Conclusion / synthesis of the keyboard poll results


Lets also not end up with a useless button to extend space because people think they are voting for a bar key, without knowing what that entails. And then ED stating it as a decision, when it isn't, pointing to said voite, people pointing to ED, people designing it in when they don't think it makes sense.

I miss ←↓→↑ and icelandic (runes), ED wants §, things that should be on the AltGr layer. Making the default artificially limited is no reason to impose limits.

Fn labels are ugly, blue looks less ugly because its less visual, a bonus to be had is that its also a laptop convention. Fn typing of symbols is a sin. Fn-typing of letters is a joke. Sabers choice of colouring looks a lot better than the others, i dont think people care for the pyra/fire connection.

[edit]

In light of this, i don't find it credible to assume people care for the pyra/fire connection, which is the counterargument, that i state on my own personal level, about what is naturally a consensus, because i have only found it stated, to my knowledge, as a esoteric lore-like connection.

I would like opinions and insight to be shared in the matter, and maintain no illusion of knowing.

[/edit]

What I do think is that if Colour+ something is a thing, the super cant also be that colour.

Is the super the coloured modifier, is it typed with Fn?

One Fn that does one thing, and another Fn that does another, is a variation over the theme Fn buttons that dont work half the time, employed to do something they shouldnt.

Symbols for backspace enter/return etc on the typewriter part, lettering on the rest. No both. < ^ v > | X is a nice and consistent paradigm for the 87-keys that fit.
 
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Fn labels are ugly, blue looks less ugly because its less visual, a bonus to be had is that its also a laptop convention.
Blue looks more ugly than red (see how opinions work), and is made more visible when it is backlit.  Putting a light behind it is not going to make it less visible, regardless of the color.  If that is the goal, which it isn't, they should be a very dark grey.

"why stick with convention when there is no harm in making a change?", because it seems stupid to me to do things "because that is how it is done" and for no other reason.
Sticking with something because it is conventional is worse than ED pointing at us about a decision, and us pointing back at him.  Pick a better reason.

Sabers choice of colouring looks a lot better than the others, i dont think people care for the pyra/fire connection.
I care.  In fact, I once asked for the backlight LEDs to be red.

What I do think is that if Colour+ something is a thing, the super cant also be that colour.
Sure it can.  If it might cause confusion Meta+Super can do the same thing as Super alone.  If we are that concerned about nannying users we should focus more on the power button instead (which is pointless since that will mostly be handled in software).
 
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I think red looks better too, but not for things that shouldn't be there. See richard sapper thinkpad design above.

Dark grey is fantastic, love it.

You, you quoted yourself... :)

Lots of thinking it does the same, creating confusion leading to things implemented in duplicated ways because people are confused, in turn making the whole UI inconsistent, is how the Gnome project designs things.

Isnt the keyboard leds rgb ones? In any event some of them are and you could red-light those. (?)

How does a power button get improved exactly?

Everything inconsistently custom looks like UI dialogs that are explicetly leet/cool because someone could.
 
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The keyboard backlight leds are not RGB, they are white.

The power button should get no other label than the power symbol imo. No extra labels/symbols for "suspend", "reboot", "logout", "hibernate" or whatever.

Orange-red as the color for the Fn labels works quite well. My current laptop has a backlit keyboard that looks like this:

YunbEy8.png
 
ck, I quoted myself to put emphasis on what I said before, and to use that as a response to what you said.  What I said after that was to add on.
 
Editor here.
Why 10 over 7? Not sure about the mixed colors. How would it look if you swapped the colors.


Oh, and I realIy don't like things on the d-pad altogether.



Well, the thing about the Dpad is it's there, but we aren't utilizing it for anything. The colors shown are for illustration purposes to show which Meta key works on what key/control.

As for 10 over 7, it depends on the insightfulness of the observer.  
 
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Am i the only one that gets extremely irritated when comradekingu arbitrarily fabricates 'collective preferance' i.e. "I don't think people care for the pyra/fire connection" and slips these into his arguments in an attempt to seruptitiosly brainwash the rest of us.


God help me, but it makes me livid!
 
Am i the only one that gets extremely irritated when comradekingu arbitrarily fabricates 'collective preferance' i.e. "I don't think people care for the pyra/fire connection" and slips these into his arguments in an attempt to seruptitiosly brainwash the rest of us.

God help me, but it makes me livid!
No, you aren't. I've called him out on it several times as well but he always brushes it off or ignores it and goes back to claiming his opinions are fact.I've just started droning him out.
 
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/me scratches his head in utter confusion...

The following is from the "Current keyboard layout" thread, Page 18. The Poll thread was closed on 20th...

Since we should all assume the layout has "left the building" a week ago, why are you all still here bickering about meaningless little details?-)

(Baah... I quoted wrong... anyways, the comment below Saber is from ED on 13th...)

Not much time left before the layout has to be submitted to the production company?
 
Well, the later we submit, the more delay we get. So we should try to have everything finished next Monday.
 

Edits: It seems cross quoting between threads was too difficult for me to do properly... and there are too many threads about this for a sane person to remember which was called which... :)
 
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Since we should all assume the layout has "left the building" a week ago, why are you all still here bickering about meaningless little details?-)
Don't worry, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that ED even cares about this thread. It's just here to entertain keyboard layout designers who can't let it go.
 
Since we should all assume the layout has "left the building" a week ago, why are you all still here bickering about meaningless little details?-)
Don't worry, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that ED even cares about this thread. It's just here to entertain keyboard layout designers who can't let it go.
Oh, I'm actually reading it :)

But not very deeply.
 
EEEK! *hides*

Well, the preferences I stated here are what I would like to see.  The recent render showed reddish (edit: or orange) Meta markings.  Some of the keys had symbols, and I think they look fine.  I don't need them, but I am still wondering if additional markings on gaming buttons depicting their keyboard functions might be helpful.
 
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Am i the only one that gets extremely irritated when comradekingu arbitrarily fabricates 'collective preferance' i.e. "I don't think people care for the pyra/fire connection" and slips these into his arguments in an attempt to seruptitiosly brainwash the rest of us.


God help me, but it makes me livid!
I don't see why you would get upset, if you want to focus solely on one statement, singeling it out makes it totally void. Who cares what I think, you do, and that provokes you..? It is as interesting to the discussion as you getting angry about it. Did you miss the I think so part?

Well now we have at least someone stating they like red/orange Fn-labels, atop what removes it from an esoteric argument, and a case of it in-the wild. Thats a whole lot more than nothing. If you looked at the argument I presented, without the newly presented information, the safe bet would be to assume people don't like it. I'm ok with being wrong. Me being wrong, provoked what evidence there was to the contrary. Fire Fn it is. Personally I dont like Fn labels, so its still a case of (slightly less) guesswork on my part as to what the community prefers. And how wb landed at his decision. Lets try to be rational about things.

To discuss the position of space, shared by the great majority of keyboard designers, to be preferable in the singlewide variety.

The poll asking for a space-bar, without further clarification, didn't have any explanation of what that entails.

It is easy to make that mistake, and before i looked into it, i sided more with dualwide space.

Deciding blindly on a functional layout matrix, and then putting labels on it, is error-prone and decidedly the wrong way around if you want to have all the information available to make decisions.

With the proposed layouts in this thread, its directly the difference between having a compose, and having only a meta-compose. With less typing-keys otherwise, you need a compose more. Easy upgrade.

With everyone pointing at eachother in the matter throughout, I asked ED what he thinks.

What made most sense to me, that he said, is that if you have a problem hitting the keys, you will be moreso able to hit space, which considering its frequency, will supposedly improve the overall accuracy. The argument is fair, but that is crutch-design. A keyboard should be made with preference for people who can use it, not for the ones that cant.

If you cant hit the keys, there is no helping that. The size of each individual key becomes the issue. Unless you are typing "                      "

There are a number of problems with the argument of bigger spacekey improving accuracy.

For the sake of efficiency, you will forever be aiming the leftmost part of the key, giving you only the extra space on the right to benefit. However this means the key depresses/actuates unevenly, and it feels wrong. So in the case of someone having a problem hitting the keys, now they have less feel for the thing too.

Learning that one key should depress differently, for no reason, from the others, doesn't help.

For everyone else, there still is the case of efficiency over feel, which for everyone means you loose efficiency by hitting the less central middle bit, or that you depress it unevenly, which may or may not cause it to wear out more quickly.

Given only the two thumbs, it gets worse quick, there are also efficiency lost in hitting a different key in sequence with space.

Considering comma space and period space it all it does, you lose efficiency there aswell. It also messes up efficiency by arbitrarily setting restrictions on where enter and shift can go.

For the people who care about looks, it is unsymmetrical. For the people who think you wont be able to find space, this is also a misnormer. I have tried it on countless people, and it is never a problem, for any level of proficiency. There are many devices in the wild to put credibility to this claim.

For the people who aren't English, or use advanced layouts, it is also crucially important. I like it because im used to it from the pandora, is a lesser issue here.

Think about what kind of users exist, and what you want to adapt them into doing.

At one point in time, there was a lot of mechanical typewriter typists. Loud and precise machines. The first electronical keyboards meant to replace them, and I have one, feature a speaker underneath that can amplify the sound of typing electronically, to make the adjustment more smooth. Because nobody would ever type on, -what did you say, im typing here TATAKTAKTATATA.

By todays standards, even without the electronical amplification, these keyboards are very loud, and it very soon stopped being a feature. Mobile keyboards haven't reached their final form yet, and if they don't improve, they might go extinct before that happens.

People having different sized hands, and being able to extend the pinkey-finger to the extremities on the keyboards from any position given by the rest of the fingers (doing the typing) is the reason the enter/return backspace and shift are longer keys on a desktop keyboard. Same goes with some mobile keyboards. However they are not on the pandora. One way in which it is better than its competition.

Big space/shift/enter looks more like a 10 finger ordeal, but it doesnt carry over the actual functionality.

What it does do, is deprive those keyboards of keys, and with anything mobile, thats not ideal.

When your fingers span across the desktop keyboard, your thumbs will always be positioned above the space bar, that is the reason for it to be a bar key, reaching it with both thumbs.

None of that translates to two thumbs. Here your position is given by each thumb, there are no extra fingers in the mix. (the only case where this is a concern, is if you want to use the two in conjunction, which should be streamlined in case of sequences, and not mandated in case of shift and altGr type things (they should be sticky, because that doesnt tie up everything))

That leaves us with the question of legacy familiarity over function.

Since I wanted to know what people prefer, I asked the question:

How it works vs how familiar it looks at first glance.
  1. bullet_star_rated.png
    Functions more like a 2thumb keyboard, looks less like a 10finger desktop keyboard? (27 votes [71.05%] - View)

  2. Looks more like a 10finger desktop keyboard, functions worse as a 2thumb keyboard? (5 votes [13.16%] - View)

  3. I dont know. (6 votes [15.79%] - View)

 
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Oh, I'm actually reading it :)

But not very deeply.
I'm impressed. Where do you find the time?

Any specific layout issues you are struggling with? Right now we have a nice offer of

  • Procedural bickering
  • Label capitalization and colouring
  • Random layouts vaguely related to the poll
:p
But in all seriousness, if there are specific things you want assistance with then please don't hold back, that way we can have a discussion with focus and perhaps it might even become constructive.
 
Suspend/power. This button will likely have a multi-function purpose.


When the Pyra is off, press it once to power the Pyra on.


When the Pyra is on, press it once to go into standby.


When the Pyra is on, hold Fn/Meta and press the power button to go into suspend to disk.


When the Pyra is on, hold the power button for 3+ seconds and the Pyra shuts down.


When the Pyra is locked up and otherwise non-responsive, a to be defined button combination will force it to reboot (this hasn't really been discussed yet, but will be needed).


I agree that the logo should be on the Super key - and it should be back lit to the alternate keyboard color.
Cool, but does Susend/Power need to be there? I think the Logo is enough.
I prefer "Power", if it needs to be there,but just like those Cap vs Lower case, not that big of a deal.


Alternative Keyboard color?


Also, does having a square for the delete button kind of cheap looking?
No - suspend/power does not need to be labeled on the printed version.  This was mostly for 'function' and not everything will get printed as you see it.

Alternative keyboard color refers to the Fn/Meta keyboard label colors.

If you're seeing a square box, then you do not have the unicode label set that includes the symbol in it.  It's actually a right pointing irregular pentagram with an X in the middle.  The exact opposite of the BackSpace button graphic.
 
Oh, I'm actually reading it :)


But not very deeply.
I'm impressed. Where do you find the time?


Any specific layout issues you are struggling with? Right now we have a nice offer of

  • Procedural bickering
  • Label capitalization and colouring
  • Random layouts vaguely related to the poll
:p

But in all seriousness, if there are specific things you want assistance with then please don't hold back, that way we can have a discussion with focus and perhaps it might even become constructive.
Keep the good vibes flowing for the ever popular layout #7 and all will be justly fulfilled.  ;)
 
Well, the thing about the Dpad is it's there, but we aren't utilizing it for anything. The colors shown are for illustration purposes to show which Meta key works on what key/control.

As for 10 over 7, it depends on the insightfulness of the observer.
I don't think every single key need to double as something. At least not anything else than as unlabeled custom keys. The PC labels... are becoming too apparent.

No - suspend/power does not need to be labeled on the printed version. This was mostly for 'function' and not everything will get printed as you see it.

Alternative keyboard color refers to the Fn/Meta keyboard label colors.

If you're seeing a square box, then you do not have the unicode label set that includes the symbol in it. It's actually a right pointing irregular pentagram with an X in the middle. The exact opposite of the BackSpace button graphic.
I know everything wouldn't be as labeled as in irl, but just making sure. Yeah, I figured that out. LolI see.
 
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ED has posted the almost finished layout on twitter:



One of the comments on twitter mentions that alt/start and ctrl/select are reversed compared to A/home etc (keyboard function on top vs on bottom).

A valid point in my opinion, I think the keyboard function should be on the bottom in all of these (like it was on the Pandora).

For those wanting to have a second shift on the keyboard. Would mapping shift to the user button work? It's a little bit out of the way, but it should still be reachable.

Since we do not have WiFi/Bluetooth toggle buttons. Do we need to standardize a bit on shortcuts for this? E.g. Super+w (WiFi), super+b (Bluetooth). Also standalone super for global pyra menu, and so forth...

<edit>I also liked the idea of having lid closed being mapped to the other super button (is the pyra button the left or the right super?)</edit>
 
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ED has posted the almost finished layout on twitter:




One of the comments on twitter mentions that alt/start and ctrl/select are reversed compared to A/home etc (keyboard function on top vs on bottom).


A valid point in my opinion, I think the keyboard function should be on the bottom in all of these (like it was on the Pandora).


For those wanting to have a second shift on the keyboard. Would mapping shift to the user button work? It's a little bit out of the way, but it should still be reachable.


Since we do not have WiFi/Bluetooth toggle buttons. Do we need to standardize a bit on shortcuts for this? E.g. Super+w (WiFi), super+b (Bluetooth). Also standalone super for global pyra menu, and so forth...
"Alt" and "Ctrl" could go to the bottom, yes, but I like it that they're in a bigger font, it emphasizes that the Pyra is not just a gaming device.

Mapping Usr1 to Shift would certainly be possible if you really want that third shift.

Another possible remap you could do: map the ' " to an extra Shift, and remap acute (´) to apostrophe/quote ('), Shift+Fn+M to double quote ("), and colon ( :) to Shift+semicolon (Fn+Shift+comma).

Default shortcuts for toggles is a good idea. Also the default mapping of Usr1 and Usr2 could be hardware toggles. Not sure which ones would be most useful though, perhaps Usr1 to bring up a hardware status/settings overlay/dialog, and Usr2 to toggle "Airplane mode"?
 
Not entirely sure about putting the hardware toggles on a user mappable button.

Is the idea of the Pyra overlay button on super still alive? We could easily add the hardware toggles in that overlay menu (together with kill-current-app, etc...)

If we hotkey each of the entries in such an overlay menu it would even provide some discoverability of those features.

E.g. the menu could be something like:

  • Back (default selection)
  • Kill Application
  • Task Manager
  • Enable WiFi (or Disable WiFi)
  • Enable Bluetooth (or Disable Bluetooth)
This menu could popup on a standalone super. When pressing super + K or super + T it would directly perform those tasks.
 
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