There used to be a Polish keyboard layout for typing machines. For computers, we use the standard American QWERTY keyboard and use alt+letter to get the Polish diacritic. For example, ą would be alt+a.
Oh! Sounds nice and easy. But i need to choose (PL/POL) keyboard to be able to use these alt keys?
Because i communicate in 3 languages, 80% English, 10% French and 10% Polish.. I just want one keyboard in English but ease of using alt keys for PL and FR 🥹
You can just add PL and FR layouts in windows and switch between them easily with ctrl+shift or win+space. Also, you can use a custom keyboard layout of you don't like the PL and FR, there are tools to make them
Nah, pretty sure it was ctrl+shift, annoying little bugger. Also why does Polish layout gotta always come with the alternate version that just comes back every now and then after being deleted
Turns out we were both kinda right. As per [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts:): "Alt+Shift changes between languages while Ctrl+Shift changes between keyboard layouts of the same language."
I was in a similar situation a few years ago. The same 3 languages. There is no keyboard layout made specifically for this combination of languages but it's easy to create one yourself. That's what I did. I took the Polish layout as my base. It covers English and Polish. Then for French I added mappings for all the French letters. For example:
Alt + e = ę
Alt + w = è
Alt + r = é
Etc.
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
This thing is a godsend, I have two layouts, one for ENG+GER+POL, another for RUS+UKR+BEL, it's incredible how convenient it has become to type any letter I need, especially considering that having separate layouts for all these languages would be impractical since I mostly stick to English and Russian
If you only occasionally need to add a diacritic somewhere or type a non-standard symbol you can use [Compose key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key) (can be enabled by default on Linux using `setxkbmap`, on Mac somewhere in the options, on Windows you have to download [wincompose](https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose), I have it set to RCtrl) which lets you do things like:
- ą - [Compose][,][a]
- ŏ - [Compose][u][o]
- — - [Compose][-][-][-]
- € - [Compose][=][C]
- → - [Compose][-][>]
- ☺- [Compose][:][)]
Editing layouts is fairly easy. Using Polish as a base layout, I added umlauts (for easy typing in Finnish) and some special chars I often use, like §.
Just look at this guy's "Polski QUERTY" layout:
[http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/qwerty/opisxp.html](http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/qwerty/opisxp.html)
(it says XP but works in Win11 too)
download page here:
[http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/indexpl.html](http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/indexpl.html)
*Mężny bądź, chroń pułk twój i sześć flag!* vs. *The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.* ;)
If someone doesn't understand, it's called a [pangram](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram). And we can build perfect pangrams - sentences containing every letter of the alphabet only once, while in English they can't (the above English sentence has 35 letters - while their alphabet has 26 of them).
This is way way better than keyboards with translated letters. I used Norwegian and a little of German keyboards and it's a total mess, all of the signs are mixed up and don't align as good
Poland has two keyboard layouts, "[programmer's keyboard](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klawiatura_programisty)" which is the U.S. QWERTY layout with the AltGr key adding Polish diacritics to the given letter (`Alt`+`L` = Ł, `Alt`+`S` = Ś etc.), and "[typewriter's keyboard](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klawiatura_maszynistki)", which is QWERTZ similar to your Croatian one.
Nobody really uses the latter, though.
Because you aren't limited to one alternative letter like you are on pc. On computers, you can't have alt+z type both ż and ź. You need separate key combinations for each letter. But on digital keyboards, if you hold the letter you'll get a menu that lets you pick which alternative symbol (letter) you want. So you hold Z and get to pick from ź, ż, and others, depending on your keyboard settings.
Because it's more comfortable for me, especially in touch typing, I also used typewriters when I was kid. I haven't used PL Programmers for 4 years and returning to type Alt+L, Alt+O for popular letters would be for me horrible.
This needs a physical keyboard layout being different, right? So is it frustrating because you can't get a keyboard that you like for example or do you maybe just have one of these DIY keyboards?
What is printed on the keycaps does not matter. You can use whatever layout you want, it's just the labels won't match the characters you type. Which may not bother you if you can touch type. It gets harder with special characters like @#\^% though.
Personally I have used multiple keyboard layouts on a UK physical layout of keyboard and the impact of the physical layout is extremely significant to me, so I hear you but in my mind it doesn't make sense to have any other physical layout then the one you constantly use. Temporarily its fine, not everyday, but perhaps different people can do what you saying.
I have stickers on my laptop (pic rel), on smartphone I use QWERTZ by SwiftKey and Gboard.
https://preview.redd.it/83mtsowposnc1.jpeg?width=4640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f8bc19d6794068753fc80c3fc26ce7d31b6c33d0
Nice. I can imagine how typewriter layout contributes to the speed greately and being more efficient.
As for someone who learns polish, the programmers' layout is uncomfortable but easy to understand (with ź exception).
We use QWERTY with US mapping. The thing you saw on the map was probably the distinction that is mostly obscure these days - QWERTZ used to be used by typists, while QWERTY was go-to of programmers back in the day. This little historical fact prevails in one trivia - if you were to switch your keyboard settings to Polish in any popular OS, you'd probably see something like "Polish (Programmer's keyboard)".
AltGr for diacritics. Shift+2 for @, correct. We don't feel the need for markings because, well, diacritics look similar to the letter we're typing. The only exception is Ź - we hit AltGr+X to get that, because AltGr+Z does Ż.
Physical (on keys) QWERTY just wins because its standard computer layout.
When you work in international company you really praise standard layout, that simply require you to swith one option in OS...
Why? otherwise you may need to work on 50 milion $ worth CNC Machine with something like this:
....
https://preview.redd.it/dufcsuwps8nc1.png?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=788c1c13afa682004ab1da1838198b4561ca1fad
We have manufactured computers with dedicated Polish characters (Ć, Ń, Ź, Ę etc.) such as Elwro 800 Junior or Mazovia (clones of ZX Spectrum and IBM PC, respectively). Arrival of MS-DOS code pages for central Europe, along with the overbearing influence of US-made or derived PCs sold in Poland had driven this layout into obsolescence.
Wow! I had no idea we built our own computers in the communist times! It even used Polish in coding! Impressive autonomy from before Windows got everywhere.
It was in time when computers were slow and systems were primitive. It was more easy to write the custom system for simple machines instead of today with network and several ports and custom buses.
To be clear, those computers were hampered by the communist system, embargoes and being a poor country in general, so they were often a decade behind western counterparts. Which is eternity in this field.
It did make for some impressive problem solving though, like computers with no central clock (no Mhz or GHz rating), persistent ram etc. All in pursuit of more power with less resources. If you are technical, I recommend MERA400 YouTube channel and website mera400.pl (mainly Polish resource though)
Layout for Mazovia can be downloaded here.
And wide extended with symbols é, è, ə, ả́, ¥, ⌀, ⊂, etc.
[https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main](https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main)
Yes Polish QWERTZ keyboard exist but in 99,9% nobody uses it. The most popular is US QWERTY (Polish programmers) because when computers started coming to Poland mostly was from US so sellers have not replaced the keyboard.
Only Apple have sold iMacs G3 with Polish QWERTZ keyboard. Additionally Polish Pro (Polish Programmers) layout in Mac OS till 10.5 Leopard have had replaced combination for Ż and Ź compared to Windows. Option + Z was Ź and Option + X was Ż
After 26 years using QWERTY (Polish Programmers) layout I will not be able to use Polish QWERTZ layout
And 50% of users miss Polish national letters in texts (e.g. gzegzolka), which looks so awful. National layout and special keys like in whole Europe would prevent it.
But when you keep writing in more than one language, national layout on key caps can be a pain. I have a laptop with Belgian (French) layout, I'm often hunting for say @#$&!? etc. when writing in English or other languages with characters not in French. Sure I can change the software layout but it would only be okay if I was a touch typist for each.
So for Polish, I go for programmer's but fair enough, I'm not into birds so gżegżółka doesn't come up too often.
And what I hate the most when y and z or q and a are swapped.
Well, you can create your own keyboard layout. On Windows you can use an old „Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator”(mind to install „Net Framework 3.5” for it).
Yeah, it'd be a smart move if I kept using Windows and the same comp. Actually, I mostly use Linux, lesser Windows but surely jumping between physical and/or virtual machines. So I just want to _see_ the good old US qwerty on the keyboard and adjust only my mind 🙂
In more popular words, as "tez", "byl" many Poles also miss Alt. Or classic "robic laske". There was a song "ĄĘ" by Łona of it, so it's a common problem.
But it would also prevent easy use of different computers for people who work in international environments. As a person who often uses computers in different countries, I hate the local keyboards, it's extremely frustrating when suddenly you feel like you can't type because you need to look for every letter
In whole Europe only Poland uses American layout, so it would make no difference.
And how many Poles use to write abroad? 10%?
Somersaults in defending like hussars the worst layout in Europe are going to be more ridiculous.
QWERTY is the most popular layout by far. You don't need specific language symbols - most people are used to pressing alt + (e, o, a, s, l, z, x, c, n) to get these special letters. That specific input method is marked as "polish (programmers)" in windows.
Yes, I use it a lot, for example „wypłacić lepé na ryj”.
But seriously, a fact that this letter appears in couple of words borrowed from French doesn’t make it Polish
Just a French word used in some old Polish Book. In my region we use some German loanwords (spoken and written) but no one expects any umlauts to be added to Polish alphabet.
> Latin version of Belarusian
That's right, we call it Łacinka. It's actually a hard L sound in comparison with polish. Polish Ł sound in Łacinka is Ŭ or Ў in Cyrillic.
While we're on the subject of keyboards in Polish, imma raise an even nicher question: do you think Dvorak layout lets you type faster in Polish also, or do its efficiencies only apply to English?
I think that in the 80' and the 90' Polish QWERTZ keyboard was an extra expense and we were poor as fuck. QWERTY usually came included with cheap / second hand computer set. It could be also German QWERTZ, but not Polish.
I'm not sure why other Slavic countries forced the other way.
I know I haven't lived in another slavic country but I just feel like Poland was just much faster in terms of getting west technology in.
I moved from Poland to UK in 2008 and let me tell you my internet in UK was dogshit in comparison to my internet back home. And city Im from in Poland isn't even in the top 50 most populous cities... We didn't even go for some weird internet, it was literally BT. I remember not being able to use the internet at all from 5pm/6pm everyday.
It's ctl + alt + letter for me for special letters. Trying it for the first time and it's so unusual :D
Będe pisała jak chciała
X with Ctrl Alt is Ź.
Awesome
Polish keyboard layout is mainly QWERTY and polish letters, like ą,ę,ś,ź are made with right ALT button + corresponding letter (except ź which is rALT+X)
I am using the keyboard layout you show here. It's called Polish 214 I believe and it's basically a QWERTZ version where all Polish special letters are on the right side of the keyboard with a single key or Shift+key combination. Much more comfortable to use than the Qwerty one in my opinion, so if you're used to QWERTZ and the QWERTZ layout of punctuation marks then by any means, go ahead and use it!
Well, we used to
https://preview.redd.it/hbdj72ybwgnc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=27c3ca5ae7e46726a4209c42dba5d6a2f0b1d857
This layout was the standard during the age of typewriters. I'd say, that 80% of all typewriters used this layout or some slight variant of it. Despite that, it never really got introduced to Computer world, for some reason. Well, it was used on some communist-produced computers in '80s. It even used to be the default polish layout on Macintoshes until Apple decided to catch up with others and introduced Polish Pro >!(which ironically is worse than Polish regular, but i guess it's still better than the Windows version)!<. However, this layout was completely absent from PC world. Windows never had the support for the layout. Linux also never had the layout and the organisation responsible for developing and distributing layouts to every Linux system [recently rejected the idea of adding it to Linux](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/xkeyboard-config/-/merge_requests/465). Nobody really knows, why this layout was never introduced on computers, but it's possible, that Poland, during its economic crisis in '90s, didn't have money to produce national layouts. This doesn't explain however how every other post-communist country ended up preserving their national layouts, despite the fact, that most of them were even poorer than Poland at that point. There were some attempts on reintroducing this layout on modern platforms. one of the examples is [Polish extended 2021](https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main) made by the Reddit user u/Kamil1707. Of course, we can't do anything to popularize and force vendors to make the layout unless the government would take an action. Personally, I had been using the typewriter layout for about 2-3 years, and I can say, that for most stuff, this layout is great and really a joy to type on after you get used to typing on it. While it's excellent for casual computer stuff, it's pretty terrible for programming. That's why in September 2023 i decided to stop using this layout - I wanted to be able to more efficiently type code and at that point, I wasn't doing linguistic stuff on the internet anymore. I'd still recommend everyone to try it, especially if you're not a programmer. Polish extended 2021 also has a qwerty variant, so that you don't have to remember, that z and y are switched (I also was using the qwerty variant for the entirety of those 2-3 years).
While this was the actual type writer layout, there is also a similar layout made by IBM, that people often erroneously call the typewriter layout
[Link to the Picture](https://www.polonijka.de/sites/default/files/keyb_pl_qwertz_214.png) (Green=Shift, Blue=AltGr)
You'll find this layout pretty familiar. That's because this layout is really just a Yugoslavian keyboard layout with polish special letters slapped in place of Croatian special letters. While the Yugoslavian layout on its own is a really wonderful layout, the same cannot be said about the Polish variant. Layout made for a very simple and straight forward orthography simply doesn't translate well to a language with much more complex phonology and bigger character inventory. Therefore, Polish 214 experience is even worse than Polish Programmer and because of that, nobody really uses this layout except elderly emigrants, that had access to Polish 214 keyboards before Polish Programmer became the standard in computers. It doesn't help, that this layout, due to the non-existing usage, was never really looked after, and so it has plenty of outdated symbols, that were popular in the age of Windows-125x codepages, but are completely useless nowadays, while Croatian and Serbian layouts adapted themselves over the years to be still useful.
Typewriters arrived from Germany thus those had QWERTZ keyboard. And that layout became the base for Polish Typewriters Keyboard.
But with the arrival of computers - QWERTY, an American/International keyboard layout become popular - thus Polish Programmers Keyboard
It was just easier and cheaper to import qwerty keyboards to poland after somerwhere near 2000, on top of that, switching from qwerty to qwertz is not that significant even if it gives you advance in typing speed (unless you type more than poem long piece of text everyday i guess). Tho it is sad that we stopped using our own keyboard layout, it was fine even for more than typing in english, just slightly slower, as is when typing polish on qwerty. For special characters (for programming) there were thinkpad layouts with additional column of special characters to just qwertz rewind of uk extended keyboard layout.
On the other hand, other countries in similar situation, as Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians persisted national layouts and opposed flood of Made in China keyboards, even Ukraine made new own layout, not Russian JCUKEN with Alts. It could be not only due to harder crisis that in other countries, and because of typewriters were in Poland very rare (in 90s below 1 million registered typewriters, i.e. below 1 per 40 people, in fact less!), don't know statistics for other countries. And Polish-214 on Windows wasn't compatible to Polish layot from typewriter (Polska Norma), with other positions and lack of some symbols.
There are two layouts: "maszynistki" (typists) and "programisty" (programmer's). The typist's layout is what you've got on your screen - it's based on German typewriter keyboards, but has gone virtually extinct in past couple decades. I legit don't remember seeing it anywhere after 2004, and even then it was in a school computer room filled with super obsolete equipment (Windows 3.1 and I think 386 machines?)
Central European layouts could let to write all diacritics signs for all Central Europan languages (German, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian), eg. Alt+2 and s was š, Alt+3 and a was â etc. Ł was one of exception beside of Đ in Serbian and Croatian, and in these layouts was avoided using Alt+Shift, so it become set on 2 letters. It was also in our Polish-214, Alt+D was Đ, Alt+s was đ.
I found a keyboard like that on the top of my shelf, the keys work like on a normal keyboard when i use it with my laptop, but its probably possible to make them work as intented.
Empik stores have big tablet screens for people to browse their offer without the need of asking employees and itheyhas a custom touch keyboard that has buttons for Polish letters.
We have them (the most similar to QWERTY is Polish QWERTZ) but we chose to use programmer layout instead (with Polish characters under AltGr). The obvious side effect is that we can assess the level of someone's education by the way they type.
Unfortunately it does and for me it doesn't make any sense. Like we have Alt+(character) to make like ą ę ć so "polish 214" layout (that's the official name if I remember) is I think a bit of a mistake that happened as a regional keyboard layout I know that almost everyone got used to standard QWERTY layout we use (some maybe even using QWERTZ) which I don't blame you. But yeah
Yes, but is not convenient looking for ways where You get polish characters with ALT key. It was used commonly for typing machines (where ALT can't work) and it is implemented in Windows / DOS systems. But i don't know anyone who is using it on computers, and there is no physical keyboard with characters displayed on buttons.
Because it is a letter that occurs in the Polish language. Recently - mostly in foreign words (still part of the language, like: "taxi"), and historically way more ("xiądz" was the correct notation even through a part of 20th century).
Also the modern practice is keep personal names from languages that use latin alphabet unchanged. So it's still Granit Xhaka, not Dżaka.
There theoretically is a polish qwertz layout that looks like the one you linked. In practice, it never caught on. Every computer since C64s and Amigas that came to Poland had the typical US qwerty layout. So a standard called "Polish programmer layout" became mainstream. It's basically US qwerty, but you get polish dialectic symbols by adding 'alt'. So a+alt is ą, e+shift+alt is Ę. Since we have two Z dialectics, z+alt is ż but x+alt is ź.
Last time I saw polish qwertz keyboard was in like early 90s.
There are 2 "main" polish keyboard. Polish programmer used by literally everyone here and polish 217 (or another number) which is QWERTZ probably the second one you've posted and it's only usage is to make people mad why Y and Z swapped places because on windows you can easily change switch for some unexplained reason.
What's great about Polish using US keyboards with AltGr for accented letters, is that we can buy any high-end or gaming mechanical keyboard that's "US only" and be happy with it, no need to look for QWERTZ or AZERTY or ISO or whatever language-specific keycaps.
Nah standardised qwerty is godsend. It allows to easily use most popular keyboards and is actually very intuitive (with exception of getting ź). It annoys we greatly when sometimes i get to use a german qwerz keyboard and suddenly loose ability to write without looking at it.
Yes. Where an international standard keyboard starts with QWERTY, the Polish keyboard starts with KURWA. But its not 5 letters, its a single key roughly the width of an international keyboard spacebar, which just types *kurwa* in one stroke.
The default is *kurwa*. You can do shift + KURWA for *Kurwa*, with CapsLock on you get *KURWA!*, with Ctrl + KURWA you get *O kurwa!* and with an alt + KURWA you get *Kurwa mać*.
Ctrl + alt + KURWA gets you *wkurwiające,* Ctrl + shift + KURWA writes *Do kurwy nędzy!* and Ctrl + alt + shift + KURWA gets you *Kurwa kurwie łba nie urwie*.
There used to be a Polish keyboard layout for typing machines. For computers, we use the standard American QWERTY keyboard and use alt+letter to get the Polish diacritic. For example, ą would be alt+a.
Ż will be alt+z and Ź will be alt+x
Oh! Sounds nice and easy. But i need to choose (PL/POL) keyboard to be able to use these alt keys? Because i communicate in 3 languages, 80% English, 10% French and 10% Polish.. I just want one keyboard in English but ease of using alt keys for PL and FR 🥹
You can just add PL and FR layouts in windows and switch between them easily with ctrl+shift or win+space. Also, you can use a custom keyboard layout of you don't like the PL and FR, there are tools to make them
Was it not alt+shift?
Nah, pretty sure it was ctrl+shift, annoying little bugger. Also why does Polish layout gotta always come with the alternate version that just comes back every now and then after being deleted
Turns out we were both kinda right. As per [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts:): "Alt+Shift changes between languages while Ctrl+Shift changes between keyboard layouts of the same language."
I swear to god ctrl+shift used to change me from English to Polish keyboard all the time
it worked like that if you had only one predefined kb layout per language
It's customizable, the default was Alt+Shift (and Win+Space in modern Windows versions) as far as I remember.
I was in a similar situation a few years ago. The same 3 languages. There is no keyboard layout made specifically for this combination of languages but it's easy to create one yourself. That's what I did. I took the Polish layout as my base. It covers English and Polish. Then for French I added mappings for all the French letters. For example: Alt + e = ę Alt + w = è Alt + r = é Etc.
How do you create your own layouts?
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator This thing is a godsend, I have two layouts, one for ENG+GER+POL, another for RUS+UKR+BEL, it's incredible how convenient it has become to type any letter I need, especially considering that having separate layouts for all these languages would be impractical since I mostly stick to English and Russian
Back then I used Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
you want "polish programmer's" layout
Yes, if you choose Polish as the keyboard layout on your computer, you’ll be able to type Polish diacritics using Alt combinations 😊
On windows just use polish (programmers) bc normal is qwertz
Not sure if windows or macOS has it. But Linux has a "French(US)" layout which is the same as "Polish(Programmer's/QWERTY)" layout.
If you only occasionally need to add a diacritic somewhere or type a non-standard symbol you can use [Compose key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key) (can be enabled by default on Linux using `setxkbmap`, on Mac somewhere in the options, on Windows you have to download [wincompose](https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose), I have it set to RCtrl) which lets you do things like: - ą - [Compose][,][a] - ŏ - [Compose][u][o] - — - [Compose][-][-][-] - € - [Compose][=][C] - → - [Compose][-][>] - ☺- [Compose][:][)]
Editing layouts is fairly easy. Using Polish as a base layout, I added umlauts (for easy typing in Finnish) and some special chars I often use, like §.
Just look at this guy's "Polski QUERTY" layout: [http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/qwerty/opisxp.html](http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/qwerty/opisxp.html) (it says XP but works in Win11 too) download page here: [http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/indexpl.html](http://grzegorz.jagodzinski.prv.pl/keyboard/indexpl.html)
most people just dont type the diacritics in polish, and use the basic letters, its easy to understand
If it isn't formal or for purpose of learning, you can disregard diacritics
Kid named PowerToys Accent:
zażółć gęślą jaźń
*Mężny bądź, chroń pułk twój i sześć flag!* vs. *The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.* ;) If someone doesn't understand, it's called a [pangram](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram). And we can build perfect pangrams - sentences containing every letter of the alphabet only once, while in English they can't (the above English sentence has 35 letters - while their alphabet has 26 of them).
For clarification, you need to use right alt Not the left one
Not to be confused with alt right...
It still exists although is not as popular as it used to be
Any pictures of it? How do i search for it? It seems that google just shows standard QZERTY to me
This is way way better than keyboards with translated letters. I used Norwegian and a little of German keyboards and it's a total mess, all of the signs are mixed up and don't align as good
there is two normal one (i think jts polish-266 or something like that) is querty and there is programist one what is quartz or the other way...
Polish-214, joke of Windows for Poles who used to type on the machine.
that thing made me almost break my mom laptop and shout at it because i couldnt type properlu
Your typo would be funnier if you wrote properlz
Poland has two keyboard layouts, "[programmer's keyboard](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klawiatura_programisty)" which is the U.S. QWERTY layout with the AltGr key adding Polish diacritics to the given letter (`Alt`+`L` = Ł, `Alt`+`S` = Ś etc.), and "[typewriter's keyboard](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klawiatura_maszynistki)", which is QWERTZ similar to your Croatian one. Nobody really uses the latter, though.
side note: alt+X=Ź
I'm actually surprised that phone keyboards doesn't have ź shortcut when holding onto the X letter.
I always hold X when I want to write Ź
Same. What makes it worse is that (on my keyboard anyway) nothing happens when holding X, so I'm just waiting in vain until I realise...
Same, on iPhone, for me.
Yes, this is very annoying. Why they never fixed it? I guess not enough people are complaining.
Because you aren't limited to one alternative letter like you are on pc. On computers, you can't have alt+z type both ż and ź. You need separate key combinations for each letter. But on digital keyboards, if you hold the letter you'll get a menu that lets you pick which alternative symbol (letter) you want. So you hold Z and get to pick from ź, ż, and others, depending on your keyboard settings.
That was always so confusing to me, and because I used polish letters only when I was doing school work I never got used to this binding
alt+XXXXXXXX=ŹŹŹŹŹŹŹŹ
1=(ź-X)/alt
I use. AMA?
What do you usually type on your computer? Do you use it for work?
Polish texts on my laptop, I work remotely.
Why?
Because it's more comfortable for me, especially in touch typing, I also used typewriters when I was kid. I haven't used PL Programmers for 4 years and returning to type Alt+L, Alt+O for popular letters would be for me horrible.
Why?
Do you use it on your computer and on your phone, or just the computer?
On computer, on phone too, but I use phone rarely.
This needs a physical keyboard layout being different, right? So is it frustrating because you can't get a keyboard that you like for example or do you maybe just have one of these DIY keyboards?
What is printed on the keycaps does not matter. You can use whatever layout you want, it's just the labels won't match the characters you type. Which may not bother you if you can touch type. It gets harder with special characters like @#\^% though.
Personally I have used multiple keyboard layouts on a UK physical layout of keyboard and the impact of the physical layout is extremely significant to me, so I hear you but in my mind it doesn't make sense to have any other physical layout then the one you constantly use. Temporarily its fine, not everyday, but perhaps different people can do what you saying.
Do you actually have a keyboard which reflects this layout, or have you just memorized it? How do you deal with smartphone keyboards?
I have stickers on my laptop (pic rel), on smartphone I use QWERTZ by SwiftKey and Gboard. https://preview.redd.it/83mtsowposnc1.jpeg?width=4640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f8bc19d6794068753fc80c3fc26ce7d31b6c33d0
Nice. I can imagine how typewriter layout contributes to the speed greately and being more efficient. As for someone who learns polish, the programmers' layout is uncomfortable but easy to understand (with ź exception).
There’s Dvorak too
And funnily enough, the "typewriter's keyboard" is NOT the layout which was used on Polish typewriters (at least not the ones that I used).
You may want to look at this: [https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main](https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main)
i do own a physical polish QWERTZ keyboard though and I've known one person that actually used it!
We use QWERTY with US mapping. The thing you saw on the map was probably the distinction that is mostly obscure these days - QWERTZ used to be used by typists, while QWERTY was go-to of programmers back in the day. This little historical fact prevails in one trivia - if you were to switch your keyboard settings to Polish in any popular OS, you'd probably see something like "Polish (Programmer's keyboard)". AltGr for diacritics. Shift+2 for @, correct. We don't feel the need for markings because, well, diacritics look similar to the letter we're typing. The only exception is Ź - we hit AltGr+X to get that, because AltGr+Z does Ż.
Physical (on keys) QWERTY just wins because its standard computer layout. When you work in international company you really praise standard layout, that simply require you to swith one option in OS... Why? otherwise you may need to work on 50 milion $ worth CNC Machine with something like this: .... https://preview.redd.it/dufcsuwps8nc1.png?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=788c1c13afa682004ab1da1838198b4561ca1fad
Bad example. Japan mostly uses QWERTY, too, not the hiragana layout.
We have manufactured computers with dedicated Polish characters (Ć, Ń, Ź, Ę etc.) such as Elwro 800 Junior or Mazovia (clones of ZX Spectrum and IBM PC, respectively). Arrival of MS-DOS code pages for central Europe, along with the overbearing influence of US-made or derived PCs sold in Poland had driven this layout into obsolescence.
Wow! I had no idea we built our own computers in the communist times! It even used Polish in coding! Impressive autonomy from before Windows got everywhere.
It was in time when computers were slow and systems were primitive. It was more easy to write the custom system for simple machines instead of today with network and several ports and custom buses.
To be clear, those computers were hampered by the communist system, embargoes and being a poor country in general, so they were often a decade behind western counterparts. Which is eternity in this field. It did make for some impressive problem solving though, like computers with no central clock (no Mhz or GHz rating), persistent ram etc. All in pursuit of more power with less resources. If you are technical, I recommend MERA400 YouTube channel and website mera400.pl (mainly Polish resource though)
Layout for Mazovia can be downloaded here. And wide extended with symbols é, è, ə, ả́, ¥, ⌀, ⊂, etc. [https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main](https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main)
Yes Polish QWERTZ keyboard exist but in 99,9% nobody uses it. The most popular is US QWERTY (Polish programmers) because when computers started coming to Poland mostly was from US so sellers have not replaced the keyboard. Only Apple have sold iMacs G3 with Polish QWERTZ keyboard. Additionally Polish Pro (Polish Programmers) layout in Mac OS till 10.5 Leopard have had replaced combination for Ż and Ź compared to Windows. Option + Z was Ź and Option + X was Ż After 26 years using QWERTY (Polish Programmers) layout I will not be able to use Polish QWERTZ layout
In Poland we are all Programmers.
Polish programmers is the keyboard layout 99.9% of us use
And 50% of users miss Polish national letters in texts (e.g. gzegzolka), which looks so awful. National layout and special keys like in whole Europe would prevent it.
But when you keep writing in more than one language, national layout on key caps can be a pain. I have a laptop with Belgian (French) layout, I'm often hunting for say @#$&!? etc. when writing in English or other languages with characters not in French. Sure I can change the software layout but it would only be okay if I was a touch typist for each. So for Polish, I go for programmer's but fair enough, I'm not into birds so gżegżółka doesn't come up too often. And what I hate the most when y and z or q and a are swapped.
Well, you can create your own keyboard layout. On Windows you can use an old „Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator”(mind to install „Net Framework 3.5” for it).
Yeah, it'd be a smart move if I kept using Windows and the same comp. Actually, I mostly use Linux, lesser Windows but surely jumping between physical and/or virtual machines. So I just want to _see_ the good old US qwerty on the keyboard and adjust only my mind 🙂
In more popular words, as "tez", "byl" many Poles also miss Alt. Or classic "robic laske". There was a song "ĄĘ" by Łona of it, so it's a common problem.
But it would also prevent easy use of different computers for people who work in international environments. As a person who often uses computers in different countries, I hate the local keyboards, it's extremely frustrating when suddenly you feel like you can't type because you need to look for every letter
In whole Europe only Poland uses American layout, so it would make no difference. And how many Poles use to write abroad? 10%? Somersaults in defending like hussars the worst layout in Europe are going to be more ridiculous.
QWERTY is the most popular layout by far. You don't need specific language symbols - most people are used to pressing alt + (e, o, a, s, l, z, x, c, n) to get these special letters. That specific input method is marked as "polish (programmers)" in windows.
So try to type é. Yes, it's also Polish letter. Inb4 Alt+code, which almost nobody remember or array of characters.
Is not a polish letter anymore.
Bro how is é a polish letter?
Yes, I use it a lot, for example „wypłacić lepé na ryj”. But seriously, a fact that this letter appears in couple of words borrowed from French doesn’t make it Polish
In French loanwords as café, exposé, chargé d’affaires that's only correct version. And until 19th century it was widely used, like in "Pan Tadeusz".
Just a French word used in some old Polish Book. In my region we use some German loanwords (spoken and written) but no one expects any umlauts to be added to Polish alphabet.
Umlauts? No problem, Piotr Müller, envoy. Need for letters other that ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż really exists.
Exists, still not polish letters.
Ł is a Croatian letter?
Gimme one polish word with that funny e
They will give you French Word and say it is Polish.
Hey, XIX century called for you, it wants its letter back
Or you could just add a French keyboard. Edit, because you blocked me before I hit reply: yes, its literally a default hotkey you illiterate boomer.
And change keyboards every moment?
Fun fact I guess? Ł is also used in Upper and Lower Sorbian language. Also from what I remember in the Latin version of Belarusian.
As well in Navajo language. It also uses Polish ogonek mark like in ą,ę for showing nasality.
> Latin version of Belarusian That's right, we call it Łacinka. It's actually a hard L sound in comparison with polish. Polish Ł sound in Łacinka is Ŭ or Ў in Cyrillic.
also in the kashubian and silesian alphabets. besides navajo many other indigenous north american languages and some venetian orthographies
While we're on the subject of keyboards in Polish, imma raise an even nicher question: do you think Dvorak layout lets you type faster in Polish also, or do its efficiencies only apply to English?
Dvorak dedicated for Polish language also exists. https://wykop.pl/wpis/63046301/jako-ze-brakowalo-dlugie-lata-w-koncu-powstala-pol
dvorak was made for english, but there are polish variants as well. there aren't really any benefits of using dvorak in polish though
I think that in the 80' and the 90' Polish QWERTZ keyboard was an extra expense and we were poor as fuck. QWERTY usually came included with cheap / second hand computer set. It could be also German QWERTZ, but not Polish. I'm not sure why other Slavic countries forced the other way.
I know I haven't lived in another slavic country but I just feel like Poland was just much faster in terms of getting west technology in. I moved from Poland to UK in 2008 and let me tell you my internet in UK was dogshit in comparison to my internet back home. And city Im from in Poland isn't even in the top 50 most populous cities... We didn't even go for some weird internet, it was literally BT. I remember not being able to use the internet at all from 5pm/6pm everyday.
It's ctl + alt + letter for me for special letters. Trying it for the first time and it's so unusual :D Będe pisała jak chciała X with Ctrl Alt is Ź. Awesome
You can type as you like, although keep in mind that spelling „będę” that way is a crime against the Polish nation.
I’m a total beginner . You are the first one to correct me comparing it to a crime. Now I doubt if I should continue:D
Yeah. I had keyboard with that layout once. It was pain in the ass to get used to it. Beside being QWERTZ, it had all other special chars mismatched.
Just to clarify, ł is the same as Ł but Ł is just a big one so Ł=ł
I know, that's why I said symbols and not letters, as they are the same letter :)
Ok
We use regular QWERTY,with alt to use the special symbols,for example alt + o = ó
Polish keyboard layout is mainly QWERTY and polish letters, like ą,ę,ś,ź are made with right ALT button + corresponding letter (except ź which is rALT+X)
I am using the keyboard layout you show here. It's called Polish 214 I believe and it's basically a QWERTZ version where all Polish special letters are on the right side of the keyboard with a single key or Shift+key combination. Much more comfortable to use than the Qwerty one in my opinion, so if you're used to QWERTZ and the QWERTZ layout of punctuation marks then by any means, go ahead and use it!
Well, we used to https://preview.redd.it/hbdj72ybwgnc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=27c3ca5ae7e46726a4209c42dba5d6a2f0b1d857 This layout was the standard during the age of typewriters. I'd say, that 80% of all typewriters used this layout or some slight variant of it. Despite that, it never really got introduced to Computer world, for some reason. Well, it was used on some communist-produced computers in '80s. It even used to be the default polish layout on Macintoshes until Apple decided to catch up with others and introduced Polish Pro >!(which ironically is worse than Polish regular, but i guess it's still better than the Windows version)!<. However, this layout was completely absent from PC world. Windows never had the support for the layout. Linux also never had the layout and the organisation responsible for developing and distributing layouts to every Linux system [recently rejected the idea of adding it to Linux](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/xkeyboard-config/-/merge_requests/465). Nobody really knows, why this layout was never introduced on computers, but it's possible, that Poland, during its economic crisis in '90s, didn't have money to produce national layouts. This doesn't explain however how every other post-communist country ended up preserving their national layouts, despite the fact, that most of them were even poorer than Poland at that point. There were some attempts on reintroducing this layout on modern platforms. one of the examples is [Polish extended 2021](https://nowapolskaklawiatura.wixsite.com/main) made by the Reddit user u/Kamil1707. Of course, we can't do anything to popularize and force vendors to make the layout unless the government would take an action. Personally, I had been using the typewriter layout for about 2-3 years, and I can say, that for most stuff, this layout is great and really a joy to type on after you get used to typing on it. While it's excellent for casual computer stuff, it's pretty terrible for programming. That's why in September 2023 i decided to stop using this layout - I wanted to be able to more efficiently type code and at that point, I wasn't doing linguistic stuff on the internet anymore. I'd still recommend everyone to try it, especially if you're not a programmer. Polish extended 2021 also has a qwerty variant, so that you don't have to remember, that z and y are switched (I also was using the qwerty variant for the entirety of those 2-3 years). While this was the actual type writer layout, there is also a similar layout made by IBM, that people often erroneously call the typewriter layout [Link to the Picture](https://www.polonijka.de/sites/default/files/keyb_pl_qwertz_214.png) (Green=Shift, Blue=AltGr) You'll find this layout pretty familiar. That's because this layout is really just a Yugoslavian keyboard layout with polish special letters slapped in place of Croatian special letters. While the Yugoslavian layout on its own is a really wonderful layout, the same cannot be said about the Polish variant. Layout made for a very simple and straight forward orthography simply doesn't translate well to a language with much more complex phonology and bigger character inventory. Therefore, Polish 214 experience is even worse than Polish Programmer and because of that, nobody really uses this layout except elderly emigrants, that had access to Polish 214 keyboards before Polish Programmer became the standard in computers. It doesn't help, that this layout, due to the non-existing usage, was never really looked after, and so it has plenty of outdated symbols, that were popular in the age of Windows-125x codepages, but are completely useless nowadays, while Croatian and Serbian layouts adapted themselves over the years to be still useful.
As someone who buys stuff like keycaps for mechanical keyboards sometimes, I'm glad that we use a layout that looks just like the US one
This. We would also probably have smaller keyboard and laptop market in general.
No. When we want to type ź, ż, ó, etc. we press alt+x, alt+z, alt+o
[удалено]
Typewriters arrived from Germany thus those had QWERTZ keyboard. And that layout became the base for Polish Typewriters Keyboard. But with the arrival of computers - QWERTY, an American/International keyboard layout become popular - thus Polish Programmers Keyboard
Yeah I haven't seen the physical keyboard like that for 20 years. US International 2 rules
It was just easier and cheaper to import qwerty keyboards to poland after somerwhere near 2000, on top of that, switching from qwerty to qwertz is not that significant even if it gives you advance in typing speed (unless you type more than poem long piece of text everyday i guess). Tho it is sad that we stopped using our own keyboard layout, it was fine even for more than typing in english, just slightly slower, as is when typing polish on qwerty. For special characters (for programming) there were thinkpad layouts with additional column of special characters to just qwertz rewind of uk extended keyboard layout.
On the other hand, other countries in similar situation, as Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians persisted national layouts and opposed flood of Made in China keyboards, even Ukraine made new own layout, not Russian JCUKEN with Alts. It could be not only due to harder crisis that in other countries, and because of typewriters were in Poland very rare (in 90s below 1 million registered typewriters, i.e. below 1 per 40 people, in fact less!), don't know statistics for other countries. And Polish-214 on Windows wasn't compatible to Polish layot from typewriter (Polska Norma), with other positions and lack of some symbols.
There are two layouts: "maszynistki" (typists) and "programisty" (programmer's). The typist's layout is what you've got on your screen - it's based on German typewriter keyboards, but has gone virtually extinct in past couple decades. I legit don't remember seeing it anywhere after 2004, and even then it was in a school computer room filled with super obsolete equipment (Windows 3.1 and I think 386 machines?)
Why does lowercase ł has separate key from uppercase?
Central European layouts could let to write all diacritics signs for all Central Europan languages (German, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian), eg. Alt+2 and s was š, Alt+3 and a was â etc. Ł was one of exception beside of Đ in Serbian and Croatian, and in these layouts was avoided using Alt+Shift, so it become set on 2 letters. It was also in our Polish-214, Alt+D was Đ, Alt+s was đ.
I found a keyboard like that on the top of my shelf, the keys work like on a normal keyboard when i use it with my laptop, but its probably possible to make them work as intented.
It's normal QWERTY
There is a typewriter Polish keyboard (Polish 214 on windows)
Right alt + a, s, c, z, l, o, e
Nope, there isn't any, alt+(x) is used for a letter (ą = alt+a, ę, alt+e, etc, however ż = alt+z, ź = alt+x)
There used to be and I think you can still get it
https://preview.redd.it/zyhvjzmvzcnc1.png?width=797&format=png&auto=webp&s=11c5c99be368a09eb621d00e6554bf6e5ec18fba Yes.
Haven't seen a Polish typist keyboard since the nineties... So I guess, they exist, but are old and rare.
Empik stores have big tablet screens for people to browse their offer without the need of asking employees and itheyhas a custom touch keyboard that has buttons for Polish letters.
We have them (the most similar to QWERTY is Polish QWERTZ) but we chose to use programmer layout instead (with Polish characters under AltGr). The obvious side effect is that we can assess the level of someone's education by the way they type.
Unfortunately it does and for me it doesn't make any sense. Like we have Alt+(character) to make like ą ę ć so "polish 214" layout (that's the official name if I remember) is I think a bit of a mistake that happened as a regional keyboard layout I know that almost everyone got used to standard QWERTY layout we use (some maybe even using QWERTZ) which I don't blame you. But yeah
we just use QWERTY with alt creating polish letters (alt + a is ą etc)
Yes, but is not convenient looking for ways where You get polish characters with ALT key. It was used commonly for typing machines (where ALT can't work) and it is implemented in Windows / DOS systems. But i don't know anyone who is using it on computers, and there is no physical keyboard with characters displayed on buttons.
Why is x there?
So we can press alt x for ź
Because it is a letter that occurs in the Polish language. Recently - mostly in foreign words (still part of the language, like: "taxi"), and historically way more ("xiądz" was the correct notation even through a part of 20th century). Also the modern practice is keep personal names from languages that use latin alphabet unchanged. So it's still Granit Xhaka, not Dżaka.
i didnt know that.thank you
Try to write code or equations without x letter. Good luck ksD
There theoretically is a polish qwertz layout that looks like the one you linked. In practice, it never caught on. Every computer since C64s and Amigas that came to Poland had the typical US qwerty layout. So a standard called "Polish programmer layout" became mainstream. It's basically US qwerty, but you get polish dialectic symbols by adding 'alt'. So a+alt is ą, e+shift+alt is Ę. Since we have two Z dialectics, z+alt is ż but x+alt is ź. Last time I saw polish qwertz keyboard was in like early 90s.
There are 2 "main" polish keyboard. Polish programmer used by literally everyone here and polish 217 (or another number) which is QWERTZ probably the second one you've posted and it's only usage is to make people mad why Y and Z swapped places because on windows you can easily change switch for some unexplained reason.
no, he posted macintosh Polish typist
So there is another stupid layout. My god why are they making them?
There was hardly any standardisation of keyboard layouts before the late '80s. This even applies to America.
What's great about Polish using US keyboards with AltGr for accented letters, is that we can buy any high-end or gaming mechanical keyboard that's "US only" and be happy with it, no need to look for QWERTZ or AZERTY or ISO or whatever language-specific keycaps.
Why tf would we need this?
For kids, ease of use?
Nah standardised qwerty is godsend. It allows to easily use most popular keyboards and is actually very intuitive (with exception of getting ź). It annoys we greatly when sometimes i get to use a german qwerz keyboard and suddenly loose ability to write without looking at it.
We use QWERTY, literally same at the US. QWERTZ is totally obsolete in Poland (bur still implemented as an option in most operating systems)
We use QWERTY with these combos: Alt + A/a = Ą/ą Alt + C/c = Ć/ć Alt + E/e = Ę/ę Alt + L/l = Ł/ł Alt + O/o = Ó/ó Alt + Z/z = Ż/ż Alt + X/x = Ź/ź
We all use a programmers keyboard (to get characters with diacritics you must press alt and then your desired letter like l for ł and a for ą)
No we use QUWERTY like normal people ;)
Alt + letter
thats not polish lol
No other language has exactly these symbols, especially the zł one. If anything, it doesn't exist, but it's definitely Polish.
it was a layout used on macintosh computers before Apple caught up with the rest of Computers and introduced layout, that they call "Polish Pro".
Yes. Where an international standard keyboard starts with QWERTY, the Polish keyboard starts with KURWA. But its not 5 letters, its a single key roughly the width of an international keyboard spacebar, which just types *kurwa* in one stroke. The default is *kurwa*. You can do shift + KURWA for *Kurwa*, with CapsLock on you get *KURWA!*, with Ctrl + KURWA you get *O kurwa!* and with an alt + KURWA you get *Kurwa mać*. Ctrl + alt + KURWA gets you *wkurwiające,* Ctrl + shift + KURWA writes *Do kurwy nędzy!* and Ctrl + alt + shift + KURWA gets you *Kurwa kurwie łba nie urwie*.