So I looked at the "wb intl" layouts.
1 and
2. My initial thoughts is that there are ◌'s on the keyboard, with a subsequent "why.jpeg"?.
Same reason ED dislikes that, I think it looks foreign.
They work in the US intl way. Now I never knew about the US intl way, and have since learnt about it, that's a hurdle
to overcome that alone warrants not printing ◌'s. Because not a lot of people know about it (is what i think)
More importantly with US dead diactrics they are R_alt or ctrl+alt, not meta. I would, knowing what i do know, expect ( to work too,
but it doesnt. So its is a halfway functional concept for me. The things that are covered I imagine could be made to fit on the meta+letters
which is preferable to the cumbersome nature of dead-key diacritics.
I see that is done, but it makes all users see a visual chaos. Optimizing things for half the audience, english people never had to see any of it.
So at the benefit of what each of the regions arent fully satisfied with, its ruining the visual nature not only for them, but also for the most important group.
Its a good system for when you dont have ^, and we dont. So it could be used. However scandinavian things like ø and å i would like to see dropped in favour of more useful things ↓← or something else.
Yes people speak those languages, but they are the scandinavians themselves. Not so much the others. If we combine it with a full layout, we dont need that, because those are then covered enough to warrant removing it IMO.
On a personal level, i deal with organized clutter quite badly. Instead of a 'downfall of the commons'/all regional letters visual by default for me I'm asking myself if i would instead want a clean A-Z only, where it is for case of argument impossible to type anything else. It is about that bad for me.
From a nerd point of view I think it may fail and it may work. For novices im convinced it has a huge detrimental effect on sales to clutter for all, as opposed to limiting to having only a suited target of english-speaking people to sell to.
Im not ignoring the argument. English works better, as a bonus you get German and Spanish, and all the scandinavian languages.
How exactly would you type German on your layout? How would you type the letter ß?
How would you type Spanish questions or exclamations? How would you type the symbols ¿¡ ?
When typing German, Spanish or Scandinavian languages in your layout, how do you type capital letters using only the keyboard? And how do you write editorial remarks [like this] or something like HTML code for a web site in your favorite language?
Your layout only really works for English and the Scandinavian languages, and only if you're willing to sacrifice the keyboard shift and use the shoulder shift only.
1 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and move shift. (some efficiency is lost)
2 Type ä ö ü in not-nomral positions and keep shift where it is.
3 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ^ (keyboardshift is lost)
4 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ß (keyboarshift is lost)
If you need ß i would suggest have the default layout have it at AltGr+s. Germans have ſ here which i dont think is imporant. If that turns out not to be the case, it can be implemented somewhere else.
Spanish only has ñ ḉ ^ so there is always a key left over for keyboardshift
shift+AltGr+1 for ¡
shift+AltGr+0 for ¿
Switching the primary and shift+ (and also AltGr+ and shift+altGr+ in the case of ^) for any of these buttons you can reinstate what was on them by pressing FN+ and FN+shift+
For germans [ ] and { } is already a chorded sequence. <> is similar to US/UK, but on the whole, everything is one level worse and non-standard.
Optionally, AltGr+ letters can be reconfigured, if the default doesnt already provide the option. Or a FN+letter hack can be employed. It wont be printed until you can get a sufficient userbase to agree that it makes sense for them, which is democratic, and a way to avoid downfall of the commons.
I have no problem agreeing that ridding the visual layout of ÆØÅ is good, so long as i dont have to see öäü etc. And since i think predominantly people will prefer to type the way they are used to, we will have to see from the people who use it what they think about alternative options.
Since the default or primary shipping layout is fully functional for english, I think that is ok as a working-base to figure out regional layouts from then on. And i think having that in mind makes for less extensive hacks. What i have described above is the minimum i can achieve for "getting it right" according to myself and the feedback ive been able to accumulate.
I think that p+2 and l+2 is a lot stronger argument for making a dedicated keymat than printed chorded regional letters are.
Also, the philosophy of your layout assumes that people are already sufficiently familiar with the keyboard layout of the particular language in order
to know where to find the extra keys just based on the position of the key -- that might seem like a trivial assumption, but in these times where standard physical keyboards are no longer typically the first text input method, it may quickly become an incorrect assumption.
Typewriters have worked the same way keyboards now do, dating back to the 1800s, its not going anywhere. Its the exact same on virtual keyboards that enjoy
the attention of a real userbase. And i think the pyra is for people who enjoy the tactility/feel, legacy/memory, and functionality of a real keyboard.
If virtual keyboards become anything, its not going to be a lesser variant of what they already are.
