Polish
Most typewriters use a QWERTZ keyboard with Polish accented letters accessed directly (officially approved as “Typist's keyboard”, Polish: klawiatura maszynisty, Polish Standard PN-87), which is mainly ignored in Poland as impractical (except custom-made, e.g., in public sector and some Apple computers); the “Polish programmer's” (Polish: polski programisty) layout has become the de facto standard, used on virtually all computers sold on the Polish market.
Polish programmers use QWERTY keyboards identical with the standard US layout. In this layout Polish letters are accessed in the same manner as the usage of keyboard shortcuts, with Latin letter keys in combination with right Alt (actually working as AltGr) key. These key combinations (excluding one for “€”) obey states of both Shift and Caps Lock keys, preserving normal capitalization while typing Polish characters. For example, to obtain capital “Ź” pressing Shift-rightAlt-X is needed, with Caps Lock off. The use of the right Alt in Polish programmers layout may be confused with Alt-A, Alt-C etc. (which are common shortcuts in most programs and can be obtained only with left Alt) because the key really acting as AltGr is also marked as Alt. This is because most keyboards sold in Poland are US-layout with Alt marked on both keys, without AltGr.
| Caps Lock state | In combination with | Keystroke | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | C | E | L | N | O | S | Z | X | U | ||
| Off | right Alt | ą | ć | ę | ł | ń | ó | ś | ż | ź | € |
| Shift & right Alt | Ą | Ć | Ę | Ł | Ń | Ó | Ś | Ż | Ź | ||
| On | right Alt | Ą | Ć | Ę | Ł | Ń | Ó | Ś | Ż | Ź | € |
| Shift & right Alt | ą | ć | ę | ł | ń | ó | ś | ż | ź | ||
| Note: On Polish programmer keyboard, right Alt plays the role of AltGr | |||||||||||
Also, on MS Windows, the tilde character (Shift+` ) acts as a dead key to type Polish letters (with diacritical marks) thus, to obtain an "Ł", one may press ~ followed by L. The tilde character is obtained with ~ and space.
Read more about this topic: Bepo, QWERTY-based Layouts For Latin Script, QWERTY
Famous quotes containing the word polish:
“It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)