Foreword

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This document was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 35, User interfaces.

This fourth edition cancels and replaces the third edition (ISO/IEC 9995-3:2010), which has been technically revised.

The main changes are as follows:

update of the title;
revision of Clause 5 (now Clause 4) by a new specification of a “Latin International keyboard layout”;
removal of Clause 6.

A list of all parts in the ISO/IEC 9995 series can be found on the ISO and IEC websites.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and www.iec.ch/national-committees.

Introduction

Besides demonstrating the details specified in the ISO/IEC 9995 series on an actual keyboard layout, the Latin International keyboard layout standardized in this document is intended to fulfil the following goals:

All names (personal and organizational) and texts written in official main languages of all countries can be entered correctly (provided they use the Latin script).
For common non-Latin scripts, the common transliteration systems are supported, such as for Arabic, Chinese (Pinyin), Hebrew, Russian and other languages with Cyrillic script, and Sanskrit.
Common diacritical marks can be entered by the “dead key” method, which is common for European layouts. Sequences of two dead keys are used to enter characters with two diacritical marks (as are needed e.g. for Vietnamese).
All characters used in “good typography” can be entered easily. Especially, the “comma-shaped apostrophe” gets a prominent position, while being doubled as “closing single quote” which is allocated systematically with the other quote characters.
The Latin script variants Fraktur (Blackletter) and Gaelic, which have some contemporary use despite their “old fashioned” look, are supported (for environments which provide appropriate fonts and automatic ligating for Fraktur, which can be controlled by the “zero width non-joiner”).
Symbols used commonly in business texts are provided, like ¥, ®, or ⌀ (diameter).
All characters which can be entered are presented on the keytops using the keytop surface efficiently.
The layout is designed as an extension of the widespread “QWERTY” layout as specified in the US-American standard ANSI INCITS X3.154-1988. Thus, anybody familiar with its use can continue to use it without having to learn new things, especially when touch-typing. They only have to learn new key combinations for the “new” characters which they in fact want to use which were not on the “ANSI” layout. Also, it is compatible with extensions of that ANSI layout which allocate the Euro symbol (€) on the level 3 on the “digit 5” key, which are in use e.g. in the Netherlands.

Some detailed design considerations leading to the layout defined in this document are compiled in Annex A.

1 Scope

Within the general scope described in ISO/IEC 9995-1, this document defines a specific keyboard layout for the Latin script.

This document is primarily intended for word-processing and text-processing applications.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Latin International keyboard layout

4.1 General

4.2 Layout table

4.3 Additional requirements

4.4 Input of specific currency symbols

4.5 Variants

Bibliography