How do I enter codes?

[Viking Zippy]

3) If you are using a US keyboard layout hit the "`" button ("~" is the shift version), but you dont want shift. This should bring up a console

and what do you press on non-US layouts?
(german for instance)

Keyboard layouts. Look there, your keyboard should be somewhere on there

[TomyLobo]

yes i know where the key is, but it doesnt work
i press the key to the left of the "1" key, above TAB and nothing happens
if i set the layout to english/us, that same key opens the console
console keys on non-us layouts seem to be an issue in all recent games

hl1 didnt have it
hl2 has it and the quake3 lineage has/had the same problems too

the reason is that more recent games seem to address keys by the character, rather than by scan code
(logical vs. physical keys)
while this has some advantages (no swapped keys on non-us layouts), it also has many disadvantages, as you can see

[Silb]

On a French keyboard, the console key ends up as '<', which is just right of the left shift key. I think on a German keyboard it's 'ö'.

[TomyLobo]

ah thanks, ö works