keyboardkeyboard-layoutwindows
I'd like to use multiple keyboards (all USB or one USB and one PS/2) with a different keyboard layout on each. Is this possible in Windows 7 or XP?
I'd prefer to avoid a hardware-based solution if possible.
My specific issue is that I prefer to use a Dvorak layout, but most of my colleagues use QWERTY. I'd quite like it if they could use my computer with a QWERTY layout by using a second keyboard, without affecting the layout of the primary one.
You need to use
xinput --create-master SecondKeyboard
to create a separate master keyboard, and then reattach the second keyboard to the new master:
xinput --reattach "Keyboard Id" "Master Id"
You use the ids from
xinput --list
This way the keyboards are separate and can be treated exclusively. E.g. you have two focuses, you can write in two applications at the same time with two keyboards, and set different key mappings, by specifying different master ids in things like setxkbmap.
The Gateway keyboard in your image is definitely not the British/UK keyboard layout (as mentioned in the other answer), which doesn't only have different symbol positions but also different key shapes. Its Enter ↵ key is a mirrored ⨼ L shape like the symbol ↵ instead of a 180°-rotated one Ꞁ like on the ISO, UK and German keyboards. It has the Backwards-L layout and the bar-shaped version has the ANSI layout
Backwards L-shaped
A "backwards-L shaped" (or just "L-shaped") Return key is the union of the ISO and ANSI Return keys. The key is often called Big-ass Enter because of its size, or Asian enter because it is found on many East Asian keyboards.
There have been studies that have shown it to be easier to hit accurately than the ISO and ANSI Return keys.
However, with the backwards-L shaped Return key, the
\key has to be relocated, often at the expense of having a smaller backspace or right shift key.
Many many people call it the J-shaped enter key as well. Here is the real US keyboard with that layout
compared to the British one with completely different keys for the symbols
When you see the single-row Enter key, that is the US-ANSI layout. IBM suffered terribly when it added an extra key between Left-Shift and Z on the Selectric III, so when it came to designing the Extended Layout with which most of us are now familiar, someone recognised the folly of the Selectric III and suggested cutting the large enter key in half to accommodate the
\key.On ISO keyboards, the Enter key is usually still the size of the ANSI Enter plus the
\key and, prior to MS messing up the bottom row with the Windows keys, the\was often placed in the single space position between Ctrl and Alt. Since the introduction of Windows keys, the placement of\on ISO keyboards has wandered. Sometimes, the Enter key is narrowed at the bottom so that\can sit beside“. Sometimes the Backspace key is halved so that\sits beside=. The last and least desired placement is back in that increasingly annoying position of between Left-Shift and Z.What's the advantage of a L-shaped "enter" key vs. a regular (one-row high) "enter" key?
IIRC in the past (like 15-20 years ago or more) I've always seen the backwards-L enter key in my country (Vietnam), which uses standard US keyboard layout. On most keyboards the backslash is put on the left of R-Shift key like in the first image, which results in a better typing experience since no keys are too small. On some others it's moved to the left of backspace, resulting in a tiny square backslash key without text label, only a symbol like in the below image. And then when laptops became more common the desktop keyboards began changing to the ANSI rectangular enter key like that.
A little bit of my own history: I remembered around 1995-1997 I went to my uncle's house and while playing some spacecraft shooting game I realized that there are 2 similar keys named ← (as you can see in the big-ass keyboard above). I tried pressing the upper one (which turns out to be the backspace) to see if it moves left or not and suddenly I got a much stronger weapon and easily passed level 5, which no one could do before
While searching on the internet I also find a strange layout where the backslash is moved to the right of the R-Shift key. I don't think anyone will be a fan of this, since typing a backslash is now too hard
FYI Apple did produced keyboards in backwards-L layout like that
Here is a detailed comparison between layouts
A comparison of common mechanical computer keyboard layouts. Keys that are not present in them all are highlighted in pink (alphanumeric) and dark-grey (modifier). Keys that are sometimes omitted are shown with interrupted outlines. Note that the 104th key on the ABNT layout is located in the numpad section and therefore not visible. From left to right, top to bottom:
- 101 keyboard, common in North America, Asia, Oceania
- 101 alternate, common in Asia and Russia
- 102 keyboard, common in Europe, Latin America
- 103 keyboard, used in South Korea
- 104 keyboard, used in Brazil
- 106 keyboard, used in Japan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Mechanical_layouts
The second version is common in Asia and Russia, which explains why I saw them a lot in the past
You can also see various types of Enter ↵ key if you open Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
Best Answer
I think this is just what you need:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/20994/Using-multiple-keyboards-with-different-layouts-on
The article describes RightKeyboard, which changes the system keyboard layout depending which keyboard you use to type. It has a couple of restrictions (the first key typed when you switch keyboards may be wrong, for example, because it works by changing the global layout when you press a key on a different keyboard, not by actually making the system read them each differently), but it should do the job.
There have been reports in the comments of the download from that link not working, though, so get it from the GitHub release if you want to use it: https://github.com/agabor/RightKeyboard/releases