Talk:Modifier key
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Great Unsolved Mysteries: what's "Alt Gr"? (is it for very angry sufferers of computer rage -- "alt ... grrrrrrrr!" ;-) -- Tarquin 15:43 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)
- Probably German for "Alt Shift", where "Gr" stands for "grosse". -phma
- Nah, the "Gr" is either for "Graphics" or for "German". [1] (http://www.computerlexikon.com/?q=42&w=1) --Eloquence
- Sunir on Meatball found this: http://www.electriceditors.net/grapevine/issues/114.txt Quote from that page:
Alt Gr stands for Alt(ernative) Graphic. It was originally, as you correctly say, intended for additional keyboard characters, and many layouts use it for that purpose, with the additional character being shown to the right of the lower character on the key. The German keyboard, for example, uses this key for superscript 2 and 3, square and curly brackets, vertical line (|), backslash, tilde, at symbol and mu (the Greek letter used for "micro" in units). This means it can contain all the keys of a standard US/UK keyboard (except for the pound sterling symbol) plus quite a few others (Umlaute, the "double s" character, accents, circumflex, section symbol and mu). It might help you to know that Windows interprets Alt Gr as Alt+Ctrl. I use this fact in Word to assign additional symbol characters to it. On your laptop you may be able to reassign some of the Ctrl key functions to Ctrl+Alt, in effect turning the Alt Gr key into a second Ctrl key. Some apps, like Word and WordPerfect let you assighn keyboard shortcuts, or you could get a shareware keyboard mapping program, which lets you (re)assign keys globally.