Sorry but that's not true, at least not according to Nokia's Regional Keyboard Layout proposals that I've seen for the last months. :-)

I agree that sacrificing the normal arrow-key layout for language-specific keys is not desirable — neither in a functional nor an esthetic perspective (Norwegians don’t need Ö/Ä, and Swedes probably don’t need Ø/Å that much).

Although the argument about using the screen instead of the arrow-keys for “navigation” has some validity, that option will in some cases most probably be to inaccurate to be a fully functional alternative.

Another annoyance with the Nordic layout is the bad choice of merging period and the comma. Those are also very commonly used keys that shouldn’t have been messed with! And then there is the lack of an ampersand …

Here is a picture showing the differences on the Nordic layout.



I don’t desire the changes the Nordic layout imposes and unless the International layout can produce æøå/ÆØÅ width the help of a modifier / key combination, I’m not sure I want the device all together …

Is there anyone with the UK/US/International keyboard on the device that can visually confirm that the Nordic characters æøå can be produced in some way by the hardware keys?! For instance by first typing o and then having it changed, or holding a modifier when pressing o.

I’ve seen the Nordic characters produced on the screen keyboard, so I have a hope the physical keyboard can cope too …

i'd rather have 4 arrow-keys and all the umlaute (äÄ, öÖ, üÜ) mapped on the arrow-keys or something like that. i mean, the arrow-keys on the 4-arrow-key-versions dont have a second function, right? so why not use them to map the german (or scandinavian) special letters to them...?

what happens when you push "blue arrow" and one of the directional keys together?

What I do (with my german device) is switching the keyboard format to Netherlands(English) in order to use these keys as arrow-keys.

Not a big problem imho, but a desktop widget to quickly switch between two keyboard formats would be really nice.

The blue modifier change between left/right and up/down function.
If I understand it correctly you generate other keycodes when you press shift and cursor-key as you need this for text selection.

Bye

Thorsten

yes i know this applies on the keyboards with only 2 arrow-keys, but i was asking this for keyboard with 4 arrow keys (like the american n900 has)

because if pushing one of the 4 arrow keys with the modifier does nothing, they could have used those arrow keys to map the special letter to them for german/scandinavian versions instead of cutting the up/down-arrow keys and mapping those to the left/right arrow-keys.

I think the German layout works just fine when you get used to it. It confused me for all of about 30 seconds. It seems like -at least as far as the German version is concerned- that it's something that is perfectly easy to deal with.

Sounds like the best solution I've read yet. Too bad Nokia didn't have it.

I'm Finnish-Swedish, and I live in Finland, so I frequently use the åäö letters. Still, I was immensely disappointed when I opened the box and found two of the directional keys under fn. I'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather have a version with åäö behind fn. Much rather.

I have only had the N900 for a few days, so I haven't been in many situations where the arrow keys have been really annoying, but there was one game. I can only imagine how uncomfortable it will be when more games are released.

Hopefully a good software fix will be coming soon.

Wait... You don't even HAVE the device? And you're complaining?

Is someone holding a gun to your head to purchase this device?

I don't mean to come across as rude, but DAMN, GINA! Talk about someone who loves to ***** and moan.