this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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Do you know why the
3
key has ann
? I have a hunch:This is clearly a tactical keyboard for use in military, aviation or maritime navigation systems! /s
Now I gotta know the tactical reason for the 2 key to also have the 2 symbol?
I did't know much about the German keyboard layout but I know the Czech one, which is derived from it (we both use QWERTZ) and was able to look up most of what I didn't know.
So, the keyboard has 4 layers: default, Shift, AltGr, AltGr+Shift (the fourth one is not standard but is recognized by xkb; in Czech I use it for custom character mappings, in German it is standardized but Linux-only).
As you can see, AltGr+2 produces ², and AltGr+3 produces ³. I think the full-size "2" and "n" are misprints. My old Czech keyboard has some errors too.
By the way, Czech is more chaotic:
´
,ˇ
,˚
,¨
) like on typewriters˚
key twice prints the degree sign (°) twice (Windows) or once (Linux)§
key but we need to press AltGr+7 twice, then backspace (or Alt+96) for a grave (`), which is part of ASCII and used in Markdown€
); it contains useful symbols ([]{}<>|\€$@#^&×÷`) as well as useless ones (Đđ – these are Slovene, why not the Slovak Ôô?), leading people to prefer Windows-only left-Alt+numpad codes (such as Alt+64 for @) that use the obsolete OEM-1252 codepage (the Unicode extension has to be enabled via registry and Alt+letters hex codes get passed to programs anyway, often defocusing the input element). I only found a Slovak one on Wikimedia CommonsWhoa, it's beautiful. I'd be still using it with some usb adapter.
The "n" is probably a misprint, AltGr+2 prints "²" and AltGr+3 prints "³" in the German layout; it can be customized to actually print "n" in xkb though.
I mean, if the redundant Windows keys produce different codes, it could be worth a lot to macro enthusiasts. The model exists with an English QWERTY layout too:

The picture seems to be from 1998 so you'll likely need a passive DIN to mini-DIN adapter as well.