I'm not really an expert in this field, I'm sometimes found it difficult to get Korean working for example in XFCE+Openoffice. Anyway, if you feel confident, I'll trust you.
Then I guess my case is: english only, no accents should be printed on the physical keyboard. The layout should be efficient for terminal usage . As little distractions as possible, so when I switch to another software layout I don't get too confused by the labels.
Well that's a very specific case. I can't tell you about the specific support of various languages within XFCE (or linux in general), all I know is that if you find a few keymappings that work, creating shortcuts to switch between them is simple.
It's not just an English device though, it's primarily English, French, and German. At least English and German should be on there.
Wow, 10 pages in 2 days.
Yeah surprised it isn't double that already.
I don't know what answer you're looking for. The Pandora didn't have an AltGr key. There's absolutely nothing special about that. It's not like AltGr+<key> produces a standard keycode like Alt/shift/ctrl+<key>, AltGr is keyboard/language specific.AltGr is a key that means "alternate graphic". Press altgr and a corresponding key and some alternate code is produced, which depends entirely on the keyboard (or more exactly, what keyboard the OS thinks is) being used. There was no AltGr+Spacebar because the Pandora didn't have an altgr key. The Fn key effectively acted like an AltGr key, providing the alternate graphics of the Pandora's keyboard. In fact, it could probably have simply been named AltGr (just like the Pyra is going to be) and it would have been the same thing, except with a few extra functions thrown in.
The SpaceBard must be in an adventuring party with WizardStan.
None of the top hardware buttons have an AltGr value just in case someone wanted to turn on Bluetooth, Switch off USB power, or change key backlighting brightness while in AltGr lock mode. Shift was the better choice to alter them since we'll have two keyboard Shift keys. I would prefer Menu to be a dedicated Escape key. It's very easy to press Fn then Spacebar on the Pandora so hitting AltGr then Spacebar to bring up the Start Menu shouldn't be much of an issue for most. If L2 is also AltGr, then it's even easier. Backspace or Enter can take the place of the Menu key to do hard and soft resets and such.
So is there anyone who knows what is the wiring of the keyboard matrix?There could be a technical problem with putting 4th symbols on each key, and that has to do with the physical layout of the keyboard circuit.
The Pandora keyboard is laid out on a grid, when you press a key you don't (for the most part) activate a gpio pin specific to that key, but rather you short two pins, and the combination of which pins are shorted indicates which key was pressed. This works quite well for the most part but an important thing to note is that it has limitations on how many keys can be pressed at once. Specifically, if 3 or more keys that are laid out in a rectangular pattern on the grid are pressed together, only the first two buttons pressed are recognised. This means that if you hold down 2 keys in the same "row", all keys in the same "columns" as the two you pressed become unavailable. I have no reason to expect that the Pyra will be any different in this regard, so if there's to be any chording of modifiers on the main keyboard the keyboard matrix layout needs to be taken into consideration to avoid such issues.
For reference this is how the Pandora keyboard matrix is laid out:
Is there any chance we could get a diagram of how the Pyra keyboard matrix maps to the physical position of the keys?
Theoretically, chording the modifiers on the shoulder buttons should not have the same problem because each should get its own gpio. (I would hope)
The use of sticky keys could also obviate this issue, but I for one would find it quite disconcerting to be unable to chord said modifiers.
That brings me to my next point though. Am I the only one thinking that making any of the shoulder buttons 'sticky' in any way would be very bad idea?
- Neelix
No, my question is how did slaeshjag and others do an AltGr + Shift + Spacebar combo if the Pandora didn't have an AltGr key? This was brought up multiple times by slaeshjag starting in post #8 here and in other posts later on by him. How did he manage to supposedly do a non-breaking space on the Pandora without it, and is there another way to do a non-breaking space on the Pyra so Menu can be on Spacebar for many others who asked for an Escape key without having to seesaw AltGr with q for said Escape key?
Does Shift + Control + U enter Compose mode in Linux? If so, it's good to know this other way, but Left Shift + Right Shift may be simpler to do. On the Pandora, Compose was Shift + Enter, but this conflicts with shortcuts in Libreoffice so I made it Left Shift with Right Shift. People like having a Compose key and we're kind of scarce on places to put keys on without disrupting the other key positions.
Looks to me like he's talking about on a full sized keyboard under the assumption that "AltGr" on the Pyra will mean the same thing. To the best of my knowledge (which is pretty limited) there was no non-break space on the Pandora at all. But of course that can't be the case, as I mentioned it's not like there's a definitive AltGr "standard", it is dependent on the keyboard and what the OS supports. If the Pandora wants shift+AltGr+Space to be a non-breaking space then it can be: slaeshjag should make a proposal for it. But I don't see anything on the internet that says it must.Perhaps we should go back to calling it the Fn key just to avoid confusion with the AltGr key most people are probably used to on full sized keyboards?
I wasn't aware of that shortcut. "Compose" is an actual key on some keyboards, however, so that's probably where the idea of having a dedicated key came from.
Huh. THAT is what compose is. I can see why people prefer native keys over compose now; every time you want to type a character in your language, you have to press several other keys to get to it. Not sure why I didn't realize this sooner.
And how do you imagine German keys implemented exactly?
Its not a compose key, but you have understood why compose keys arent the same as having dedicated keys. This is what shift+ctrl+U is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input
