Non-US keyboard support

Well it appears that 1.4 does not correct that. SL residents with non-US keyboards (and there are many) will still be unable to type question marks and other signs in chats.

This is clearly a major PITA. Is it THAT difficult to address ?

BIG BUMP!

Jebus. Look, I'm portuguese and can type question marks just fine.
Change your keyboard settings to US English and learn how to use the american layout. The question mark can be accessed by pressing shift and the third key to the righ of your M, but only after you change the layout settings.
The keyboard issue has been whined about since beta and its probably not going to be worked on any time soon.
LL doesnt use the "normal" windows keyboard access routines for purposes of cross-platform compatibility...
Newer versions of windows allow you to easily switch between keyboard mappings and they even remember which mapping is used with which application, so i can type portuguese special characters into Word, then switch to SL and get the US layout back automatically, then switch back to word and continue typing portuguese with no hassle...

That's got to be one of the most disingenuous replies I've seen in this forum. To be honest, the fact that SecondLife forces the US keyboard layout is a pain in the rear, especially for scripting. I'm in the UK and because I'm forced to use the US layout in SL my @'s come out as "'s and my "'s as @'s - any idea how frustrating that is when scripting?

Now, I don't have a problem with the ? as the UK layout is the same as US in this respect, but for others like those above, SecondLife's insistence on the US layout is plain stoopid - especially with so many Europeans joining now. Hardly user-friendly is it?

You may think it's whining but it's little things like that which will put a lot of people off playing. Quite why you think that everybody should change to US and just get used to it is beyond me.

Well Eggy, thank you for your suggestion but that was not really the point. Most of us non-US-keyboard-afflicted people know about workarounds.

It's just a real concern for over 20% of 2L's population now. And it needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

My best regards to Jebus, btw.

Actually, the problem goes even deeper. I was, for example, not able to login because my password contained a plus (+) sign whcih I could type in fine on the member join page, but not anymore in the login.

After various attempts I finally had to reset and change my password to be able to login.

Inworld, I lack not only keys like question marks, but also very basic charcters like a : sign to make up a smily - which results in a much less sophisticated method of communication close to rudeness (no question marks, no smilies, etc.).

I agree that an international product is absolutely inadequat when it does not even preserve basic keyboard layouts (whether or not windows is used, the unicode approach would come to mind or a senseful keymapping method).

As a new member, this was - and still is - my major complaint with SL and might ultimatively let me consider to not dive too deep into the second life...

From a programmers point of view, I have to say that reading the keyboard directly ( like SL seems to do ) is really daft, and people just stopped doing that years ago. The operating systems available today supply very good input methods, and SL's input and string handling routines just SHOULD use that. All three major OS's support unicode ( UTF8 ) out of the box, and using unicode instead of neutered 7-bit amercian english should be a requisite when marketing products internationally.

I don't know how many products I have had to battle with ( and their creators ) by now - I have just lost count. But it seems that programmers in the US are willing to trade off usability for some meagre percentage in speed.

I for one do place UTF8 capabilities as HIGH priority, and ask that it will be implemented in SL. I do have friends that have joined SL and I know are my countrymen. I would like to be able to speak with them on MY terms, in MY language, not in english, and not in some seven-bit mockup of my language...

I sincerely hope that you are listeng Linden Labs, because this is a very important issue if you are going world-wide with this product.

Regards,
An Icelander.

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