There are a number of "glitches" related to keyboards that should be worked around, or at least prominently documented. Mine was tackled somewhat (but not fully), on the forum:
PC Keyboard layouts are NOT the same as Mac Keyboard layouts.
The consequence is that on some keyboards, you strike a key, and get character different from the one you see on the key cap.
Example: on a French (AZERTY) keyboard on a MacBook Pro (or any other machine for that matter), the top row "6" numeric key shows "6" for upper case and "§" for lower case (yes, 0..9 are upper case on the French layout). In any Mac app, striking that key will normally yield the "§" character. In Parallels with Windows XP, using the French layout, I get the "-" character. What gives? The reason is apparent if you look at any French PC Keyboard: on such keyboards, the lower case character for the "6" key is indeed "-".
The solution is "simply" to install a correct keyboard layout inside Windows. But this is not that simple, because Windows doesn't provide the correct layout. And in any case, it's burdensome and not easy enough for my mum to do!
For the French layout, I found Florent Pillet already did the work. See http://www.florentpillet.com/.
Now the point of my comment:
While this cannot strictly speaking be considered as a Parallels bug, I think the issue really belongs to Parallels to solve. The reason is that the purpose of Parallels Desktop is to bring PC compatibility to the Mac. Keyboard compatibility should be on the agenda. The correct layout(s) could be installed at the same time as Parallels Tools. At the very least, Parallels should document the issue and its solutions in the official documentation for the product, AND maintain and ship a library of relevant layouts.
Finally, many thanks for a great product. I love it.
Jean-Denis
PC Keyboard layouts are NOT the same as Mac Keyboard layouts.
The consequence is that on some keyboards, you strike a key, and get character different from the one you see on the key cap.
Example: on a French (AZERTY) keyboard on a MacBook Pro (or any other machine for that matter), the top row "6" numeric key shows "6" for upper case and "§" for lower case (yes, 0..9 are upper case on the French layout). In any Mac app, striking that key will normally yield the "§" character. In Parallels with Windows XP, using the French layout, I get the "-" character. What gives? The reason is apparent if you look at any French PC Keyboard: on such keyboards, the lower case character for the "6" key is indeed "-".
The solution is "simply" to install a correct keyboard layout inside Windows. But this is not that simple, because Windows doesn't provide the correct layout. And in any case, it's burdensome and not easy enough for my mum to do!
For the French layout, I found Florent Pillet already did the work. See http://www.florentpillet.com/.
Now the point of my comment:
While this cannot strictly speaking be considered as a Parallels bug, I think the issue really belongs to Parallels to solve. The reason is that the purpose of Parallels Desktop is to bring PC compatibility to the Mac. Keyboard compatibility should be on the agenda. The correct layout(s) could be installed at the same time as Parallels Tools. At the very least, Parallels should document the issue and its solutions in the official documentation for the product, AND maintain and ship a library of relevant layouts.
Finally, many thanks for a great product. I love it.
Jean-Denis