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Stupid brazilian keyboard

Although I’m no prude I generally don’t write offensive words. I have to make an exception though: Brazilian keyboards are stupid! Die!

I’m a programmer (at least I try to be one) and typing a lot everyday gives me the right to say that.

My previous laptop died in the middle of the night. I needed another computer the next day while I was still living in Brazil. I could only find laptops with Brazilian keyboards for prompt delivery.

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The first annoyance is the right Alt key replaced by Alt Gr. It makes me feel handicapped.

If I need the ? or / character I need to combine the keys Alt Gr + q or Alt Gr + w. Great. Great idea.

Typing in Emacs is like playing guitar. You have chords. Now I can’t type M-f and avoid physical therapy. Normally I would press my right thumb in the right Alt key (where did it go??) and my left index finger in the f key. If you play any instruments you know what I’m talking about.

Another problem. The Ç character. C cedilhado in Portuguese. The name implies it. It is the same C character genius!! You don’t need a unique key for it the same way you don’t need a separated key for Á, á, É, é, Ô, ô, etc. Just add a dead key for the cedilha.

With the addition of this unnecessary key they moved the location of crucial chars like ‘ and “.

Really? Bear with me. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

I could go on and on but I should stop. That is enough for my karma today.

  1. May 21st, 2009 at 09:36 | #1

    Hello Dani

    Brazilian keyboards piss me off too.

    But maybe you can replace it. Sony vaio products have international warranty. Try contacting their support.

  2. Fabio Fonseca
    May 21st, 2009 at 11:36 | #2

    Hi Dani!

    Eu também não gosto deste teclado e compartilho da mesma que você sobre isto!

    Eu o aconselharia a procurar uma revenda ou assistência técnica da Sony para trocar o teclado para você! O $ investido na troca lhe economizaria tempo e lhe deixaria trabalhar mais tranquilo.

    []’s

    FF

  3. August 20th, 2009 at 12:51 | #3

    I would also like to know who created this stupid position of the question mark. I have an EeePC that has this keyboard too, and I know what you are feeling. Every time I write a question I need to stop and rememmber this AltGr stuff. Not all notebooks have this weird placement of the question mark, fortunately. This is something recent, and I hope it won’t last long.
    The “Ç”, however, was placed there decades ago. My grandfather’s old typewriter had the C cedilhado there. I think it can’t be removed now without causing some trouble, although I agree that a dead key for the cedilha would be a lot better.

  4. August 20th, 2009 at 13:53 | #4

    Rubens, you know what? I just gave up. I did set my keyboard to the US layout. When I need to type in Portuguese I press the shit keys and Ubuntu switches to the same US layout but with dead keys support. I can type Ç by pressing Alt Right + , and then the C key.

    You probably type more commas than C cedilhado so it’s a good decision not to set comma as a dead key by default. Otherwise you would be forced to type space after every comma you want inserted.

    The only problem I see is that you can only set a comma dead key by holding the Right Alt key. This is really awkward to type. The Left Alt (or both) should set a comma dead key.

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