QUOTE
I quite like the N810 layout shown, as far as I looked, but Benjiro was talking about the OQO and UX. Specifically.
Yes, but what has an overpriced x86 brick todo with an ARM handheld? N810 fits the bill better and actually Pandora is supposed to be the upgrade from my N800(which has got no hardware keyboard at all, better none than an unusable taking up space).
I dunno offhand as the OQO hasn't REALLy crossed my radar. Let me go have a quick peek... well it might be x86 based (with pros and cons) but the keyboard looks betetr and it's a "similar" form factor, so I'd say it was relevant IF we assume there isn't going to be a nationalised version of the key layout (I've seen people assume the N800's don't have a German layout either, and that proves to be incorrect). the point being, I assume, that there is a lot more to the final device - be it an OQO or an N810 or a
andora1: than the Umlaut, and that people buying the OQO (purely as an example of a similar product, not necessarily the CLOSEST product) will find it has shortcomings which are overridden by its benefits. So to, the theory goes, with the Pandora - it's keyboard limitations (which are not insignificant) may be small compared to the overall benefits it offers.
Personally I suspect that the N810 or indeed the OQO are better designed for use with their slide-out keyboard while the Pandora is better designed when not in use, with the clamshell protecting the screen better. Though I expect mine will live in a case much like my F-200 does when not in use, I COULD be wrong and find it ends up being just "in a random pocket" like my MP3 player currently is.
'mali' said:
QUOTE
How many Umlauts do you see in the actual posts, though?{snip}
You are wrong here,
No, no - don't sugar coat it for me, tell me exactly what you think... {chuckle}. My sense of humour will be the death of me...
'mali' said:
but how can I explain since you don't know/practise German? Why should there be any umlaut on an English board where people write in English :lol: The missing of umlauts here doesn't prove that they don't exist elsewhere
Edit:
Just go on www.openpandora.de and check for some umlaut practise there
Explaining that which we are unfamiliar with is often daunting. Will the other person understand? Will they even LISTEN? Too often IMHO, especially on the Internet where we are all largely faceless, the wrong answers come back. But I went and had a look...
Umlauts, if my brief peek is anything to go by, come along like buses. There are none for ages (past words, sentences, paragraphs - whole posts with no Umlauts) and then threee come along at once. Possibly all in one word! they travel around in sentences like gangs, made more confident by associating with their peers - but where they are rare they are VERY rare, hiding like a gang member without his gang.
I can only look in from the outside - obviously, as that's where I am in relation to the German language - but I try, a little. I am not unsympathetic. So if you're insistent on using FACTS to ruin a perfectly good "solution" (joke) then the least I can do is spend 5 minute trying to consider the issue rather than just blurting out "it's fine for me!" or some such.
What, I wondered, is the frequency of Umlauts in German as my peek on the board seemed inconclusive (from my look on the board I would say that the Umlaut deserves less attention than the : but probably more than the `, for example, which is bizzarrely on the current keymat WIP). Is there a quick and easy way to gauge HOW important it is?
I found the combinations:
ae (for ä)
oe (for ö)
ue (for ü)
seem to be fairly common substitutions for when umlauts are not available. So I wondered if the solution was/could easily be considered a software rather than hardware one, and whether just saying "type ae and your application should be capable of converting to ä) was a suitable solution (if put less bluntly and more thoughtfully). I am not wholly convinced, because ae and oe seem to appear in their own right about 1% of the time in German language - so you would have to do something like aeESC (if there was an ESC character) to get the two letter ae combination. Worse still, ue appears around 2% of the time without intending to be an umlaut-replacement scheme. Not a complete write-off perhaps (and only 3 key presses to get 2 characters) but it still seems a little, hmmm, well it could perhaps be better.
elsewher eI have read that using a quotation mark (") as a suffic has been used to let software know that a letter should have an umlaut, but I have not done any research into how often the quotation mark would follow voewls in natural use so I do not know if such an approach, in software, would be practical.
There are keys I am missing from the keyboard. I would ideally like a "Break" that I can press, Shift-Press and Control-Press (we needn't IMHO go into the cursor key issue tas that is probably solvable well enough with the ABXY buttons). Ideally. But there really isn't room for them on the tiny
andora1: keyboard, and they only affect a single (if major) use of the machine for me, so I wonder how else we could strive to find a SOLUTION to the umlaut "issue". Because I agree that if I typed some of the umlaut-gang-infested posts I read today, I would probably be getting irked if each umlaut required 4 keypresses.
Location lcoation location - is there any way to define the problem that reorients the problem to somewhere other than the keymat or, frankly, the
andora1: lack of keys? Because the small number of keys is definately a problem here IMHO. If the keyboard and game controls are infinitely configurable (I have NOT seen this stated clearly enough for me) could you not simply reprogram one or more of the keys? That is one approach that seems to have been commonly given and avoids any issue of compatability (because to do so would be entirely at the users choice). Or is there a way to direct the problem at the applications where you would need an Umlaut? For example, I doubt it is needed much when playing Quake III or Pacman - so where would you need the Umlaut, and is it possible that those applications will have an alternative solution (like auto-converting ae (or ideally something more obscure and less likely to be needed in actual use) to ä)?
Offhand I cannot see how normal key sequencing could be used at driver level (halfway between hardware and application level) as it would introduce a delay/confusion/complication while the driver decides whehter to pass a or ä (etc.) to the application, but is there somewhere/some way to offload the issue from the keymat?
Basically what I'm trying to do is something I see all too little of on the Internet, and that is jointly ponder, explore, chat even - rather than just put forth my own opinion. Is there a way to tilt our heads sideways "just so" in order to see the problem in a different light - probably NOT one I have come up with (as I do not have the issue so see it less clearly) in order to find a happy solution?
'WizardStan' said:
ED has said that the L and R keys are not remappable because they are for the mouse buttons. Craigix has already somewhat reconfirmed this, at least that they're mouse buttons. As I posted in another thread, if it becomes necessary, I'll do the driver rewrite myself if it is impossible to remap the L and R buttons. It just makes more sense to me for the game pad buttons to act as mouse buttons: use the left analogue stick as the mouse and the buttons on the right as the buttons. I'm hoping I won't have to, but we shall see.
Craig SEEMS to be saying that the L and R buttons Are remappable in his next post:
'craigix' said:
They can be remapped if you want to.
though since he doesn't state outright what "They" are and does not quote who/what he is replying to, the response is hopelessly vague IMHO. He PROBABLY means the L and R buttons, but in a court of law (should we collectively take OP to court when it proves that ED is correct and Craig was not) not one word of it would hold up. We have a phrase - "you could drive a bus through that statement". I'm not sure EXACTLY what that means or what it derrives from, but I beleive you could drive a small nation's entire armed forces through Craig's statement
'WizardStan' said:
(naw)mcx said:
Not sure if some one has said this, but could some one not program a onscreen keyboard that only shows the keys needed in a big size, so you can just thumb them when needed?
I also posted in one of the other argumentswell thought out debates that I considered doing that, too, if necessary.
LOL! Love the brief bit of humour. Personally I like the idea of an onscreen keyboard. Everyone else seems to have one
Ta
