Alternative keyboard variant for non-gamers, e.g. Emacs, Vim users, etc.

[zeth]

I have just discovered the Pandora device and community recently and I think it is a major achievement that a tiny team backed by a community of just five thousand or whatever has produced such an amazing device. Especially given how many other more prominent device projects have failed to come up with a production device.


Maybe I humbly suggest that for any future second device (or maybe for the first device too), you create a second optional keyboard configuration which might increase the prospective market.


I myself am not massively into playing classic games or homebrew games (I would secretly love to be but I have not the time and I enjoy programming as much). However, a small Ultra-Mobile Linux device with a very long battery life is priceless for developers and hardcore Linux fans on planes, trains etc. There are not many suitable things out there at the moment smaller than a netbook. iPads and phones and so on are pretty useless for me to read, write or tweak code on.


I personally don't really want a joystick, but would prefer instead more symbol and modifier keys in standard-ish places to make easier use of Emacs and Vim, etc. Apart from that, all I really need is for a console that can host a minimum of 82 characters (80 characters is a fairly standard code width, plus 2 for the borders), perhaps the Pandora 1 can already do that - I haven't bought one yet so I don't know, I am sure I will find out soon enough.


There may be some other easy configuration changes which increase the potential market, but developers on Linux would be an easy one to appeal to, given it already has a very capable Linux distribution on board that can easily run these developer tools.


I apologise if I have ignored something vital i.e. there is already such a thing for the current device. Indeed nothing else really needs to change apart from the second keyboard layout to be perfect for me personally.


BTW, it is often better to do things as an evolution rather than revolution due to the dreaded "second system effect". Since you have a working device, don't throw out what works. If you gently upgrade the specs now and again, richer users can update every year; while poorer users will not feel left out as the changes are mostly incremental. Also you will not need separate software packages for different systems, one OS and one set of packages will work on old and new devices, they will just work better on the new ones.


Sorry if I am repeating old ground or being boring, I am new here so I have not read everything important yet.

 

[mcobit]

Hi and welcome!


The gamingbuttons are mappable and are already used as keyboardkeys, when not gaming.


Look here for reference:


http://pandorawiki.org/Keyboard


The nubs can also be mapped to anything you want. Normally they are configured to move the mouse in addition to the touchscreen and the right nub is for left/right/double/middleclicking.

 

[DaMummy]

and production is already a small amount. cutting that in half would only make the pandora much more expensive. especially for something that 1/10 might prefer over what we have now. the small run of it can be a gift and a curse

 

[diligentcircle]

The nubs can also be mapped to anything you want.

Huh? I'm pretty sure the OS itself only gives you a few options for the nubs (joystick, mouse, mouse buttons, and mouse wheel). The only way I can think of to make the nubs keys is to set them to joystick mode and use qjoypad.

 

[mcobit]

The nubs can also be mapped to anything you want.

Huh? I'm pretty sure the OS itself only gives you a few options for the nubs (joystick, mouse, mouse buttons, and mouse wheel). The only way I can think of to make the nubs keys is to set them to joystick mode and use qjoypad.

But it is possible, isn't it?


If you can map mouseactions to it, why shouldn't you be able to map other stuff?

 

[diligentcircle]

But it is possible, isn't it?


If you can map mouseactions to it, why shouldn't you be able to map other stuff?

I suppose, but I don't know of any documentation describing how to map nubs to keys (or even custom assignments for mouse buttons). If you don't know how to do it, it might as well not be possible.

 

[_wb_]

My terminal is 88 chars wide, I'm using a slightly smaller than default font, but it's still readable enough.


The keyboard is quite OK as it is now for coding etc. I wrote >5000 lines of code on it. It will probably only improve since the P2 will use the ICP2 keyboard which has more keys. Your input on the default keyboard layout for that one is welcome by the way.