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| A basic understanding of keyboards and how they work around the world can help avoid problems in application development. |
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- Do not assume there is a one-to-one relationship between keystokes and characters. Java, Windows, and X all allow the program to see keyboard events as well as typed characters. You cannot assume that a key down will produce a character, or that you will see a key down before a character is entered. In the case of IMEs, it is possible for multiple characters to be entered at once.
- Do not assume that there are two Alt keys, or that the layout has an AltGr.
- Do not assume anything about the assignment of characters on a keyboard. For instance, do not assume that numbers are unshifted or that A and S are adjacent (see Figure 2).
- Be careful not to assign meaning to pressing keys which from part of a dead key, IME, or escape sequence. For instance, on PC's you should be able to press the Alt and a set of digits from the numeric keypad to enter a numeric character code. In this case you should disregard the press and release of the Alt.
- Test your program with a variety of keyboards. In particular, test with keyboard layouts which use AltGr, dead keys, and a national group.
- When doing globalization testing, use the keyboard layouts of the language you are testing. This makes it easier to enter characters outside of the basic Latin set.
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