Keyboard shortcuts for Macbook pro and wireless keyboards.

Question

I´ve searched for an answer to this issue because it seems so obvious, but I can´t seem to find anything useful. Perhaps I´m just terrible at searching relevant posts here. I apologize if this has been addressed before.
I´m taking some tutorials (from Lynda.com and Ripple training, to name a few) and in all of them, even those about very recent software, they keep aluding to ye olde long keyboards of yesteryear, when you had tildes and the plus and minus signs were on it's own keys. But most modern mac keyboards, on laptops such as macbook pro's, as well as desktop computers now, use the short keyboard. So, for example, if in the tutorial they explain how to reduce the size of a brush with a shortcut pressing command and the plus sign, that shortcut can't be used in a macbook pro, because to get the plus sign you also need a modifier, which completely alters the function of the sortcut.
Now, I guess one could simply edit every command individually, but it seems to me there's gotta be a simpler, easier way to fix this, since old long keyboards have been almost fazed out. It amazes me why don't the programs such as Final Cut, to name an Apple proprietary, just come with a preset for long and short keyboards at this point. But they still don't.
I hope someone can assist me with this issue, and I´m sorry about the syntax and grammar, english is not my native language.

Answer 1

Tom,
No I have not asked on a dedicated forum since this is an issue I've had with several programs (I should start to refer to them as apps), however, it's not a bad idea and I'll skim those forums to see if this issue has been addressed. Also, indeed you are right and I made a mistake in my previous post, the + sign comes up by just pressing that multipurpose key, with shift it will produce the asterisk and with option it will produce the bracket. I got carried away with Melophage's first post where the plus sign is used as an example. I apologize to both for my mistake, and I'll try to be more specific and careful in the future.
Tom and Melophage,
My keyboard does have the Spanish-ISO mode of input by default, and I've added the US input also, although I hardly ever use it. And indeed, being able to do something simple like zooming on a document or a web page with command and the plus sign is something I can easily manage. However, the things I usually have a problem with are, for example (and I'll be more specific this time), in photoshop cs6 to reduce or increase the size of a brush, you have to press either the left or right bracket. For me to get the left bracket, I have to press option and a multipurpose key that contains these three signs: ` ^ [. Now, in photoshop, as soon as you press the option key, the brush, or whatever tool you have selected, turns into the eyedropper tool, so pressing option and multipurpose key doesn´t get you a bracket, gets you the eyedropper and ignores any other key you press.
In final cut there is a similar problem with the bracket to make L cuts with a shortcut that uses the bracket, and both programs also make use of the tilde key, which I don't even have in my keyboard.
You both made me realize, of course, that the problem lies in my regional configuration of the keyboard, and that software makers probably just avoid the hassle of having to come up with multiple different sets of keyboard shortcuts due to those different layouts. I still think this is something that should be addressed right from the box, but now I realize it might not be such a prevalent issue, specially with people who have the US keyboard layout.