Mailbag: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S

Even before the “remaster,” my essay about the Polish S bug was routinely discovered by Hacker News and other places, so I thought I would take a look at all the commentary over the years and summarize. First, pragmatically, these are the lessons for any keyboard shortcut designer: On Windows, AltGr (Right Alt) and Ctrl+Alt shortcuts are one and the same, and Right Alt and alphabetic keys are used for some languages to output regular accented letters. You should not prioritize Ctrl+Alt shortcuts anywhere your users write text. On a Mac, ⌥ and most keys generate characters. They do so even on English layout for extra typographical flair, but particularly in other languages, regular accented letters might hide there. Note that these are not just letter keys, but also digits and other keys. You should not prioritize ⌥ shortcuts anywhere your users write text. I couldn’t find a good image, so I made these two as an example. First is Mac’s American keyboard with ⌥ held. Second is Polish…