Studio incompatibility with Czech (and other national) keyboard layouts

Feedback Studio
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1

Hi,

This issue might sound like trivial but it is an important issue for anyone not using US keyboard layout.

The problem: studio doesn’t recognize Right ALT key (=AltGr) as its own key and it simulates Left CTRL+Left ALT instead.

(yes, AltGr is supposed to be emulated with Lctrl+Lalt but not other way around.
“On US and UK keyboards, Windows maps the combination Ctrl-Alt to AltGr; in the rest of the world, the right Alt key is mapped to AltGr.” - Talk:AltGr key - Wikipedia )

This is a problem because Ctrl+Alt is used for number of important shortcuts while AltGr is used for special characters in national layouts all throughout the world.

With (czech) national layout: AltGr symbols like \|[;]{}$&#@€÷×~^°` are important & used frequently. With UI Path Studio not recognizing AltGr and emulating Ctrl+Alt instead I am (and rest of non-US layout world) able to effectively use the studio with my preferred keyboard.
Czech layout for refference blue/some pink symbols are AltGr. [spoiler]https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr[/spoiler]

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Talk:AltGr key - Wikipedia
AltGr key - Wikipedia

There might be a discussion to “just use US keyboard” but my point is, that even for programming, US keyboard is not strictly better than some national keyboard layouts. In the end it comes to everyone’s flavor, but for example, Czech keyboard layout is uniquely equipped to access common programming symbols and from my research (~200respondents, programmers of CTU University) ~35% use Czech layout for programming.

There also might be a response to just re-map all the ctrl+alt overlapping shortcuts but that is really costly workaround, around bad functionality which I am hope was not an intended feature.

Thank you for addressing this seemingly small but essential issue,
Vit Hlavacek

2

Hi Vit,

the AltGr key works fine in the Advanced editor of Studio (in main pane and properties pane), which alleviates the issue to a certain degree. Not usable in variables and arguments panes- so declaring some more complex types is pain.

Cheers

Libor

4

Thank you for a nicely written post, we will have a look and prioritize accordingly :slight_smile:

2 Likes
5

Hi,

can I kindly ask about the progress or where can I track it?

Vit

6

Unfortunately, I cannot share the exact timeline, but it is on our radar and will be fixed in the coming versions.

7

thank you.

8

Hi,

This still hasn’t been fixed in 2021.4.4.
I can’t type @, [, ] and other special characters using Alt Gr. Those characters are Alt Gr + 2, Alt Gr + 8, Alt Gr + 9 respectively.

Creating robots using Danish keyboard layout heavily relies on those key combinations.

9

This issues should finally be fixed in the latest version of Studio :slight_smile: