Increasing the diversity of people who write Python (was: Benefits of unicode identifiers)

[Thomas Jollans]

On 2017-11-24 17:41, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> Perhaps for my next computer I should choose a
> non-ASCII keyboard option when configuring it.
> 
> Skip
> 

I'm quite fond of the US international keyboard layout. It lets you type
most Latin-lettered languages with relative ease (including, obviously,
the few accented letters used in English). It's conveniently available
(and almost identical) on all (major) operating systems, but alas
Windows only has a dead-keys variant built in. (But I believe you can
download a no-dead-keys variant somewhere)

It's nice because (with a no-dead-keys version) unless you press AltGr,
everything's the same as with a traditional US keyboard (which is not
entirely suitable for the English language on its own).

On Windows machines I only use occasionally (and may not have admin
rights on) I tend to set up both "US" and "US international" keyboard
layouts and switch between them depending on what I'm typing. It's not
ideal, but it's better than either programming being a pain in the arse
(with all the dead keys) or not being able to type natural-language
words properly.

-- 
Thomas Jollans