>>@ is AltGr+q {[|]} are only reachable via ALTGR ; needs a shift and so one. But this is nothing compared with the pain to search äöüß on an english keyboard.
>>In the days of yore, programming TurboPascal, I had simply painted the english codes to the keys and switched the layout.
>>In VFP it's no prolem at all.
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>IIRC, once upon a time in the days of 7-bit alphabets, you used to have the same mess we had, where [], {}, \| @` ^~ stood for our specific characters (which I still can't use here, the unmentionables)(Michel, for the 23th time, when will UT have UTF-8 again, as it once had when it ran under VFP? It still says content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1").
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>I guess it was the same (and I remember my German edition Atari 1040STf). Now imagine the further twist, when they invented 7-bit Cyrillic, which has three more specific characters, the [unprintable] and [unprintable] and [unprintable] (plus the Macedonian dz), which would replace w, x and q (and y)... and then accidentally the scripts would get mixed up. Somebody would just type it thinking the text goes in English, or would slap a Cyrillic font all over the page, forgetting that the author is mixing die Spraeche in the same sentence (just wanted to say "????????", but for a real mix go elsewhere, UT won't support it). There's a whole genre of slang in modern Serbian, based on that kind of mix - Njindonjs, njnjnj.dot.kom etc etc.
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>Inventing variables to become last names when surrounded with [ and ] (which stood for [unprintable] and [unprintable], of course) was a sport for itself.

Can't you control your unprintable posts? ;-)

The New York Times, which I value greatly, contorts itself with language decorum. "Not printable in a family newspaper" is a phrase that appears regularly. (Whereas The New Yorker, equally esteemed, includes many F-bombs. When a writer of fiction means f***ing, he or she can write f***ing without obfuscation). Then again, the NY Times style also requires referring to Bono as Mr. Hewson.