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Key symbols we lost to time, pt. 2: The Mac side

163 points · 89 comments · zdw

  1. behnamoh · · focus · HN ↗
    I wonder why people stopped adding symbols to ASCII. The number row on Macs is just these characters:

        ~!@#$%^&*()_+
    And every programming language uses a subset of these. But why these symbols? Why didn't people add more symbols to the keyboard?
    1. Findecanor · · focus · HN ↗
      Many European layouts do have more symbols outside ASCII. For example German has ° (degree) and ß (ess-tset) and § (paragraph). German PC keyboards also tend to have µ on the M key, but it is available with the right Alt key.

      Macintosh keyboard layouts tend to have many symbols on Option-combinations but they are not always printed.

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