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Concept
Keyboard layout
Summary
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.
is the actual positioning of keys on a keyboard. is the arrangement of the legends (labels, markings, engravings) that appear on those keys. is the arrangement of the key-meaning association or keyboard mapping, determined in software, of all the keys of a keyboard; it is this (rather than the legends) that determines the actual response to a key press.
Modern computer keyboards are designed to send a scancode to the operating system (OS) when a key is pressed or released: this code reports only the key's row and column, not the specific character engraved on that key. The OS converts the scancode into a specific binary character code using a "scancode to character" conversion table, called the keyboard mapping table. This means that a physical keyboard may be dynamically mapped to any layout without switching hardware components—merely by changing the software that interprets the keystrokes. Often, a user can change keyboard mapping in system settings. In addition, software may be available to modify or extend keyboard functionality. Thus the symbol shown on the physical key-top need not be the same as appears on the screen or goes into a document being typed. Some settings enable the user to type supplementary symbols which are not engraved on the keys used to invoke them. Modern USB keyboards are plug and play; they communicate their (default) visual layout to the OS when connected (though the user is still able to reset this at will).
A computer keyboard consists of alphanumeric or character keys for typing, modifier keys for altering the functions of other keys, navigation keys for moving the text cursor on the screen, function keys and system command keys—such as and —for special actions, and often a numeric keypad to facilitate calculations.
Official source
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