In Visual Studio 2012 what is the Navigate backward shortcut on a french keyboard?

Question

It\'s been a while since I wonder how to navigate backward and forward in Visual Studio using a French (fr-FR) keyboard.

Hovering over the buttons it l

Answer 1

Not all keys can be used in Visual Studio shortcut keys. You can try it yourself in the Options dialog / Environment / Keyboard tab, in the 'Press shortcut keys' text box. For example, with a french keyboard, you just can't create the CTRL+. shortcut, you can't either create the CTRL+- shortcut (as some non french suggested :-)

Why? Because CTRL+. is just seen as CTRL+SHIFT+; (you have to look at a french keyboard to understand that) because Visual Studio extracts the SHIFT from the key pressed (because it wants to keep it as part of the shortcut), and doesn't remember a '.' character was pressed.

(original image courtesy of AZERTY)

The rule could be something like this:

A Visual Studio shortcut is not recognized or cannot be used on a given keyboard if the part of it that is not a modifier (CTRL, ALT, SHIFT) cannot be created without using a modifier key on this keyboard.

Note: there are some (probably hardcoded?) exceptions to this rule, for example, numbers 0 to 9 are usable without using SHIFT on a french keyboard...

Answer 2

I think I found it, but I am not sure. I can't seem to actually test this on my computer, but what I did:

1. Used Pat or JK's Spy (http://patorjk.com/blog/software/) to extract the text from the combo box.
2. Copied that weird dot to python and did ord('·') and got 250
3. 250 = 0xfa, Edit: after doing some more research, I figured it can be also 183
4. 0xfa = ù ( or 0xb7, after doing some research on this)

So, I conclude that ctrl+shift+ù should work.. It is the ' or " key on the English keyboard. (% on the french keyboard)

On my computer it didn't work, but worth the shot, maybe it will help.

Edit: Well after doing some research, I figured it is probably a bug. After reading this: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=17600.0 and all other links in that link, and more about the "middle dot" (interpunct) I concluded that it is just not possible to type that character, not even using Japanese layout (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081215222938AA9Nz0t)

I tried Spanish, Catalan, 4 different French layouts and Japanese. Couldn't get that middle dot! So, there seems to be only one explanation for this - it is truly a bug.

Answer 3

As a french user, I have had this problem too and VS2015 won't solve it. The quickest solution I found is simply to remap the command.

Go to

Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard

and search for the commands View.NavigateBackward or View.NavigateForward and enter the new keyboard mapping. It's tough to find one that is not already assigned to a command ! I personnaly use Ctrl + Num . for backward navigation and Ctrl + Num 0, Ctrl + Num . for forward navigation.

Better than having a default mapping that doesn't work.

Answer 4

If it is not a normal fullstop . here is how I would go about identifying it.

1. Use SysExporter to copy the text out of the UI control in the VS2012 options menu.

2. Paste the text into a Unicode text file, such as one made with Windows Notepad or Notepad2. Be sure to save as Unicode.

3. Then open it with an editor such as HxD to open and copy the raw Unicode character value. Now you can look that up and find out exactly what symbol that dot is, and how to recreate it.

Answer 5

for a quick update for french/azerty users, on VS2015, the shortcuts ctrl+! and Ctrl+Shift+! are free and are closer to the home row.

Answer 6

Try Ctrl + : as : is where the . is on English keyboard.