About Pyra's Debian i18n

ible · May 7, 2016

Ted said:
It should be press kit (not set, sorry for this typo), for public relations (PR, advertising), http://cloud.openpandora.org/index.php/s/a0Q0TXV8gh5NLAC, currently there are only English and German versions, shall we translate those documents into Chinese?

if you are willing and able, that would be awesome!

Ted · May 7, 2016

ible said:
if you are willing and able, that would be awesome!

Yes, I will. I'm currently on business travel, hopefully I can do some translation on Friday.

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mgdesigner · May 7, 2016

Ted said:
The Pyra is developed by German (de) people.
It should be press kit (not set, sorry for this typo), for public relations (PR, advertising), http://cloud.openpandora.org/index.php/s/a0Q0TXV8gh5NLAC, currently there are only English and German versions, shall we translate those documents into Chinese?

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Thanks for your explanation. I got it. About the press kit, I have read some. About tech documents, if there will be Chinese documents , it will be very good. Acutally speaking, I also write articles for technews.tw (Very big tech news in Taiwan. And the site not only provides traditional Chinese,but also simplified Chinese for other countries. ) . My latest news article about Pyra was just published online hours ago.

I think my article could make a lot of open source community people focus on Pyra. I think in Taiwan there will be also some people want to help translation.
[doublepost=1462649638,1462648770][/doublepost]

Caine said:
We do not have a full sized keyboard, so some keys are bound to end up in slightly different places. Would such a binding work:

I probably made a few mistakes. Most notable deviation of the keyboard layout you have posted above is that ㄝ, ㄤand ㄡ move to the bottom left. So you would hold L2 to strike each of these keys.

The labels will not be printed on the keys (unless you can convince EvilDragon to make a separate keymat, but I don't expect this to happen).
The (lengthy) keyboard layout discussion has closed and is now final. This doesn't mean we can't think about sane mappings for other nationalities.

As title "i18n" of my original post , I think the situation may also affect Japanese(their Kana need 37 keys) and Korean key layouts. With a little fixin., I think your layout modifying idea is the right way. It needs key layouts modified with custom keyboard overlay pieces. And.... I think the idea need enough users to support it.

Besides open source contributors in Taiwan, I also have some friends in Japan community. I will also share Pyra information with them. I think that it will get more Asian open source contributors' attention to help.

ible · May 7, 2016

very nice article! (thanks google translate.) thank you for your enthusiasm!

rygD · May 7, 2016

@mgdesigner It would be great if we could get more people involved, so thanks for bringing attention to all of this. Hopefully things will work out for additional language support.

Ted · May 8, 2016

mgdesigner said:
My latest news article about Pyra was just published online hours ago.

Great article, thanks!

As title "i18n" of my original post , I think the situation may also affect Japanese(their Kana need 37 keys) and Korean key layouts. With a little fixin., I think your layout modifying idea is the right way. It needs key layouts modified with custom keyboard overlay pieces. And.... I think the idea need enough users to support it.

I'm checking in another thread, what type of license protecting Pyra hardware, and the possibility of produce (maybe with modification) parts or the whole device by 3rd parties. If is allowed to do so, we could re-design and produce asian keyboards, that will be helpful for asian users.

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Caine · May 8, 2016

Here is a link to a keyboard layout editor which we frequently used during the Pyra's keyboard design phase:
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com

Paste the code below into the raw data section to edit the layout

rygD · May 8, 2016

Ted said:
Great article, thanks!

I'm checking in another thread, what type of license protecting Pyra hardware, and the possibility of produce (maybe with modification) parts or the whole device by 3rd parties. If is allowed to do so, we could re-design and produce asian keyboards, that will be helpful for asian users.

There is probably interest for key mats for other languages. If you decide to try to get some made contact ED and find out if he will help out and put you in contact with the company making them for him. The only thing that would need to change are the characters printed on the keys. He said he plans on releasing everything, but a semi-official key mat would be great, and there have been people discussing it in the past.

Grench · May 9, 2016

Caine said:
We do not have a full sized keyboard, so some keys are bound to end up in slightly different places. Would such a binding work:

I probably made a few mistakes. Most notable deviation of the keyboard layout you have posted above is that ㄝ, ㄤand ㄡ move to the bottom left. So you would hold L2 to strike each of these keys.

The labels will not be printed on the keys (unless you can convince EvilDragon to make a separate keymat, but I don't expect this to happen).
The (lengthy) keyboard layout discussion has closed and is now final. This doesn't mean we can't think about sane mappings for other nationalities.

Conceptually, it can be done, but the example there has 3 Alt buttons, so it fails. Loosing the shoulder Fn is bad too.

We could use something like Pyra (held) +Fn (press) toggles the keyboard area entirely to/from Chinese. At that point each non special key will have:
shift Fn at ctrl = 2*2*2*2 = 16 different possible outcomes per key per mode that Pyra held + Fn press would be allowed to cycle into.

I'm betting we could do the same exact layout we have now and include every character on the IBM Chinese keyboard above and only have 5 labels per key. Would need 3 more colors in the print for clarity.

It could be done - and it can be done without changing the default (existing) layout. That part is key. It needs to retain a default mode that is compatible with the expected software profile so everything else works from the primary OS support.

The key to making it work is to not monkey with the shift, alt, Ctrl, Fn placement or actions. Pyra key + anything could be used as a keyboard mode switch though.

ible · May 9, 2016

yeah, would definitely try to use AltGr (right alt, on the right shoulder) rather than Fn (on the left shoulder) to get some of the alt characters. then Alt+Fn will get you some others, and Alt+Fn+Shift will get you others.

it'll be crazy, but by the looks of that thinkpad you might already be used to crazy...

Caine · May 9, 2016

Ehh... yes. You guys are right. That was an oversight. I merely focused on putting the Chinese character in. Right Alt to AltGr is a much better choice than Fn.

The key point is that the Chinese characters can be made to fit in a fairly standard way without negatively affecting compatibility of the keybindings.

mgdesigner · May 10, 2016

ible said:
yeah, would definitely try to use AltGr (right alt, on the right shoulder) rather than Fn (on the left shoulder) to get some of the alt characters. then Alt+Fn will get you some others, and Alt+Fn+Shift will get you others.

it'll be crazy, but by the looks of that thinkpad you might already be used to crazy...

left shoulder+right shoulder buttons to switch between English Chinese(or Japanese ,Korean, Emoji) inputing is a good idea. About "space" being used(used as "enter" in IM output),IM output can be set as a right shoulder(Just like FPS game shoot button).

ekianjo · May 10, 2016

Caine said:
It doesn't really work that way. Do you have any idea how many characters Chinese has? (Hint: reading a newspaper requires you to know about 2000 ~ 3000 of them).

Yes you actually type by pronounciation and then you have a combo of keys to change into actual characters.

_jr_ · May 10, 2016

Do these IMs actually need an additional Modifier (i.e. does it actually input the symbols printed on the keys)? I assumed it works like Pinyin where you activate the IM that converts ASCII character sequences to the target characters.

mgdesigner · May 11, 2016

_jr_ said:
Do these IMs actually need an additional Modifier (i.e. does it actually input the symbols printed on the keys)? I assumed it works like Pinyin where you activate the IM that converts ASCII character sequences to the target characters.

Yes, as I sayed, there is BoPoMoFo IM which is similar to Pinyin ,input roman chars to spell Zhuyin. The situation is just like Japanese IM which foreigners like Roman spelling IM ,but Japanese or Taiwanese are used to input by Kanas or Zhuyins which are taught at their elementary schools.

About key symbols issues,I think it may need discussion in local community . Because only for playing old games in mobile situation,there are almost no need to use IMs. It is need to use telegram/slack/ browser. This kind of users may tolerate using BoPoMoFu or Kana-romanji . But for serious works , for example, writing articles, they may use normal usb keyboards.

My proposal is that Dragonbox would provide different printed keyboard for users to change.

_jr_ · May 11, 2016

mgdesigner said:
Yes, as I sayed, there is BoPoMoFo IM which is similar to Pinyin ,input roman chars to spell Zhuyin. The situation is just like Japanese IM which foreigners like Roman spelling IM ,but Japanese or Taiwanese are used to input by Kanas or Zhuyins which are taught at their elementary schools.

About key symbols issues,I think it may need discussion in local community . Because only for playing old games in mobile situation,there are almost no need to use IMs. It is need to use telegram/slack/ browser. This kind of users may tolerate using BoPoMoFu or Kana-romanji . But for serious works , for example, writing articles, they may use normal usb keyboards.

My proposal is that Dragonbox would provide different printed keyboard for users to change.

Thanks for the info, now various bits of info I picked up actually make sense. I agree that input of Zhuyin and Kana become much more usable when the symbols are printed on the keyboard (especiall because position will be at least partially non standard). ED can be hired to design and produce Pyra variants (there is a thread somewhere on the board where this topic came up), but someone will probably have to step up to finance prototype development and production (e.g. by crowd funding). The design files will probably also be available, so that a third party could design and produce a keymap variant.

Ted · May 11, 2016

mgdesigner said:
Yes, as I sayed, there is BoPoMoFo IM which is similar to Pinyin ,input roman chars to spell Zhuyin. The situation is just like Japanese IM which foreigners like Roman spelling IM ,but Japanese or Taiwanese are used to input by Kanas or Zhuyins which are taught at their elementary schools.

About key symbols issues,I think it may need discussion in local community . Because only for playing old games in mobile situation,there are almost no need to use IMs. It is need to use telegram/slack/ browser. This kind of users may tolerate using BoPoMoFu or Kana-romanji . But for serious works , for example, writing articles, they may use normal usb keyboards.

My proposal is that Dragonbox would provide different printed keyboard for users to change.

Maybe we could setup a separate small crowdfunding project, just to design and produce Asian language keyboard for Pyra.

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rygD · May 11, 2016

mgdesigner said:
My proposal is that Dragonbox would provide different printed keyboard for users to change.

ED has mentioned the cost to do additional keymats before. As long as there is enough customer demand he will probably consider it. Like @_jr_ said, the money may need to be there first.

Ted said:
Maybe we could setup a separate small crowdfunding project, just to design and produce Asian language keyboard for Pyra.

I highly recommend it. Keep trying to drum up interest in the Pyra, and if enough people are interested it shouldn't be difficult to get people on board for that (based on my understanding of the popularity of another handheld computer's crowdfunding success).

Ted · May 11, 2016

rygD said:
I highly recommend it. Keep trying to drum up interest in the Pyra, and if enough people are interested it shouldn't be difficult to get people on board for that (based on my understanding of the popularity of another handheld computer's crowdfunding success).

Does Pyra uses the same keymat with Pandora, or their keymats are different?

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slaeshjag · May 11, 2016

Keymats are very different.

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