<buLwc.609 25$zN5.390@fed1 read01>...

Can users with international keyboards tell me if they have problems typing
the left-quote ( ` ) character? It isn't used much in Python but we are

Single keystroke for me (Cyrillic/Russian).

-kv