In order to convert these scancodes into characters, the system needs to know which
symbol is associated with which key. This is done through a keyboard map. Since
most English North American keyboards have a standard layout, one standard keyboard
map usually suffices; but outside of English North America, additional symbols
will appear, either supplementing or replacing the English North American
symbols. For example, a U.K. keyboard layout will include symbols for the Euro and
pound.
The layout of the basic roman letter symbols will also vary; in North America, the
top row starts with QWERTY; in Germany, it often starts QWERTZ; and in France,
AZERTY. Nonroman alphabets obviously have their own distinctive layouts as well,
but typically provide some way to type roman letters for email addresses, URIs, and
code.
Some languages use large numbers of accented characters. Keyboards set up for these
languages often use dead keys, which don??™t actually type a character, but which cause
the following character to be accented. This handling is performed by the system and
not by the processor in the actual keyboard, so the operation of dead keys can be
reconfigured as needed. A compose key is a special type of dead key that builds a
character based on two subsequent keypresses.
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