Current Keyboard Layout


Is it really necessary to have "Pause" in such a prominent position? (I talk about the layouts where its left of the USR1 key)

I have never even used that key and my lenovo laptop doesn't even have it. The german wikipedia article says it is more or less a relic and not really used anymore. Wouldn't it make more sense to have Esc there or something?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The last proposed designs from ED, _wb_, ible and grench look fine, except there is no possibility to quickly alter the states of the wireless connections, one button should suffice for this (either by just toggeling through all combinations from "all off" to "all on" or the more clever version Grench proposed).
 If you want a dedicated button for that, you can let USR1 or USR2 do that. I personally don't want a quick wifi toggle. My laptop has one, and all I 'use' it for is... accidental disconnects.

On a serious note : as a Froggy myself, I think we can live with only dead keys. What we need as dead keys for common French is : " ´ ", " ` ", " ¸ ", " ¨ " and " ^ ".

Please note that AZERTY is not a good indicator for French language as it is completely flawed. As a Windows user, I have to thank Microsoft for at least one thing : the Alt+Unicode.

This is the only way I know of to get Ç and É on this layout, because we can't just shift the letter as it's getting us the numbers. And we only get " ` ", " ¨ " and " ^ " as dead letters (the two latter ones being less commonly used).

It's even more worrying as some people actually believe that because of this fact, capital letters in typed French shouldn't be accentuated.

So don't worry about giving us dedicated letters, just give us dead diacritics and we'll do fine, as we've been through way worse. ;)
 If you thank Microsoft for Alt+number codes, then you should certainly thank *nix for the Compose key, which is much easier (Compose , C for Ç for example).

Layout I'm referring to: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/6cba5957453accdc87e90713d2aa5f35

Let's discuss dead diacritics. It is a good mechanism, since it is more efficient than Compose sequences (two thumb presses instead of three). It is less efficient than a direct precomposed character though (one thumb press).

Acute ´

For French you don't really need dead acute, just éÉ suffices (and by having é on Fn+Q, obviously that implies that Shift+Fn+Q does É). It is good to have this as a special key too, because é is very common in French. Also in several other languages and in many loan words like "café" it is used. So having a dedicated éÉ is useful. Still, there is also a dead acute on Fn+R, because it is essential for a.o. Spanish, which puts acutes on all vowels. There are also Eastern European languages that put acutes on consonants, e.g. the Polish ć ń ś ź.

Grave `

For French you need à and è commonly, and ù in the word "où" (where), to distinguish it from the word "ou" (or). In most other languages (notable exception: Italian), à and è are also the most commonly used ones. I suggest to not have an explicitly labeled dead grave and to have Fn+B produce a backtick (`) immediately. However, if you need other graves than à and è, you could let Fn+B be dead grave (so you need to type Fn+B followed by space to get a backtick symbol). For Italians that makes sense. If you only rarely need other graves (e.g. French, which needs ù every now and then for the word "où"), then Compose is probably good enough. Also, Fn+Shift+B could be a dead grave by default, for those 'in the know'.

Diaeresis / Umlaut ¨

For German you need äöü. The ä and ö are also used in Swedish and Finnish. They are pretty common letters (especially in the Scandinavian languages), so having them available directly (in one thumb press) is practical. Other languages (e.g. French, Dutch) also need ë and ï, though typically not frequently. The Compose method (e.g. Compose " e for ë) is good enough. Also, Fn+" (so Fn+Shift+') could be mapped to dead umlaut by default, for those 'in the know'.

Circumflex ˆ

Quite important for French and several other languages. Fn+T is a dead circumflex.

Cedilla ¸

Mostly needed for the French and Portuguese çÇ. In Turkish you also need şŞ, and the Eastern European ogonek ąĄęĘ could also be considered as a sort of dead diacritic. However, I think  it suffices to have just the çÇ.

Tilde ~

Spanish needs ñÑ, Portuguese needs ãÃõÕ. I suggest to let Shift+~ be a dead tilde by default (Fn+Shift+H), for those 'in the know'. Those who frequently need tildes (Iberians and Latin Americans) can either let ~ be dead by default, or directly map Fn+N to ñÑ (for Spanish) or remap öä to õã (for Portuguese).

Caron ˇ

This one is heavily used in Eastern European languages, mostly for čČ šŠ žŽ. I suggest to let Shift+Fn+C and Fn+< (Shift+Fn+,) map to dead caron, for those 'in the know'. The others can use the standard Compose sequences: Compose C [letter] and Compose < [letter].

Stroke /

Mostly used in the Danish/Norwegian ø Ø and the Polish ł Ł (but also for đ Đ and ħ Ħ). Those who need it, will probably want to map the letters they need as precomposed direct letters somewhere. I propose to let Shift+/ (so Fn+Shift+.) be dead stroke, for those 'in the know'.

Overdot

Mostly used in Eastern European languages, e.g. Polish żŻ and Lithuanian ėĖ. Also dotless i (ıİ) is often grouped with this. I don't think a dead diacritic is useful here. Compose will have to do. Those who need it, will probably want to map the letters as precomposed direct letters (e.g. using the AltGr layer, which is still completely available).

Macron ¯

Mostly used in Eastern European languages (in particular, Baltic languages) and in transcriptions of non-Latin languages. The Compose method (Compose - [letter]) will have to do, especially since dash (-) is a primary key so it's a relatively easy Compose sequence.

Ring °

Only needed for the Scandinavian åÅ and the Czech ůŮ. Does not really make sense to make a dead diacritic for this. We could make Shift+° (so Fn+Shift+K) a dead ring.

Double acute (Hungarumlaut) ˝

Only needed for the Hungarian őŐ űŰ. Hungarians also need öÖ üÜ, so remapping those is not an option for them. I propose to let the dead acute on Fn+R turn öü into őű.

Breve ˘

Mostly needed for the Turkish ğĞ and the Romanian ăĂ. Not useful to have as a dead diacritic. Turkish and Romanian will have to do specific remappings anyway (e.g. on the AltGr layer).
So I think we have it all covered in terms of dead diacritics.
You detailed which keys need to be activated to trigger the symbol portion of the dead diacritic, but I do not see anywhere in that post of HOW you intend to trigger this.

Using ~ as an example for ñÑ.

The current layouts have ~ on the Fn layer.

We are not allowed to use Fn+Shift+key.

So, if Fn+Shift+~(root) is not available, how do you plan to differentiate ~ symbol from ~ dead key?
 
How about Ñ/ñ? Is this done via a dead "~"+"n"? If there are dead keys anyway, why not treat the french accents and german umlauts the same way with "'", "`", "^", and """? Or can we get a dedicated "ñ" and remove, for example, "§", for which the only use I would know of is writing german legalese? The access to different languages (at least the one with latin characters) should be consistent, which also makes the use more intuitive since every time you are looking for an accented letter you know you can just press the most similar symbol to the accent + the letter.
There are no dead keys on this style of layout without first activating AltGr. You COULD use compose ~ N to get Ñ though. The layouts with explicit and easy diacritics were deemed too complicated for general consumption.
There are: acute and circumflex would be available as dead keys. Those are needed in several languages, a.o. French and Spanish. Umlaut and grave are available as precomposed äöü and àè, which is enough for German and French; they could be made available as unlabeled dead keys on Shift+" and Shift+` to easily form the remaining umlauts and graves: ëïÿ and ìòùỳ.


Same with ~: Shift+~ could be dead tilde by default, useful for the Spanish ñ and the Portuguese ãõ.
Possible, yes. However, it has been deemed by ED that there shall not be any keyboard use on the Fn+Shift layer. Changing that rule would be critical to allowing the diacritics to work as you described above.
Please see my previous post, just a few above yours, and tell me what you think about the proposed layout! I'm honestly looking for opinions, since it is based on the latest ED, has no dead keys, but you can still "kill" the necessary keys for exotic diacritics such as ñ or ë or whatever with the compose key, which unless I am completely wrong is its only function.
 
The position of Ctrl was me, the colour-coding wasn't. However its success is due to having enough keys, that is the primary concern. To the right of P and two letters to the right of L are keys just as you would find them on a real keyboard.

TOHKBD isnt as efficient as a two-thumb keyboard, they went with the familiarity of a 105key board. And that was a known choice, as was the colouring.

When you off-center space, going for the 105key familiarity is costly, its much more ideal to use that to go for something that is more efficient as a two-thumb keyboard.

The difference is something that pretends to be 105key and fails, equal in terms of acceptance (try it) and sub-par in terms of functionality.

(I updated my post above to bring some weight to the argument)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You can do Fn+Shift+Key combinations, I just don't want to print them somewhere, as it will get too complicated.
Grench had a layout that used Fn+Shift+Key and only had 3 characters per key. It seemed pretty clean to me.
 
@Neelix If typing QWERTY on mobile keyboards and real keyboards are such different skills, why is it that removing keys for international languages is justifiable?
As I said, the QWERTY layout is used because it is a familiar base layout. But the base QWERTY layout has no included international letters to remove. Various different international variations of it add them in different locations, and obviously the users of those variations would expect them in in the locations those variations use, but in truth the only letters that every QWERTY keyboard has in common are the 26 Latin letters used in Modern English. Any international letters beyond those are additional to the layout, with no fixed placement between layouts.

Almost all of the proposed Pyra layouts has had at the very least the support for  German and some French  characters, with the ability to compose just about anything else.  Nothing was removed,  only shuffled around to make the best use of the available space, but with differing views on exactly which additional international characters should be included because we clearly can not include them all due to lack of space.

-Neelix
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The last proposed designs from ED, _wb_, ible and grench look fine, except there is no possibility to quickly alter the states of the wireless connections, one button should suffice for this (either by just toggeling through all combinations from "all off" to "all on" or the more clever version Grench proposed).
 The 'More clever version' you're referring to - was that the idea of having 4 controls per button for something like:

Normal:  WiFi toggle

Shifted:  Bluetooth toggle

Fn:  3G/4G toggle

Fn+Shift:  USB toggle

(Which one should be on which combination could be a subject for discussion IFF ED decides he wants something like this.)

That is currently forbidden as we are not allowed to use Fn+Shift+key combinations.
Yes, I was planning to have the USR-Buttons setup to something like this per default.

You can do Fn+Shift+Key combinations, I just don't want to print them somewhere, as it will get too complicated.

However, you can still put hotkeys wherever you want :)
OK - that is an important distinction. That means _wb_'s method of diacritics would be possible. It does add a rule, though, in that Fn and Shift must be next to each other such that they can be chorded. This is the case in most of the layouts presented. The Pandora did not follow this convention.

So - can we do brightness on a single button?

Normal: Screen backlight up

Shift: Screen backlight down

Fn: Keyboard backlight up

Fn+Shift: Keyboard backlight down

That would save room to enable a key to be hardware toggles.

Normal: WiFi

Shift: Bluetooth

Fn: 3G/4G

Fn+Shift: USB

And we would still have room for a menu key:

Normal: Linux equivalent of the 'Start menu': https://packages.debian.org/squeeze/gnome-main-menu

Shift: Hardware Control Menu

Fn: USR1

Fn+Shift: USR2

That would leave room for an actual Esc key:

Normal: Esc

Fn: Pause/Break

Yes, that is pretty high density of functions per key, but it would be very functional as well.
 
You can do Fn+Shift+Key combinations, I just don't want to print them somewhere, as it will get too complicated.
Grench had a layout that used Fn+Shift+Key and only had 3 characters per key. It seemed pretty clean to me.
That was this one:http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/ee8d3bc8b446f99c027105d3810f8d07

Although this one was actually my favorite from that series:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/b76ffdc065642c07243bad385b4a06a8

Linked here for documentation and example only. If we can learn anything useful from that exercise, that would be great.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You can do Fn+Shift+Key combinations, I just don't want to print them somewhere, as it will get too complicated.
Grench had a layout that used Fn+Shift+Key and only had 3 characters per key. It seemed pretty clean to me.
No, it's not. You'd have two symbols on one key - how should a standard user know which combination to press to achieve that symbol (WITHOUT reading instructions, as I found out that a lot of users don't actually do that).


If there is on colored modifier key and colored symbols, everyone knows what to do.


If there are two colored symbols on one key, how should anyone guess that you need to press an additional Shift to trigger them?


That's totally uncommon, and I've never seen that before.
 
Not much time left before the layout has to be submitted to the production company?
 
You can do Fn+Shift+Key combinations, I just don't want to print them somewhere, as it will get too complicated.


However, you can still put hotkeys wherever you want :)
OK - that is an important distinction. That means _wb_'s method of diacritics would be possible. It does add a rule, though, in that Fn and Shift must be next to each other such that they can be chorded. This is the case in most of the layouts presented. The Pandora did not follow this convention.
Yes, I'm fine with that. Even if people don't know about that possibility, it is not an essential function to use the keyboard.


And if someone reads the instructions manual, he can use that additional function (and it's easy to remember, since it's the same symbol just as dead key.

So - can we do brightness on a single button?


Normal: Screen backlight up


Shift: Screen backlight down


Fn: Keyboard backlight up


Fn+Shift: Keyboard backlight down
That's an essential function that everyone should understand without reading instructions, so we should not 'hide' it behind an Fn+Shift combination.
 
That's an essential function that everyone should understand without reading instructions, so we should not 'hide' it behind an Fn+Shift combination.
If the brightness would cycle back to off after going to max, then those who wouldn't know about Shift for decreasing brightness would still be able to use it completely. Knowing about Shift would just enhance it...
 
You can do Fn+Shift+Key combinations, I just don't want to print them somewhere, as it will get too complicated.
Grench had a layout that used Fn+Shift+Key and only had 3 characters per key. It seemed pretty clean to me.
No, it's not. You'd have two symbols on one key - how should a standard user know which combination to press to achieve that symbol (WITHOUT reading instructions, as I found out that a lot of users don't actually do that).

If there is on colored modifier key and colored symbols, everyone knows what to do.

If there are two colored symbols on one key, how should anyone guess that you need to press an additional Shift to trigger them?

That's totally uncommon, and I've never seen that before.
Actually, it is quite common and I will bet you have seen it before and didn't think twice about it.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_US-International.svg

Notice the symbols on the 1 key and the 4 key and the = key and the \ key.

Two symbols in white. The one on top is the shifted version.

Two symbols in alternate (blue). The one on top is the shifted version.

It is an entirely consistent, entirely understandable, internationally used convention.

For more examples, just browse down the list of international keyboards here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key

Having two symbols in Orange (or whatever color) on one key is pretty obvious.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/b76ffdc065642c07243bad385b4a06a8

The upper/right symbol in the alternate color (Orange) is the shifted version.

The symbols in the example were made more horizontal than vertical because at the time that layout was created the announced key cap size was very short but wide. By having characters appear more horizontal and 'not stacked', the characters themselves could be larger/clearer. Now that we have larger key caps, ideas based on this example COULD have the symbols stacked in a 2x2 grid IF we needed 4 on any keys. In my example, only two keys actually have 4 symbol functions printed.

There are examples of this being done in the wild on standard AltGr keyboards. It isn't hard to grasp.

Again, not re-submitting for consideration, but rather providing examples for us to learn from if there is anything there to learn. It was a lot of work designing those - but it was fun too.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
That's an essential function that everyone should understand without reading instructions, so we should not 'hide' it behind an Fn+Shift combination.
If the brightness would cycle back to off after going to max, then those who wouldn't know about Shift for decreasing brightness would still be able to use it completely. Knowing about Shift would just enhance it...
The more of these enhancements the better. Totally see this fitting into ED's current layout design.  ;)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
That's an essential function that everyone should understand without reading instructions, so we should not 'hide' it behind an Fn+Shift combination.
 If the brightness would cycle back to off after going to max, then those who wouldn't know about Shift for decreasing brightness would still be able to use it completely. Knowing about Shift would just enhance it...
And for that setup we don't need 100 levels of brightness. Personally, I would function quite fine with 5 or maybe 6.

Off

Minimum back light on.

33%

66%

90%

Max

Is 5 too few? Maybe. However, 10 is IMHO too many. Maybe 6 is about right? That would still be manageable with it cycling over the top to off.

That's an essential function that everyone should understand without reading instructions, so we should not 'hide' it behind an Fn+Shift combination.
 If the brightness would cycle back to off after going to max, then those who wouldn't know about Shift for decreasing brightness would still be able to use it completely. Knowing about Shift would just enhance it...
The more of these enhancements the better. Totally see this fitting into ED's current layout design.  ;)
I totally see having the brightness (both screen and keyboard) being controlled by a single button fitting into ANY layout design.
 
That's an essential function that everyone should understand without reading instructions, so we should not 'hide' it behind an Fn+Shift combination.
 
If the brightness would cycle back to off after going to max, then those who wouldn't know about Shift for decreasing brightness would still be able to use it completely. Knowing about Shift would just enhance it...
The more of these enhancements the better. Totally see this fitting into ED's current layout design.  ;)
I totally see having the brightness (both screen and keyboard) being controlled by a single button fitting into ANY layout design.
Absolutely. Combine Control and/or Alt with this button you speak of for even more of this toggling goodness.  ;)
 
I don't like where this is going (no Fn+Shift labels where useful, F-keys on numbers, numbers on primary keys, too many labels, random placement of symbols, too many keys wasted on hardware control, double width space, etc.). I know that none of this is going to change. Could you please make a poll where I can vote 'It sucks', then it would at least feel democratic or something :)
 
I don't like where this is going (no Fn+Shift labels where useful, F-keys on numbers, numbers on primary keys, too many labels, random placement of symbols, too many keys wasted on hardware control, double width space, etc.). I know that none of this is going to change. Could you please make a poll where I can vote 'It sucks', then it would at least feel democratic or something :)
Well, I don't see a donator banner underneath your picture so you must really feel this way. 
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think what he requested was some sort of democratic solution, money is not it, to his aim he brought something more important, opinons. It should be easy to explain decisions, and they should stop at some point, stirring the pot of random for a period of time does not make anything balanced. Unless it is random, why does it keep changing?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shift+AltGr, (which isnt shift+Fn), is used very sparingly for things people actually need. The exception being ¡ and ¿. Which for some Mediterranean countries is in use. Even there, you can get along just fine casually without.

There is no reason for this not to work as per normal, but there is a huge leap to be taken to assume everyone can operate or learn to operate it.

I've seen the powertoggles go from 4 buttons, to two, to one, and at no point was it ever final. Leading me to question the whole ordeal. If we imply the sort of reasoning that restrictions necessitate a certain set of limitations, everything that has fewer buttons than a laptop doesn't have dedicated powertoggles. There are more important things, and there are no good ways to do it with dedicated buttons (?)

Fn+power for a hotkey, or just the regular control panel, is the simplest and easiest way, adjust everything with sliders. This does not cover people wanting to use it in fullscreen games, and for those Fn+up or Fn+Down works, since that is the same as the best convention from a laptop. Notably only if Fn isn't on a shoulder.

Is adjusting keyboard backlight on the fly needed, and if so, what would be the best hotkey for it?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top