Well, without reading the instructions, you wouldn't even know how to press F11 and F12.
But after having been informed, for the people who use them, I find it easy to remember. Please try all layouts on regular people and pay close attention to how much can be communicated without explanation. A lot of things fail on a very basic level.
You MIGHT figure out how to press F1 - F10 without reading it up, but I still find it weird that it's missing.
That is only if you are advanced enough to need F-keys, but no, that fails. However the concept is very much working, its used on 60% keyboards, where the F-label is often
printed on the side of the key,
out of view as secondary (same as dell laptops), or
not at all. A lot of keyboards today have no F-keys, like
Chromebooks. Weird, but thats how it is. I suppose todays mediakeys are yesterdays keyboards with F-keys that dont have G-keys.
Also, Fn is in a very hard to reach area, same for ESC.
Fn is used for far less things on this layout, with not so frequent use, so lets be fair. Having them, and especially Esc, out of the way, is halfway a very good thing.
No accidental ESC, Alt+F4 or Ctrl+alt+F*
No brightness buttons can be found (and I use those a lot, because it's nice to change brightness while gaming).
I didn't think anyone did, but ok, for those that do, lets add that, Fn+↑ is brightness in increments upwards Fn+↓ is increments downwards. Another fail, but once you know about it I estimate it works.
Fn+Power to bring up the power-menu, rather than mousing to it, and controlling everything from there, is better than trying to remember what 4 keys controlling a plethora of functionality does. Two toggles on the same button sucks.
There are also keys missing (I can't find °'§, for example) and, well, we got a double-width space-bar, so one of those two buttons down there would need to move as well.
' is on AltGr+5, you can type it with one combo-click since AltGr is the bottommost columnkey. ° and § are also missing on non-german keyboards, hadnt seen that complaint either, but lets add that.
How often are they used, and what for. § is a paragraph i know. You could keep it in ctrl+v if you write a legal document/LaTex.
° as diactric (ring) is the * according to US convention, as the degree symbol its at
AltGr+R
Is shift+AltGr+2 3 ok for § ?, same as german position (3). There are otherwise open slots on the AltGr layer.
Is the mold made? Otherwise please reconsider the space, and hopefully you will come down on the side of the great majority of those who have worked on layouts. Big space is as useless as the big return-key from the example earlier.
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/c8b099d954b66ed7e0ae0a25d67e5ac7is the difference one key makes. You lose a lot of combo-clicks, you separate functionality, and its worse for international support.
Most importantly you have to hurdle to get from dot to enter. Hurdling, as coined by Dvorak, is to needlessly go from one key, over another, as a result from it being in often used combo/sequence. Every one of the lines in this post end with a enter dot. More explanation under
space here.
True, it's uncluttered, and it looks really clean - but it's too limited, in my opinion.
It has the most flexibility modularity and function of all the layouts. Only for typing F-keys it is worse, but that is not a free trade at all.
Real buttons, doing one thing, full layout, ability to go AZERTY or make additional keymats,
US-diactrics efficiency. The proof is in the pudding, try it.
It's the complete difference to what Grench suggested first: It was also very well thought of and had a maximum functionality, but was too much for a normal user.
This one is clean and well thought of as well, but it's clean because it's sacrificing keys and functions.
You get only the problems you don't know about. Something that works for more people, that saw the light last september, or something made, or that changes inconsistently every week, or the last week.
