iosipadsmart-keyboard
How do you type control + [ on the German Smart Keyboard for iPad.
I am missing the "Esc" on the iPad keyboard a lot in order to discard text fields. I read that control + [ might work as a replacement.
How do you type this on a German keyboard layout with [ not being a dedicated key.
I've developed a terminal for iOS (it is not released, is intended as a base for other projects) and I have tried for hours to see any kind of event or modifier when meta keys are used on an external keyboard. The only way to get these events is to use private APIs and if you do that you can't get your app on the store. I have filed an issue (Apple rdar 10283552) and hopefully this will change in a future release.
So the problem is not your keyboard, it is iOS. I think you have found the best solution with key chords, unless you want to use one of the better apps like Prompt, which gives you "soft" meta keys on the screen - but the whole point is to keep your hands on the external keyboard, I know.
I don't know for sure if Prompt keeps those meta keys visible when a BT keyboard is connected - it can be done in code - if it did maybe soft metas would be better than nothing.
iSSH has a button on the toolbar for exactly this purpose:
Tap that button, view that menu, enable the feature!
Best Answer
I had an issue where I couldn't get a question mark to appear using the Apple iPad Smart Keyboard with the German as the language, I would switch back to English for punctuation. I just found that you can have the language set as German but then change the keyboard hardware settings to English and now my question mark button give me a question mark. Yay! So it may work for your situation too. On your iPad go to Setting > General > Keyboard > Keyboard hardware.