Blog Update 2/15/09

[(naw)mcx]

Is that a penis on the right side?

That's an awful hand. Unless you type with your penis.

 

[PoisonedV]

Is that a penis on the right side?

That's an awful hand. Unless you type with your penis.

Wow, I thought I was the only one!

 

[MDave]

Thanks for listening and thinking Monk
ED's reply put me back in the right mood, he is a man of his word
If there is a discussion about the German layout needed, we should start it on the German board(the version on ED's render already looked good to me with only little modification needed, two keys for an umlaut is the best we can get on the limited number of keys).
As I said a few days ago, I'm going to use Pandora also as a device for work, so typing mails, bills whatever doesn't allow me to use ae, oe, ss whatever when in touch with customers, so a functional keyboard is a must and an onscreen keyboard might be awkward to use on a clamshell, but that has to be seen in real life.

A custom layout will come and so this case is closed for me

Wouldn't a spell checker auto-fix ae, oe, ss whatever for you anyway, which is what you should have turned on to be using for any serious work? :lol: And would be even faster to type that way then using a button combination for your precious umlauts?

 

[emcp]

damn, i havnt read through the whole thread

however i like this layout alot more
from just a quick look, i dont know about shell commands etc

the only thing thats annoying me is the ctrl, bit of a strech is terms of windows ctrl+c, to copy etc

however its easily remapped, same for games
the main thing is not needing to remap anything for text input etc, keep
, a ,
y a y
/ a /

etc, so yeah +1 for this layout and font btw

 

[mali]

Wouldn't a spell checker auto-fix ae, oe, ss whatever for you anyway, which is what you should have turned on to be using for any serious work? :lol: And would be even faster to type that way then using a button combination for your precious umlauts?

But who is going to code that spell checker?(BTW I don't use those things, I usually use my brain for that stuff). Typing [a][e] is faster than typing [Fn][insert random key], how so?

 

[Lingman]

My suggestion:

pure white keypad, and ship a black sharpie in the fedex box with the unit.

Dan.

 

[Bramrash]

I'm pretty sure it is a penis, (naw)mcx's pictures are great. I'm a big fan of his work.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=46672

 

[MDave]

Wouldn't a spell checker auto-fix ae, oe, ss whatever for you anyway, which is what you should have turned on to be using for any serious work? :lol: And would be even faster to type that way then using a button combination for your precious umlauts?

But who is going to code that spell checker?(BTW I don't use those things, I usually use my brain for that stuff). Typing [a][e] is faster than typing [Fn][insert random key], how so?

Your making an excuse NOT to use spell checking now? Please

I'm sure the leading open source office applications on linux support spell checking, check the hellolo video True, I forgot you still have to push 2 keys . You could type typos (or partially incomplete words) on purpose (or not ) and then let it correct for you later if speed is a priority.

If you want to do SERIOUS typing, you should use an external portable usb or bluetooth keyboard. Faster and has all the things you want. Your not going to be doing serious work standing up, are you?

EDIT: Damn forum bugs!

 

[RavenX]

My only input on this subject is that I really think that the number keys should have all of their normal shifted symbol. Shift-2 should always be "@" and Shift-3 should always be "#".

If they were moved because it is too hard to press Shift-2 with the left hand, seems like you could do it with Pressing Shift with your left thumb and "2" with your index finger, or of course stretching with your other thumb.

If they have to be moved to the QWERTY row then at least keep them all together:
CODE
Q W E R T
Esc ! @ # $

 

[puppydee]

Layout looks great. Still seems like we have a loooong way to go till the Pandora is finished tho The blog say's about 7 weeks! I know it's an estimate but I think there's atleast 3-6 months left on this project... I hope I'm wrong

 

[Tobs]

Just a quick thought - will the keyboard mappings be quick to change?
I`m just thinking if you`re writing in English and want to switch to another language - say you`re in a German and an English IRC you`re likely to need different keys.
If it's quick to swap, you`d just need an English keyset and a German one, and not worrying about getting umlauts in your scones.

Clarification - I don`t mean swapping the physical keyboard, I mean pressing a few buttons to change the keyboard mappings to German then back to English.

Sorry if I missed anything anyone else has already said; I did my best to read through the last few pages, but Monk has some *really* long posts ^^

Tobs

 

[Username]

Just a quick thought - will the keyboard mappings be quick to change?
I`m just thinking if you`re writing in English and want to switch to another language - say you`re in a German and an English IRC you`re likely to need different keys.
If it's quick to swap, you`d just need an English keyset and a German one, and not worrying about getting umlauts in your scones.

Clarification - I don`t mean swapping the physical keyboard, I mean pressing a few buttons to change the keyboard mappings to German then back to English.

Sorry if I missed anything anyone else has already said; I did my best to read through the last few pages, but Monk has some *really* long posts ^^

Tobs

I know Ubuntu has a quick keyboard layout switcher, I think we will have something similar.

 

[mali]

Your making an excuse NOT to use spell checking now? Please
I'm not interested in spell checking in any form. I don't need it and even the word-completion function in Maemo annoys me. Why should I think about spell checking when I talk about a keyboard layout? Also I think that such a spell checker would have to be fairly complex. Not every ss is an ß and there are ae, oe, ue combinations that are ment that way and mustn't be replaced with an umlaut. My orthography is good enough so if you didn't mention it here, I wouldn't have thought about wasting resources with it.

QUOTE
If you want to do SERIOUS typing, you should use an external portable usb or bluetooth keyboard. Faster and has all the things you want. Your not going to be doing serious work standing up, are you?
Well then what do I need Pandora for :lol: I've got my full sized notebook that includes a keyboard. In situations when I'm not sitting at my desk I just like to use Pandora for some smaller work-related things. Why should I accept a crappy layout or workarounds when I can have a good and usable layout?
TBH it's moot to discuss this further, because a German keymat will come and everything is fine
Ok, if there is demand for more discussion I'm fine with that also, keep it coming

 

[(naw)mcx]

Another idea! (I miss photoshop )

 

[Trip]

The keyboard font looks great. Nice and clear

The layouts good but I would move all the currency signs up to the top F row and replace them with the curly and straight brackets. The brackets will get used a lot more by developers etc. The only time you'll use the currency signs that much will be if you do a lot of accounting and spreadsheets etc. IMO. Most web sites only need you to enter the numbers when buying goods anyway.

I'd also do what was suggested on the other thread for the F keys and put a little blue F before the number (F1 for the F10 key), instead of having the number and the F number on the key. The keys are longer than most of the others and this would balance them out more to look at and make them easier to read.

Definitely getting there though

 

[mzeo77]

I think using compose button is a bad idea, not every one like to be able to type every character. I would rather see the €, £ and the strange Y to left be blank. Or perhaps something like misc1, misc2 misc3 or m1, m2, m3. People can still buy custom mats for their mapping if they like, but fewer will have to.

I would also ditch the networking button. Getting the connection up an running and loading a web page (or whatever you would use the wifi for) would probably take way longer time than typing "network on" or selecting an "toggle network" icon on screen. It would be way more useful for something that is done more often and does not hava a build in latency anyway.

That way everyone gets their favourite character without having to press four buttons to type it. They can be assigned to ¨, ^ and ´ for composing umlats and whatnot (meaning three presses instead of four), or they can be assigned to å, ä and ö if you happen to live in sweden.

I think it is better to leave a few buttons to be assigned by the user instead of trying to cover everything.

These are the design dessisions I would like the designers to think of:

1) Easy shellscripting/coding, as the pandora is linux based I believe I'm going to use the shell quite a bit for configuring the device and as a quick ssh terminal.

2) Easily chatting in my own language. Which for me is swedish so I need å, ä, ö. But I understand if people do not want them on their keyboard, just as i done want ü or â or something like that.

 

[CCmachined]

please, why the American layout? the pandora devs are UK and European as is the majority of the userbase (correct me if i'm wrong?). 123456789 are !"£$%^&*(, @ is two keys right of L on UK/Europe keyboards. stick it on a key?

more importantly though, why do we keep seeing Shift on the right in the layouts? who uses their right shift key? Fn is on the left on nearly every laptop I've seen also, swap Fn and Shift, like they are on normal keyboards? Shift is underneath Enter anyway . Fn above <>/,. is fine.

 

[Bramrash]

Another idea! (I miss photoshop )

I'd prefer to have penis on the keyboard itself, maybe replacing a less used key, such as "t".


In all seriousness though, there are plenty of options for mapping keys and buttons to anything...

I think the layout is fine, aside from the lack of a penis key.

 

[mali]

Shouldn't it be pönis or something :lol:

 

[peca]

Please, why the American layout?

Because it is pretty standard.

The pandora devs are UK...

Right.

... and European as is the majority of the userbase (correct me if i'm wrong?).

I don't sure but I guess that majority is "worldwide" :-/

123456789 are !"£$%^&*(, @ is two keys right of L on UK/Europe keyboards.

On UK maybe but not at all Europe keyboards.

More importantly though, why do we keep seeing Shift on the right in the layouts? who uses their right shift key?

On big keyboard everybody uses both shifts as it is usual for typing by all 10 fingers.

Fn is on the left on nearly every laptop I've seen also,...

Yes, but it is used for a few functions typically used for HW control (contrast, volume,...). On Pandora is Fn used as "symbol shift" for accessing symbols.

... swap Fn and Shift, like they are on normal keyboards? Shift is underneath Enter anyway. Fn above <>/,. is fine.

I guess that shift on left and Fn on right is better - IMHO.

Oh, I forgot. I have !@#$%^&*() on my 1234567890 keys. Symbols are typed by AltGr and numbers by shift because simple press do +ěščřžýáíé