Coding in Swedish keyboard mode in a Mac with (){}[] all on the same two keys with various vulcan neck pinching modifiers is definitely not one of my favourite things!

I've sticked to US Intl + AltGr as modifier key to access åäö in the usual location for ~a decade now. Managed to get the same config working on both Linux and macOS.

That's an Apple thing, though.

Oh, I'd assumed this was specific to Swedish Mac keyboards and not a more general Mac thing! How vile!

It's def. not like that on their US or UK/IE keyboards.

Not much better on standard Norwegian(non-apple) keyboards. ()[] are on the same two number keys and {} are on the keys surrounding those keys. []{} require alt gr while () require shift. Also $ is alt gr+5 which is revolting. Combined with / being at shift+7, typing in the shell is a terrible experience.

I think those are all the same on Swedish PC keyboards too, except $ -- yup, that was AltGr-4, not 5. And yeah, not lovely... Why have I put up with this for over 30 years?!?

Yeah, I have a Swedish layout Dell as well and it's better but not much. I'm confused now, though, as I took the parent as telling me that non-Swedish Macs also have the horrible symbol placement for the various braces. (rsynnott above clarifies that it's indeed Swedish-specific so it's just the Macs are a bit worse than the PCs).

I'm fairly adept at switching between British PC keyboard, Swedish PC keyboard, and Swedish Mac keyboard nowadays, but the latter's significantly the worst (and don't get me started on how default IntelliJ key combos work with that)

I'm really happy Poland went with the US layout (with right Alt "abuse"). Makes it very easy when buying computer equipment.

Unless you buy out of shelf Mac. The default is the weird "international" layout with tall Enter key.

I don't care much about keyboard layouts anymore. I use a mix of FI/UK/US normal/Mac layouts almost daily, and it rarely matters much. Maybe the layout used to be a bigger deal before smartphones, but touchscreen interfaces have taught me to expect that the layout changes randomly all the time.

You definitely haven't use any of the nordic or the common nordic keyboards then. Its not the changing around that is the issue, its the absolute backwards positioning of key (heh) keys that is the problem.

I used the Finnish layout almost exclusively for 20+ years, and I didn't find it particularly inconvenient. I needed äö at least as often as ()[]{}/|\$@, and no alternate layout was clearly better than the default.

If there was a dedicated Finnish layout (instead of a shared Finnish/Swedish one), it could be a bit better by using the å key for something more common. But apart from that, I haven't seen any suggestions that would make the layout better.

I find that some keyboard shortcuts, in programs that use "weird" keys like, say, Alt-semicolon or Ctrl-backslash, don't work with a Nordic keyboard. I've hypothesised it's because we need to use modifiers to get to those characters in the first place; maybe the programs read keyboard scan codes directly in stead of OS-mediated character codes (or vice versa), Idunno... You never run into that?

Yea, there are some programs that expect me to be able to press Ctrl-/ or something - but / is shift-7 so i'd actually have to press ctrl-shift-7, which in 99.9% of cases never works.

It's easier to just remap the shitty hotkeys to something better.

åäö are fine. But I had to create a custom layout a few years back for the insanity that is {}[]`~$.

And why do we have μ? (I know it's because it's a metric prefix but has anyone ever used it instead of u?)

Yep, agreed. I'm using US Dvorak with modifications to get those äös.