Not sure it's worth the extra costs involved with getting another colo(u)r. I would assume different plastics would be used as paint comes off easy.. I guess I'd need to understand what is involved price wise for this type of option.
Not sure if serious, but i'll bite. The IBM (thinkpad) logo is tricolour... What do you constructively think about the layout?
Keep in mind if not this, or other such decisive thing, then surely some watered down management solution that does not make sense any way you look at it. The PS layout makes the most sense, and that was fought through, tooth and nail. It strikes the balance with known solutions beautifully. Instead of latin letters its shapes. 1 is one stroke O 2 is X 3 is triangle 4 square.
I dont agree with the arrangement of where 1-2 and 3-4 is when the layout is like what is described with two additional buttons top- and bottom- left.
For example i dont think klumpen WASD layout makes sense because qwerty doesnt to begin with, additionally its hard to visualize buttons as wasd. Wasd in essence is applying something that exists for a new purpose, its not design, its activly going after a (arbitrary) compromise. I didnt understand the other buttons on it. G1 G2 G3 buttons is from the XT style keyboards, and of late logitech...
Latin letters are arbitrary, its hard to select nice looking ones and make a word too. Starting with that for action button labels strike me as somewhat odd. It comes the two button controller, which is only an addition to the 1 button style joystick before then. A B makes so little sense someone can go B A and get away with it.
My thoughts:
Its not an arbitrary selection of yellow red green blue thrown into an arrangement thats as sensical as its historically very varied implementation.
If it was, even down to what we "all" know, its instinctively a different product, so it ends up looking fake or wrong as an extention of being almost right, with respect to above situation, it is best avoided.
This is a _pyra_ layout, its bold and its not used yet, which is to say we wont be sued over using it. Ive thought up many designs, and my mind rests with this one.
( ) ( )
( ) ( )
( ) ( )
W R
G G
B B
Is the reason I did it like that, feedback?
White is a little bit off here, but what can you do, it starts with a different letter for each language. Hvit Kvit Weisse/White Blanco etc
Whi Red
Gra Gre
Bla Blu
If notes are your thing then this makes some sense.
R is atop since its red and thats the somethings wrong, other than usual, pyra. Green is your goto safe earthly button, close to the thumb, much use, whereas blue is sea, also used alot.
White is light, coming from above, getting darker. RGB is selected because its known, and the colours look ok together, add the yellow and its just chaos. 3+3 buttons is easier to understand, and you understand the 2 additional buttons with respect to the G left being gray.
White is the misty skies, gray is the fog, black is the soil.
Gray is matter, white is oxygen, red is the heat. If you want some kind of pyra-centric explanation, in that its the fire triangle.
I want the action buttons to be part of the keymat so they can have backlight too. I agree that color is useful and does not have to make it look like a toy, but it's probably going to be too expensive to have 6 different colors (currently only white and blue are planned).
Instead of using dots to indicate the button position, I'm using small triangles that refer to Home/End/PgUp/PgDn (and to the 4 classic Greek elements if you're familiar with medieval alchemical notation).
Instead of using circles around all letters (which is what guihints does), I'm using a circle only on B, a square on A, and triangles pointing in the same direction as the "dot" triangle for X and Y. The circles around the letters in guihints serve a purpose: they emphasize that these are action buttons, not regular keys; also they make it easier to see the relative position of the dot. I think it is an improvement to use different geometric shapes for the different buttons, so it gives an additional way to distinguish the buttons and to refer to them. Of course in PSX/PSP emulation it will help to use those specific shapes in that specific order.
I want the action buttons to be part of the keymat so they can have backlight too. I agree that color is useful and does not have to make it look like a toy, but it's probably going to be too expensive to have 6 different colors (currently only white and blue are planned).
Instead of using dots to indicate the button position, I'm using small triangles that refer to Home/End/PgUp/PgDn (and to the 4 classic Greek elements if you're familiar with medieval alchemical notation).
Instead of using circles around all letters (which is what guihints does), I'm using a circle only on B, a square on A, and triangles pointing in the same direction as the "dot" triangle for X and Y. The circles around the letters in guihints serve a purpose: they emphasize that these are action buttons, not regular keys; also they make it easier to see the relative position of the dot. I think it is an improvement to use different geometric shapes for the different buttons, so it gives an additional way to distinguish the buttons and to refer to them. Of course in PSX/PSP emulation it will help to use those specific shapes in that specific order.
A B is a grouping thats an addition on the 1 button. As you go AB XY you add two groups, which is arbitrary. When someone adds BA to the mix, the whole thing crumbles. Underlined A is better for ease of mind, dont think keyboard confusion is a problem.
But AB XY doesnt make sense to me. Even less when you add a +2 at the left side of the cluster.
Latin characters suck, with solid practice in use, and are rudimentary, in an arbitrary fashion, even more-so for us.
Starting out with symbols, or a variant on the "common" paradigm, is piling more of what doesnt work, atop what didnt work from before. Whoever started doing that, didnt envision a cluster of 4 buttons, much less 6.
L and R and Z make sense because its Left, Right and Z-axis.
It needs to be a logical first connection, and something that works in use. Semi-relation to something that is preconceived and cant be defended, is a lousy excuse for failing.
Colour is the primary drawing point, then shapes, then content, then whatever lore you apply.
Thats also intuitivly the fastest way to use something, its not so quick to learn, for that the symbol is more important, but whatever
We all know what a button is, and a gamepad is a known object at this point, it isnt wildly distanced from what is known to work, which is good. Distancing from what is known to be broken, and thinking anew where it matters is paramount.
The only other concern i can think of is getting some kind of added use out of them, as the number of buttons is limited.
+ ^
: *
- √
# ^
[ ]
{ }
Cool for some, not at all sexy, visually arbitrary and disturbing.
What im alluring to is that everyone has a colour recognition process going on, and a sleek design and holistic thinking is sadly lacking. Post about it
I can pull semi-good designs out of my head all day, but it is just that, semi-good. While its a lot better than ABXY, its not nailing the question with a most fitting answer.
If decided by rudimentary thinking we will end up with a design that is similar, common to everyone, ABXY -variant. Which is shooting yourself in the other foot, because it got you to where the hospital was the first time around.
Edit: the first of those is best because
add hyp-e
div multi
sub root
addition hyphen
divide multiply
subtract root
div is in between add which is + top, and sub is - bottom. Root is bootom, hype is top gogo inflated, multiply is the odd one out.
Yeah, I prefer this one for the same reasons (I hadn't took the time to find a link for all the symbols but I had a few). I like the idea of having completely unrelated symbols but which have an indirect coherence like that.
+ white with fn to increase light on the LCD and black
- black dims LCD down.
Instead of using designated buttons for this we can use those other buttons for on off for wifi and seperate ones for 3g and bt instead of the toggle cycle. Dont know exactly whats planned there, but more buttons made available is good.
The root sign, while not made by someone who thought it would look good on a gamepad, and is slightly different form the others, also points downwards. Speaking of indirect coherence, I must honestly say i hadnt factored that in.
Gamepad up and down is already poised for page up and down, that makes sense to me.
Also the black button, if the case is black, will blend in, So every button could do with a white outline border to highlight it, which would offset them against the black case. The white could have a black outline as it has a black symbol on it already.
Thoughts:
* and ^ move places on INTL keyboards in relation to US querty, so it makes sense to take those chars. + is also different but - is the same.
I dont know if we employ that button in its right place, but its not used as often in writing so that you need it there, arguably.
: could be substituted for / which means divider in some places, im not a fan. As with middle dot (.) could mean multiply.
Its not distinct enough, also, if someone wants to call the right button star, they can. Some people call hyphen (^) exp, thats ok, i suppose thats a natural button to use for leveling up or similar because of that.
Take reverse polish note of how sexy calculator design can be
The Omron 86R came out 10 years prior is also a brazen design in a similar feat.
It's probably better to avoid adding more arbitrary Latin letters for the two extra buttons, ABXY is already bad enough as it is.
Using + and - like comradekingu and others have suggested is not a bad idea. I would put brightness toggle elsewhere (see also: http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15275-unofficial-keyboard-layoutsmarch-14th-2014/page-20?p=325348#entry325348) because I want those keys to be primary keys since you have to use them repeatedly. The primary key for the extra action buttons would still be Insert and Delete, their Fn (or AltGr or whatever) key would be the + and - on the numeric keypad. That way they can be used like regular + and - for most applications, but we can also have the + and - as Fn keys in their original Pandora location, and distinguish between them if needed. If you want to you can use one pair of +/- buttons for whatever you want (e.g. software volume control) since the two pairs map to different keys.
How ironic. I suggested + and - (as well as other mathematical symbols) at the start of one of these threads - they were poo-poohed for the same reasons as Latin letters.
How ironic. I suggested + and - (as well as other mathematical symbols) at the start of one of these threads - they were poo-poohed for the same reasons as Latin letters.
Well I still think it's a bad idea to use Latin letters, for the same reasons as before. But if I can't convince enough people that Latin letters suck, then I can as well try to make the best of it. At least + and - are keys that also occur twice on normal keyboards (unlike the Latin letters), and we could even have those symbols only on the action buttons -- we can put other things on Fn+D and Fn+F.
Other mathematical symbols make less sense to me: * and ^ are shifted keys on the number row of standard QWERTY so it would make sense to keep them there, and √ is a less elegant symbol in my opinion than Σ or Π, which are also mathematical symbols. Using only mathematical operators as action button labels on the 4 main action buttons make the device look like a calculator and people will expect that they can use those keys to do calculations, not for Home/End/PgUp/PgDn.
If you really want to use mathematical symbols, then don't use those boring arithmetic operators. Use something slightly more interesting, like this:
How ironic. I suggested + and - (as well as other mathematical symbols) at the start of one of these threads - they were poo-poohed for the same reasons as Latin letters.
I still wouldn't recommend their use here for the same reasons, unless their primary function is actually assigned to keypad + and keypad -.
Mind you if you are going to follow that convention you may as well label the rest by their primary keyboard functions too. PgUp, PgDn, Home, End. (I'm beginning to think that's the only labelling system that actually makes any sense at all)
I've given up responding to suggested layouts though, since no-one seems interested in designing layouts that actually address the design issues raised, and frankly I don't see any point in changing the labels at all if the new set won't solve the issues that prompted the change in the first place.
How ironic. I suggested + and - (as well as other mathematical symbols) at the start of one of these threads - they were poo-poohed for the same reasons as Latin letters.
I still wouldn't recommend their use here for the same reasons, unless their primary function is actually assigned to keypad + and keypad -.
Mind you if you are going to follow that convention you may as well label the rest by their primary keyboard functions too. PgUp, PgDn, Home, End. (I'm beginning to think that's the only labelling system that actually makes any sense at all)
I've given up responding to suggested layouts though, since no-one seems interested in designing layouts that actually address the design issues raised, and frankly I don't see any point in changing the labels at all if the new set won't solve the issues that prompted the change in the first place.
I am trying to address all the issues in my most recent proposal (http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15736-action-button-labels/page-40?p=325349#entry325349). You can refer to the button using its shape (Circle, Square, Up Triangle, Down Triangle, Diamond, Pentagon) or using its relative position (East, West, North, South, NW, SW), which is emphasized by putting the arrow-like icons in those spots. They have icons for Home/End/PgUp/PgDn to make it somewhat more clear that that's their function. The + and - in my proposal are Fn-keys so they should probably get the appropriate color for that (blue?).
Yes, you can also refer to the buttons as A B X Y which could cause confusion, but at least you can now easily avoid the confusion. I could take away the Latin letters and use the shapes only, but that would bring a lot of objections from the people who want backwards compatibility.
You can use scaled-down versions of my proposed labels as guihints, which can be used both on the Pandora and on the Pyra.
I would prefer to have each button in a different color, but that is probably too expensive.
I am trying to address all the issues in my most recent proposal (http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15736-action-button-labels/page-40?p=325349#entry325349). You can refer to the button using its shape (Circle, Square, Up Triangle, Down Triangle, Diamond, Pentagon) or using its relative position (East, West, North, South, NW, SW), which is emphasized by putting the arrow-like icons in those spots. They have icons for Home/End/PgUp/PgDn to make it somewhat more clear that that's their function. The + and - in my proposal are Fn-keys so they should probably get the appropriate color for that (blue?).
Yes, you can also refer to the buttons as A B X Y which could cause confusion, but at least you can now easily avoid the confusion. I could take away the Latin letters and use the shapes only, but that would bring a lot of objections from the people who want backwards compatibility.
You can use scaled-down versions of my proposed labels as guihints, which can be used both on the Pandora and on the Pyra.
I would prefer to have each button in a different color, but that is probably too expensive.
The whole idea that prompted me to raise this issue in the first place was to simplify communication about the device (regardless of medium) by giving each button a single simple and unique name that refers to it. (The simplest way to do this would be to label each with it's keyboard function, but for now I'll accept the premise that they aren't acceptable names in the context of their use as Gaming Buttons.)
Your current approach is to give them multiple names, but that goes against the principle of clarity of communication that all my objections to ABXY are based on. Doing that only increases the potential for misunderstanding, as there is no longer a guaranteed common frame of reference.
The use of those icons to refer to the keyboard functions doesn't really work for me, either, as there is no existing basis for making that association between those icons and the keyboard keys you are using them as references for.
I also tend to doubt any of your combination designs would scale well to the size of the buttons.
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