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Polish keyboard incompatibility issues [11]
I'm wondering if there's a solution or a workaround for this. I'm an American studying in Poland, using a Windows 7 laptop bought in the US with the Polish Programmers keyboard layout installed. I use te Alt + key combinations for Polish characters, and it works fine most of the time, but every now and then I come across a situation where an application or website won't accept Polish characters this way (but supports them otherwise)
As an example--when I create flash cards on studyblue.com, ą ę ó ń ć ź and ż all work just fine using the appropriate Alt + keys. But when I try to type an ś with Alt +S, nothing happens. When I try to type a ł, a dot is displayed. So I have to have notepad open in the background, and copy/paste ś and ł as I need them. Both ś and ł are displayed correctly when they're pasted. Drives me crazy, and I've basically given up using StudyBlue because of it. Which is a shame, because I really like it otherwise.
Both Rosetta Stone's desktop software and the web-based equivelant don't support the Polish Programmers keyboard, forcing you to use their method with the ~ key. And a text-only distraction-free text editor I love using at writer.bighugelabs.com has keyboard commands that use the alt key. It does accept Polish characters when that feature is disabled, but a distracting "Keyboard shortcuts are disabled in settings" is displayed in the corner every time an alt key combination is used.
What bothers me is that in each of these three instances, the website and/or software support the characters themselves and will display them correctly--but they don't recognize them as being pressed, due to either ignoring any Alt key combinations altogether, interpreting alt combinations inconsistantly, or ignoring alt combinations altogether.
So I'm curious, what keyboard layout do Windows PCs use in Poland, and how are the Polish keys accessed? If it's with Alt + combinations, is there any way to circumvent faulty software/websites, so the text is fed in directly, without the software ever seeing that the Alt key was pressed? Or any ideas for a workaround?