by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2010/10/06 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/10/06/10071517.aspx
So a while back, in a comment to The difference between 'Dangeous Characters' and 'Dangerous Minds' is the lack of Michelle Pfeiffer, user Abeywickrama commented:
Michael, I was in Turkey and could not log in to the Google account from Hotel PC. Latter I found the reason was that my username had letter 'i' in it. In Turkish keyboard the letter i [which is generally between u & o] represent a different 'i' than what we use. But I found letter i in a different place.
Now the comment was from a few years ago (kind of like the blog itself was), but I thought I'd follow up on it a little....
I'll start by giving the keyboard layouts.
First the Turkish F layout in BASE and BASE+SHIFT states:
And then the Turkish Q layout in BASE, BASE_SHIFT, ALTGR, and ALTGR+SHIFT states:
Now the Turkish F keyboard puts the dotted I on VK_OEM_4 (just to the left of the "u" character in the third row), and the dot-less I on VK_I between the ğ and the O in the second row (uppercase in the shift state).
(note that on a US keyboard, this would be on the "S" key and the "R" key, respectively)
The Turkish Q keyboard keeps the dot-less I down in the base state while putting the dotted I in the ALTGR state. This can make typing the dotted I much harder. Though it puts all for letters on the VK_I -- and the "I" key on the US keyboard, which taken together maybe makes it all a little easier....
When typing on a keyboard one is not used to, the problem Abeywickrama notes is probably a lot more common to run into, and which points to one of the very real problems when using unfamiliar computers in general and the keyboards attached to them in particular....
Potential workarounds include soft keyboards (on computers, in browsrs, in toolbars, and in particular web pages), though if the web page has its own special handling that can complicate things further.
I was told Google was sometimes doing extra work here but that they aren't doing it any longer, though I am unable to verify the veracity of either claim....
John Cowan on 6 Oct 2010 10:11 AM:
It looks to me like the dotted i on the Q keyboard is on the key that on the US keyboard does ' and ", which is a sensible place for it. No need to screw around with keyboard states beyond SHIFT.
I presume that dotless-I is between U and O because the keycaps are labeled in uppercase, and "I" is an uppercase dotless-i in Turkish.