Notebook QWERTZ Layout
Please note that as long as it's not specified otherwise, this notebook will have German keyboard layout (QWERTZ),
The QWERTZ layout differs from the QWERTY layout in four major ways:
1. The positions of the "Z" and "Y" keys are switched, this change being made for two major reasons: "Z" is a much more common letter than "Y" in German. "T" and "Z" often appear next to each other in the German orthography, and placing the two keys next to each other minimizes the effort needed for typing the two characters in
2. Part of the keyboard is adapted to include umlauted vowels (ä, ö, ü).
3. The placements of some special symbols and command keys are changed, some of special key inscriptions are changed from an abbreviation to a graphical symbol (for example "Caps Lock" becomes a hollow arrow pointing down, "Backspace" becomes a left-pointing arrow), and most of the other abbreviations are replaced by German abbreviations (thus e.g. "Ctrl" for "control" is translated to its German equivalent "Strg" for "Steuerung"). "Esc" for "escape" is not translated however.
4. Like many other non-English keyboards, QWERTZ keyboards usually change the right Alt key into an Alt Gr key to access a third level of key assignments. This is necessary because the umlauts and some other special characters leave no room to have all the special symbols of ASCII, needed by programmers among others, available on the first or second (shifted) levels without unduly increasing the size of the keyboard.
