Copenhagen Cocoa

Where is the Language Key?

Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 8:03 pm

One of the greatest UI innovations on the iPhone software keyobard, is the dedicated language key.

Never before has it been so easy to change keyboard layout and dictionary.

It makes me wonder where the dedicated language key is on normal PC’s, it would be so convenient to toggle languages with a dedicated hardware button.

Being bi-langual I am growing tired of OS X, red lines, it does not detect language very well, and even when you change the dictionary, and your word is spelt correctly, it will only check the word again if you click it.

Another annoyance is iWorks unorthodox way of handling spell checking, it is tied to the specific style of the paragraph, this may be a great idea in documents containing more than one language, but most documents contain exactly one language, and therefor the default should be the change the dictionary document wide.

Would it be possible to override the functionality of Caps Lock, and instead use it as a dedicated language key, coupled with a nice UI overlay? It could be most useful.