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50-460: AltGr (also Alt Graph ) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type special characters and symbols that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign currency symbols , typographic marks and accented letters . On a typical Windows-compatible PC keyboard, the AltGr key, when present, takes

100-410: A PDA were: virtual keyboards operated by a stylus, external USB keyboards, handwritten keyboards, and stroke recognition. Microsoft's mobile operating system approach was to simulate a completely functional keyboard, resulting in an overloaded layout. Without support for multi-touch technology, PDA vitural keyboards had usability constraints. When Apple presented the iPhone in 2007, not including

150-526: A QWERTZ layout specifically designed for the Polish language with accented letters in the Polish alphabet obtainable directly. When personal computers became available worldwide in the 1980s, commercial importing into Poland was not supported by its communist government, so most machines in Poland were brought in by private individuals. Most had US keyboards, and various methods were devised to make available

200-515: A Hebrew keyboard, one may write in Yiddish as the two languages share many letters. However, Yiddish has some additional digraphs not otherwise found in Hebrew, which are entered via AltGr: On Italian keyboards , AltGr enables the user to type the following characters: There is an alternate layout, which differ just in disposition of characters accessible through AltGr and includes

250-473: A modifier key is pressed. The most common are: The (Sun) Meta key, Windows key, (Apple) Cmd key, and the analogous "Amiga key" ( A ) on Amiga computers, are usually handled equivalently. Under the Linux operating system, the desktop environment KDE calls this key Meta , while GNOME calls this key, neutrally, Super . This could be considered confusing, since the original space-cadet keyboard and

300-419: A new predictive typing feature called Quick Type, which displays word predictions above the keyboard as the user types. Haptic feedback provides for tactile confirmation that a key has been successfully triggered i.e. the user hears and feels a "click" as a key is pressed. Utilizing hysteresis , the feel of a physical key can be emulated to an even greater degree. In this case, there is an initial "click" that

350-490: A normal key and as a modifier. For example, you can use the space bar both as a normal Space bar and as a Shift. Intuitively, it will act as a standard Space when you want a whitespace, and a Shift when you want it to act as a shift. I.e. when you simply press and release it, it is the usual space, but when you press other keys, say X , Y and Z , while holding down the space , then they will be treated as ⇧ Shift plus X, Y and Z. The above example

400-571: A number of operating systems; they are known as Polish typists' layout ( klawiatura polska maszynistki ). Older Polish versions of Microsoft Windows used this layout, describing it as Polish layout . On current versions it is referred to as Polish (214) . The keymap with the AltGr key: < Romanian standard + the signs mostly pressed with AltGr prints the US keyboard signs Romanian standard> Since release 1903, versions of Windows 10 have

450-450: A physical keyboard was seen as a detriment. However, Apple brought the multi-touch technology into the device, overcoming the usability problems of PDAs. The most common mobile operating systems, Android and iOS , give the developer community the possibility to individually develop custom virtual keyboards. The Android SDK provides an "InputMethodService". This service provides a standard implementation of an input method, enabling

500-426: A physically non-existent input device, such as a surface having painted keys. This allows it to emulate unlimited types of manually operated input devices including mouse or keyboard. All mechanical input units can be replaced by such virtual devices, optimized for the current application and for the user's physiology maintaining the speed, simplicity, and unambiguity of manual data input. One example of this technology

550-473: A traditional keyboard. Virtual keyboards may utilize the following: Various JavaScript virtual keyboards have been created on web browsers, allowing users to type their own languages on foreign keyboards. Multitouch screens allow the creation of virtual chorded keyboards for tablet computers , touchscreens, touchpads , and wired gloves . Virtual keyboards are commonly used as an on-screen input method in devices with no physical keyboard where there

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600-442: A virtual keyboard for password entry, as does TreasuryDirect (see picture). It is more difficult for malware to monitor the display and mouse to obtain the data entered via the virtual keyboard than it is to monitor real keystrokes. However, it is possible, for example by recording screenshots at regular intervals or upon each mouse click. The use of an on-screen keyboard on which the user "types" with mouse clicks can increase

650-558: A virtual keyboard in an augmented reality environment is to give the user a text input possibility. A common approach is to render a flat keyboard into augmented reality, e.g. using the Unity TouchScreenKeyboard. The Microsoft HoloLens enables the user to point at letters on the keyboard by moving his head. Another approach was researched by the Korean KJIST U-VR Lab in 2003. Their suggestion

700-418: A virtual keyboard. Keyboards are needed in different digital areas. smartphones and devices that create virtual worlds, for example, virtual reality or augmented reality glasses, need to provide text input possibilities. An optical virtual keyboard was invented and patented by IBM engineers in 1992. It optically detects and analyses human hand and finger motions and interprets them as operations on

750-513: Is heard and felt as the virtual key is pressed down, but then as finger pressure is reduced once the key is triggered, there is a further "unclick" sound and sensation as if a physical key is respringing back to its original unclicked state. This behaviour is explained in Aleks Oniszczak & Scott Mackenzie's 2004 paper "A Comparison of Two Input Methods for Keypads on Mobile Devices" which first introduced haptic feedback with hysteresis on

800-466: Is known as "SandS", standing for "Space and Shift" in Japan. But any number of any combinations are possible. To press shift+space in the previous example, you need in addition to a space/shift dual role key, one of (a) another space/shift key, (b) a usual shift, or (c) a usual space key. Virtual keyboards A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows the input of characters without

850-407: Is no room for one, such as a pocket computer , personal digital assistant (PDA), tablet computer , or touchscreen -equipped mobile phone . Text is commonly inputted either by tapping a virtual keyboard or finger-tracing. Virtual keyboards are also featured in emulation software for systems that have fewer buttons than a computer keyboard would have. The four main approaches to enter text into

900-624: Is possible to use a modifier key as a normal key. In 2005 Quicksilver (software) introduced a feature called 'Modifier-only Activation'. If a modifier key (Command) was pressed for a short duration (under 300ms) then released with no other key being pressed, this was taken as a 'trigger'. In 2012 this kind of use of a Modifier key appeared in Apple's 'Dictation preferences' under OS X Mountain Lion , where Apple introduced options like 'Press Right Command Key twice' to launch dictation. This functionality

950-522: Is the "Selfie Type" - a keyboard technology for mobile phones made by Samsung Electronics . It was intended to use the front-facing camera (the selfie camera) to track the user's fingers, enabling the user to type on an "invisible keyboard" on a table or another surface in front of the phone. It was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 and was expected to be launched in the same year but never did. The basic idea of

1000-720: Is therefore designed with compatibility in mind for all four languages. In German-speaking and Romansh-speaking Switzerland (as well as the Czech Republic ), the Swiss German layout is used, while in the French-speaking and Italian-speaking Switzerland, the Swiss French layout is used. The two layouts only differ on three keys—OEM1, OEM5 , and OEM7. On the Swiss German layout, these three keys are labelled ü , ö , and ä , respectively, while on

1050-496: Is to give the user the possibility to enter text in a completely virtual environment. Most augmented reality systems don't track the hands of the user. So many available systems provide the possibility to point at letters. In September 2016, Google released a virtual keyboard app for their Daydream virtual reality headset. To enter text, the user points at letters using the controller. In February 2017, Logitech presented an experimental approach to bring their keyboards into

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1100-642: Is written in Cyrillic keyboards AltGr + Г gives letter ґ and Ґ . Modifier key For example, in most keyboard layouts the Shift key combination ⇧ Shift + A will produce a capital letter "A" instead of the default lower-case letter "a" (unless in Caps Lock or Shift lock mode). A combination of Alt + F4 in Microsoft Windows will trigger the shortcut for closing

1150-566: The Commodore 64 and other Commodore computers had the Commodore key at the bottom left of the keyboard. Compact keyboards, such as those used in laptops , often have a Fn key to save space by combining two functions that are normally on separate keys. On laptops, pressing Fn plus one of the function keys, e.g., F2, often control hardware functions. Keyboards that lack a dedicated numeric keypad may mimic its functionality by combining

1200-537: The WIMP metaphor which provided drop-down menus etc. Some non-English language keyboards have special keys to produce accented modifications of the standard Latin-letter keys. In fact, the standard British keyboard layout includes an accent key on the top-left corner to produce àèìòù, although this is a two step procedure, with the user pressing the accent key, releasing, then pressing the letter key. These kinds of keys are called dead keys . The AltGr modifier produces

1250-698: The X Window System recognize a " Meta " modifier distinct from " Super ". The ZX Spectrum has a Symbol Shift key in addition to Caps Shift. This was used to access additional punctuation and keywords. The MSX computer keyboard, besides Shift and Control, also included two special modifier keys, Code and Graph. In some models, as in the Brazilian Gradiente Expert , the Code and Graph keys are labelled " L Gra " and " R Gra " (Left and Right Graphics). They are used to select special graphic symbols and extended characters. Likewise,

1300-461: The active window ; in this instance, Alt is the modifier key. In contrast, pressing just ⇧ Shift or Alt will probably do nothing unless assigned a specific function in a particular program (for example, activating input aids or the toolbar of the active window in Windows). User interface expert Jef Raskin coined the term " quasimode " to describe the state a computer enters into when

1350-522: The AltGr key can be used to create the following characters: Other AltGr combinations are peculiar to just some of the countries: The Finnish multilingual keyboard standard adds many new characters to the traditional layout via the AltGr key, as shown in the image below (the blue characters can be written with the AltGr key; several dead key diacritics, shown in red, are also available as an AltGr combination). Typewriters in Poland used

1400-410: The AltGr key nor a right-hand Alt key. Thus Ctrl + Alt + a has the same effect as AltGr + a . Because of this feature, Microsoft advises that Ctrl + Alt not be used as part of any application keyboard shortcut, as it would prevent typing the matching AltGr character on such keyboards. In most of the keyboard diagrams the symbol one gets when holding down AltGr is in blue in

1450-593: The Android development community to implement their own keyboard layouts. The InputMethodService ships with it on Keyboard View. While the InputMethodService can be used to customize key and gesture inputs, the Keyboard Class loads an XML description of a keyboard and stores the attributes of the keys. As a result, it is possible to install different keyboard versions on an Android device, and

1500-604: The Fn key with other keys. The MIT space-cadet keyboard had additional Top and Front modifier keys. Combined with standard modifiers, it could enter as many as 8,000 different characters. Specialist typesetting machines, and word processors such as the Redactron , sometimes used multiple modifier keys to trigger mode changes e.g. for emboldened text or justification changes. This approach gradually became obsolete after software based on commodity hardware and operating systems adopted

1550-662: The Swiss French layout, the labels are inverted as è , é , and à ; namely, the base layer and the Shift⇧ layer are swapped. However, with respect to the AltGr layer, the region-specific layouts are irrelevant. Swiss German: AltGr + Ä → { Swiss French: AltGr + À → { In Turkish keyboard variants the AltGr can be used to display the following characters: In Ukrainian (enhanced) keyboard, added in Windows Vista , combination AltGr + U (or as it

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1600-688: The Windows On-Screen Keyboard by selecting the necessary keys with the German keyboard layout selected. Some newer types of German keyboards offer the assignment AltGr + H → capital ß. [REDACTED] Some of these key combinations also result in different characters if the polytonic layout is used. On Hebrew keyboards , AltGr enables the user to type the Hebrew vowels and pronunciation marks . In addition, there are several combinations for special characters: Using

1650-500: The accented Polish letters. An established method was to configure the right   Alt key as an AltGr key and to use it in combination with a Latin base letter to obtain the equivalent precomposed character (accented form of the letter). (Because there are two types of "z with diacritic " ( ź and ż ), AltGr + X is a special case.) At the time of the Fall of communism and opening of commercial import channels this practice

1700-555: The binding: On South Slavic Latin (used in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia) and on Czech keyboards, the following letters and special characters are created using AltGr: South Slavic cyrillic keyboards use a different layout. On Swiss keyboards , AltGr in combination with the following keys types the following characters: Switzerland has four national Languages ( German , French , Italian , and Romansh ). The Swiss keyboard layout

1750-458: The invention of smartphones, that predicting words, based on what the user is typing, assisted in increasing the typing speed. At the beginning of development of this keyboard feature, prediction was mainly based on static dictionaries. Google implemented the predicting method in 2013 in Android 4.4. This development was mainly driven by third party keyboard providers, such as SwiftKey and Swype . In 2014 Apple presented iOS 8 which includes

1800-418: The keyboard is only an application, most frequently downloaded among them being Gboard and SwiftKey ; a simple activation over the Android settings menu is possible. Apple 's iOS operating system allows the development of custom keyboards, however no access is given to the dictionary or general keyboard settings. iOS automatically switches between system and custom keyboards if the user enters text into

1850-518: The letters on the keys, but also additional symbols and punctuation marks . Some languages such as Bengali use this key when the number of letters of their alphabet is too large for a standard keyboard. For example, on the US-International keyboard layout, the C key can be used to insert four different characters: IBM states that AltGr is an abbreviation for alternate graphic . A key labelled with some variation of "Alt Graphic"

1900-457: The lower-right of the corner. If different, the symbol for Shift+AltGr is shown in the upper-right. The Windows version of the Belgian keyboard may only support a subset of these characters. Several of the AltGr combinations are themselves dead keys , which are followed by another letter to produce an accented version of that letter. The new Finnish keyboard standard of 2008 ( SFS 5966 )

1950-515: The need for physical keys. Interaction with a virtual keyboard happens mostly via a touchscreen interface , but can also take place in a different form when in virtual or augmented reality . On a desktop computer, a virtual keyboard might provide an alternative input mechanism for users with disabilities who cannot use a conventional keyboard, for multi-lingual users who switch frequently between different character sets or alphabets, which may be confusing over time, or for users who are lacking

2000-488: The place of the right-hand Alt key . The key at this location will operate as AltGr if a keyboard layout using AltGr is chosen in the operating system, regardless of what is engraved on the key. In macOS , the Option key has functions similar to the AltGr key. The AltGr key is used as an additional Shift key , to provide a third and a fourth (when Shift is also pressed) grapheme for most keys. Most are accented variants of

2050-422: The text input field. The UIInputViewController is the primary view controller for a custom keyboard app extension. This controller provides different methods for the implementation of a custom keyboard, such as a user interface for a custom keyboard, obtaining a supplementary lexicon or changing the primary language of a custom keyboard. Diverse scientific papers at the beginning of the 2000s showed even before

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2100-595: The tilde and the curly brackets. The following letters can be input in the Latvian keyboard layout using AltGr: On Macedonian keyboards, AltGr enables the user to type the following characters: The keyboard layouts in the Nordic countries Denmark (DK), Faroe Islands (FO), Finland (FI), Norway (NO) and Sweden (SE) as well as in Estonia (EE) are largely similar to each other. Generally

2150-533: The user to type the following characters: On German keyboards , AltGr enables the user to type the following characters, which are indicated on the keyboard: Windows 8 introduced the ability of pressing AltGr + ⇧ Shift + ß to produce ẞ ( capital ß ). Even though this is usually not indicated on the physical keyboard—potentially due to a lack of space, since the ß-key already has three different levels ( ß → "ß", ⇧ Shift + ß → "?", and, as shown above, AltGr + ß → "\")—, it can be seen in

2200-489: The virtual environment. The Vive Tracker and the Logitech G gaming keyboard track finger movement without wearing a glove. Fifty kits were sent to exclusive developers, enabling them, in combination with Logitech's BRIDGE developers kit, to test and experiment with the new technology. Virtual keyboards may be used in some cases to reduce the risk of keystroke logging . For example, Westpac 's online banking service uses

2250-400: The áéíóú sequence, or in conjunction with the Shift key, ÁÉÍÓÚ. Keyboards of some languages simply include the accented characters on their own keys. Some keyboards also have a Compose key for typing accented and other special characters. By pressing Compose , and then two other keys, something similar to a combination of the glyphs of the two previous keys will appear on the screen. It

2300-469: Was designed for easily typing 1) Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian; 2) Nordic minority languages and 3) European Latin letters (based on MES-2 , with emphasis on contemporary proper nouns), without needing engravings different from those on existing standard keyboards of Finland and Sweden. AltGr and dead diacritic keys are extensively used, although letters of Finnish and Swedish are mostly provided as normal keys. On AZERTY keyboards , AltGr enables

2350-410: Was further increased in macOS Sequoia (2024) with the addition of modifier only keys to be used alone to activate shortcuts such as 'Show Desktop, including Left Command, Left Option, Left Control, Left Shift, Right Command, Right Control, Right Option, Right Shift, fn. This effectively gives users 9 extra keys to activate shortcuts. It is also possible to use (with some utility software) one key both as

2400-603: Was on many computer keyboards before the Windows international layouts. On early home computers the alternate graphemes were primarily box-drawing characters . This likely was the intended purpose of the Alt key on PC keyboards, however software quickly used this as a combination key for shortcuts, requiring a new key for producing additional characters. Windows interprets Ctrl + Alt as AltGr , to accommodate some compact keyboards like those of netbooks which have neither

2450-491: Was so widespread that it was adopted as the de facto standard. Nowadays nearly all PCs in Poland have standard US keyboards and use the AltGr method to enter Polish diacritics. This keyboard mapping is referred to as the Polish programmers' layout ( klawiatura polska programisty ) or simply Polish layout . Another layout is still used on typewriters, mostly by professional typists. Computer keyboards with this layout are available, though difficult to find, and supported by

2500-411: Was to use wearables to track the finger motion to replace a physical keyboard with virtual ones. They also tried to give audiovisual feedback to the user, when a key got hit. The basic idea was to give the user a more natural way to enter text, based on what he is used to. The Magic Leap 1 from Magic Leap implements a virtual keyboard with augmented reality. The challenge, as in augmented reality ,

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