Strange QWERTY keyboard layout: which one is it?
 

Hi,

An american client of mine here in South France needed a new laptop in replacement of his old PC. He insisted on having one with an american QWERTY keyboard layout, and not a french model with an AZERTY layout.

I managed to find him one machine with a QWERTY keyboard (I myself use german and swiss QWERTZ layouts). The client is not a ten-finger-typer, so he actually has to watch what's on the keys (most of the time).

It turns out that the QWERTY machine I shipped him is not a US machine but... something else. The main keys - letters, numbers - are all OK, but many things around these (like several item on the top row of the keys) are not what they're expected to be.

I took a picture of the keyboard, and maybe someone recognized the layout. From which country is it, and which variant eventually?

Definitely not US. I'd suspect it would be a European variant of some sort. Telling to me are:

The 3 key has the symbol for pounds sterling used in the UK as opposed to the octothorpe (a/k/a pound sign, number sign, hash) as seen on US keyboards.

Also I see what appears to be a cedilla key to the right of the L - US keyboards typically have the colon : and semi-colon ; on that key. The key to the right of that would typically be single quote ' and double quote " but on yours has things I don't recognize AND the octothorpe.

The Alt-GR is something one doesn't typically see on American keyboards either. I found a Wikipedia article discussing that key which also has various international keyboard layouts discussion that might help you figure out what it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key

It seems an Italian keyboard.

Looks quite like an italian keyboard. The placement of the '\', '>' '<' keys is a bit unconventional, but reasonable in a laptop. Quite probably it works if setup as an "it" keyboard.

Probably an Irish/UK Qwerty keyboard. Simple test. Set it up as en-US.

" & @ will have swapped places (@ is near semicolon)
~ & `, or \ will also, as will
£ & #
\ is also misplaced. He will have a € key (which he probable needs in France, and it's on Alt_Gr & 4 in some software or Alt_Gr & E otherwise :-/.

Set it 'en-gb' in xorg. You'd be a while searching for that. If he is really fussy, he can revert it by xmodmapping all those. I forget exactly the form but it's done in an .Xmodmap file usually.

Looks like you're right, ragazzi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ian.svg&page=1

Grazie mille!

E' stato un piacere (it's been a pleasure) :)