It's the keyboard layout.

[fusion_power]

One innocent question ? Why are german keys required when it's accepted now in modern German to write those letters as combinations ? i.e. ü is accepted as ue, etc...

Because it sucks.  I personaly hate ae ue oe for ä ö ü, it looks weird even if it's a "legit" way to write. It always looks like someone without a propper german keyboard wrote in german.

 

[_wb_]

Since it only makes sense for germans to have AOUS for additional characters, it could be confusing to remember where they are compared to having them in the approximate correct position in a familiar looking cluster, if they aren't labled.

In Scandinavian languages, you need three out of Ä Ö Å Æ, which makes it a bit tricky indeed to map them to vowels. In Norwegian and Danish mappings, you could put Æ on E, Å on A, and Ö on O, at least to me that seems to make some kind of sense. In Swedish/Finish mappings, you could put Ä on A, Ö on O (just like in the default German layout), and Å at some other spot near A or O (e.g. W, S, I or P). In French mappings, you could put É on E, È next to it on R, À on A, Ù on U, Ç on S, for example. In most languages, the most frequently used extra symbols are based on vowels.

Dead key diacritics (like Meta+' for the acute accent in my proposal) and a Compose key are the best approach for languages that have more than just a few extra symbols.

 

[AnimatedFreak]

might be to much to ask but an å would be nice for us Swedish people. Or at least a simple shortcut, as the once for the Pandora was hell to use. I like that ö and ä is their  

 

[bzar]

One innocent question ? Why are german keys required when it's accepted now in modern German to write those letters as combinations ? i.e. ü is accepted as ue, etc...

Because it sucks.  I personaly hate ae ue oe for ä ö ü, it looks weird even if it's a "legit" way to write. It always looks like someone without a propper german keyboard wrote in german.

As an analog, consider, just for the sake of the argument replacing all 's' letters with 'zz', 'y' with 'jw' and 'e' with 'ij' in english. For the sake of the argument also consider those would actually be pronounced anything near their counterparts. Now type a sentence that has those and tell me it doesn't look wrong to you, though it (in this fictional example) is pronounced a bit alike. Taking used letters away and replacing them with combinations of other letters is not the same as having the actual letters themselves.

 

[oxym]

But I do think that it would be better no to put the labels Ä Ö Ü ß on the keymat. That way, it looks more universal. You can still have those keys in those spots by default, just don't label them. That way, it's nicer for all the non-Germans, who don't need those symbols, or who want to put different symbols in those spots (e.g. Å Æ Ø).

+1

 

[Saber]

My latest layouts are in my signature.

 

[DaMummy]

as a foreigner, i give no shits that letters from my people arent included in the keyboard, but cant we have some software thing for different languages and their keys, so if you select german for example, shift/meta/pyra/ctrl/whatever+a would equal Ä while when selected finnish in software, shift/etc+ae would be Æ?

 

[Urben]

My ideas to the layout posted in OP:

• ' and ' looks very alike, but one is important for grammar and the other for programming. If we include both, how do we make them look different? Cant we just keep the "real" one for grammar out and keep the programming-relevant?
• What does the "SysRq" key? System reset? Sorry my oldest console was the N64 I might be too newschool :^)
• Two shift keys on they keyboard are indeed useful, but once you need AltGr you either have to use the right one on the keyboard or shoulderbutton. To make it consistend we could spare left shift. Then we could move Tab one down and use the Tab key for Esc, and the Esc Key at the AltGr Mode for something else like the other apostrophe.
• If (+) and (-) are labeled as + and -, it would be confusing if they do anything but not + and -. We could use the shift mode (or AltGr mode or both) to make them actual + and - keys, sparing the ones on the AltGr mode and use the keys there for ^ and °
• Who besides of shitposters needs Capslock? I would not use it (it would collide with my Esc-Tab idea )
• Since äöü also exist in capital form ÄÖÜ this would be a 4-way usage of the key. As a german I would be okay with this but is it technically possible?
• Same with the accents ` and ´ since I can only see one of them. Or is the other a apostrophe? Hell!
• Question mark should be on the shift layout. I would put the ( ) to the AltGr layout and put the = next to the ? and this way with my + - idea the = would be perfectly under the + and -
• Do we scroll with D-Pad?

I changed the design with my ideas (marked as red). I rearranged the AltGr symbols abit since I wanted to put the ( ) together down there.

http://abload.de/img/keyskbjs8.png

 

[slaeshjag]

as a foreigner, i give no shits that letters from my people arent included in the keyboard, but cant we have some software thing for different languages and their keys, so if you select german for example, shift/meta/pyra/ctrl/whatever+a would equal Ä while when selected finnish in software, shift/etc+ae would be Æ?

Remapping keys assumes there's space for the keys to be remapped. The software part of having keys remapped is pretty much inevitable.

 

[_wb_]

as a foreigner, i give no shits that letters from my people arent included in the keyboard, but cant we have some software thing for different languages and their keys, so if you select german for example, shift/meta/pyra/ctrl/whatever+a would equal Ä while when selected finnish in software, shift/etc+ae would be Æ?

Yes, obviously switching keyboard layout / locale should be something that you can do in software. The point is: where to put the keys that would normally be available as dedicated keys on a locale-specific keyboard? How to minimize the number of keypresses needed for common letters (in your particular locale), how to keep things easy to remember?


I personally prefer to just use Compose for everything. Compose " A to get ä, Compose , C to get ç, Compose ` A to get à, Compose ~ N to get ñ, and so on. But that's because I mostly use Dutch and English, and only occasionally French (and I write it poorly anyway). If I would speak French, German or Swedish, I would probably want to have dedicated keys for some letters, or at least, dedicated Meta keys (so with the shoulder button Meta, it would be only one thumb press).

My ideas to the layout posted in OP:

• ' and ' looks very alike, but one is important for grammar and the other for programming. If we include both, how do we make them look different? Cant we just keep the "real" one for grammar out and keep the programming-relevant?

There are several symbols that look like ': there's the apostrophe, the single quote marks, and the acute accent. On a normal keyboard, you would have an apostrophe key '; word processing software can automatically convert it to the correct quotes ‘like this’, and in Compose combinations, it acts like an acute accent so you can make e.g. á é í ó ú.


So we only need one key for '.


We also need only one key for ` (backtick/grave accent).

• What does the "SysRq" key? System reset? Sorry my oldest console was the N64 I might be too newschool :^)

System Request. It is mostly used for the 'Magic SysRq key': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

• Two shift keys on they keyboard are indeed useful, but once you need AltGr you either have to use the right one on the keyboard or shoulderbutton. To make it consistend we could spare left shift. Then we could move Tab one down and use the Tab key for Esc, and the Esc Key at the AltGr Mode for something else like the other apostrophe.

Why? Keep in mind that AltGr should be sticky (like Fn on the Pandora), and I would argue to make the keyboard Shift also sticky by default.


Having a dedicated Esc key in such an easy to reach spot would be a bad idea: people will hit it by accident, which sucks (it can cause programs to immediately exit, for example).

• If (+) and (-) are labeled as + and -, it would be confusing if they do anything but not + and -. We could use the shift mode (or AltGr mode or both) to make them actual + and - keys, sparing the ones on the AltGr mode and use the keys there for ^ and °

In my proposal (http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/96ce05fe6ad1693cb29247f4d18b7974), the + and - buttons actually produce + and -, since that does indeed make sense.


It's probably not a good idea to give the action buttons a different AltGr function, because that will confuse games that use action buttons and shoulder buttons.

• Who besides of shitposters needs Capslock? I would not use it (it would collide with my Esc-Tab idea )

In my proposal there is no Capslock.

• Since äöü also exist in capital form ÄÖÜ this would be a 4-way usage of the key. As a german I would be okay with this but is it technically possible?

Yes. Technically it is no problem at all. We just want to keep the number of labels per key low, because the keys are small so the labels will be hard to read if we have to fit too much stuff on them.

• Same with the accents ` and ´ since I can only see one of them. Or is the other a apostrophe? Hell!

See discussion above. In my proposal there are no dedicated keys for dead acute/grave accents (also not in Saber's proposal, I suppose). I do propose to use Meta-apostrophe for dead acute (áéíóú) and Shift-grave for dead grave (àèìòù), as a slightly faster method compared to using Compose.

• Question mark should be on the shift layout. I would put the ( ) to the AltGr layout and put the = next to the ? and this way with my + - idea the = would be perfectly under the + and -

Any particular reason why question mark should be a Shift key and not a Meta/AltGr key?


In standard US-QWERTY, shift+90 is (), I don't think we should deviate from that.

• Do we scroll with D-Pad?

Just like on the Pandora, the dpad corresponds to the arrow keys. The ABXY buttons are Home/End/PgDn/PgUp. I would propose to let the right nub act like a 2D scroll wheel.

 

[codifies]

Interesting how people assume what they use is THE standard, every keyboard I've ever owned has " above 2 and @ above ' - but I wouldn't assume that's standard just because I happen to live in Europe (and also happen to speak English as a first language....)

As far as diacritics go, you honestly cannot expect to support French, German, Finnish, Swedish etc ad nauseum from a single layout... (unless you make some awful mash up that inconveniences everyone... including people requiring diacritics)

 

[Urben]

• If (+) and (-) are labeled as + and -, it would be confusing if they do anything but not + and -. We could use the shift mode (or AltGr mode or both) to make them actual + and - keys, sparing the ones on the AltGr mode and use the keys there for ^ and °

In my proposal (http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/96ce05fe6ad1693cb29247f4d18b7974), the + and - buttons actually produce + and -, since that does indeed make sense.It's probably not a good idea to give the action buttons a different AltGr function, because that will confuse games that use action buttons and shoulder buttons.

Too bad would have been a nice position...

• Question mark should be on the shift layout. I would put the ( ) to the AltGr layout and put the = next to the ? and this way with my + - idea the = would be perfectly under the + and -

Any particular reason why question mark should be a Shift key and not a Meta/AltGr key?In standard US-QWERTY, shift+90 is (), I don't think we should deviate from that.

Well the german layout has the question mark between 0 and return. And since the ? is an equal part of punctuation character to ! I would put it up there, too.

 

[Glyph Reader]

Interesting how people assume what they use is THE standard, every keyboard I've ever owned has " above 2 and @ above ' - but I wouldn't assume that's standard just because I happen to live in Europe (and also happen to speak English as a first language....)

As far as diacritics go, you honestly cannot expect to support French, German, Finnish, Swedish etc ad nauseum from a single layout... (unless you make some awful mash up that inconveniences everyone... including people requiring diacritics)

Honestly, this is exactly why the keyboard wars discussions were so painful for me that I had ignored them after the first few months.  Obviously there is a standard (US QWERTY), but a sizable part of our community is from Europe and other areas.  

We would want, ideally, a keyboard layout that is standard enough for someone to be able to pick up, but still cater to our audience (German, Finnish, French, Dutch, etc.)  However, as you said, shoving it all in causes problems for all.  

Here is an idea that has been mentioned a bit.  

I think that we should have a keyboard that is mainly geared towards the standard keyboard (US QWERTY) by default.  Then, during Pyra setup, we should be presented with a selection of different setups more geared to their respective audience.  That way, just about everyone should be happy (assuming I'm not missing anything).  

-Glyph Reader

 

[Willhelm]

I would like to have ü ä ..... labels on the keymat. I do not need an exclusive left shift key neither an dedicated ESC key. I like the fn+q soluion on my pandora.

 

[_wb_]

There is no single standard. There are many. And we can't follow any of them, because we don't have enough keys for that.

But it does make sense to try to imitate a standard. And US-QWERTY seems to be a good one to try to imitate.

US keyboards are used not only in the United States, but also in many other English-speaking places, including India, Australia, English Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines. However, the United Kingdom and Ireland use a slightly different layout [they have " and ₤ instead of @ and #, that is, except on UK Apple keyboards, which have @ in the normal spot].

I do expect to support any Latin script based language from one single layout, with the catch of course that you'll have to use locale-specific remappings and/or dead diacritics and/or Compose for most of them. But that's not that different from the actual language-specific keyboards: e.g. on a French AZERTY keyboard, it takes two keypresses to type the ô in hôpital, the ê in forêt or the ë in Noël, so it would not be reasonable to expect a Pyra keyboard where those letters are available in just one thumb press.

 

[comradekingu]

As promised earlier in my news post, here is the thread about the keyboard layout.


First of all, thanks for all the discussions and threads you already had here at the boards - a few interesting ideas arose, and one came very close to what I had in mind.


Let's start with some facts first:

• The keyboard should be standard enough to be used by every normal user
• It should be balanced between text typing and coding
• It should have most of the keys a normal keyboard has (i.e. Pandora keyboard has issues with DosBox).
• The main languages used where the Pandora sold are English, French and German. It should support these languages as good as possible (with English being the main one)
• We should have a maximum of three characters per key: One with a single keypress, one with Shift and one with AltGr (which replaces the old Fn-Key)
• The most-used keys should get the best positions

Okay, of all the keyboard layouts I've seen at the threads you created, this seems to be nigh perfect in my opinion:

pU8hObm.png

Is that the right link?


This makes the normal user a minority.


I don't think there is a regard for coding. Stringing symbols together isn't better.


A normal keyboard has the use of regular altGR to hit regular letters. Putting symbols there makes the whole thing look crowded and messy. See it as a whole instead of two different ones.


Putting dot and comma at one extreme end and space in the other means slalom typing. It is a very bad idea because you shift


focus for new users, and you tie the two thumbs at extreme ends for the maximum possible duration. It is the least effective way.

What do I like about it?

• Mostly Standard QWERTY-Keyboard, including the Shift-Keys on the numbers
• Tab as a single key
• ä, ö and ü (German) as well as ' and ` (French) included
• Almost all normal characters are existant
• Even has two shift keys (useful for persons who don't use the shoulder buttons when typing, like myself

What issues are there?

• Hard to type some key combinations like ALT-F4 (as you need to press ALT, ALTGr and 4 at the same time). Only used for old DOS-Games though
• ESC is not a single key. Would be nice to have it, but not mandatory (did work with the Pandora)
• Some keys missing: ', ° and ^.
• +, - and = is a bit too far in the middle (hard to reach for these common keys). Maybe we should move them with less used keys?

And be rational - there is NO layout everyone loves. What we need to find is the best compromise for all users and usecases.

The French use hotkey-number diactrics. To make matters worse there are no dead-key diatric combos here.


Germans dont use those symbols like that, nor in that position. Nor does anyone else. To make matters worse those other people dont use german symbols.


In effect its making a one-fits-all localized pan-european solution, and that is reinventing the wheel as a square.


I could make a list of all the things that i dislike, but it wouldnt be a fix, it would only highlight the ways i think it is broken.


You cant lift one stone without it interrupting the others. Things dont magically fit together. If you design by metrics then you forget the


true compromise, which is the arbitrary set amount of keys and positions.


The pressing issue is why arent the other solutions regarded to be solutions? If you want to sell pyras, at least see what the


more popular vote is? Why does that hurt anyone? Put it on geekhack and deskthority, see what they think. Ask the regular users you have in mind (we are not the regular users you are looking for).

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

LOL, the 7th and 12th spoken language will have keyboard layout but not the 3th...

Cannot create two layouts insted of one? One can have English + German/Français and other English + Spanis/Other. The Spanish layout only need two plus characters: ´ and ñ. It is going to be a pain in the ass if we do not have those characters.

 

[Exophase]

As a stupid American who doesn't like doing programming much away from a full keyboard I don't feel like I have much useful input to this thread, but I did want to at least respond to this:

I don't like hiding Esc behind AltGr. It's just too commonly used, much more common than, say, Tab. Especially Vim users will scream bloody murder at that.

I for one would much prefer dedicated Tab to dedicated Esc. Even in vim, I manually tab in programming (auto-tab causes more problems than it's worth for me). But moreover, I find myself wanting tab-completion a lot in terminals on Pandora. Having the dedicated key in the normal position would be a big improvement over where it is now.

But that's just me, I have no idea if this reflects how other people type.

 

[sqff]

Letter frequencies


ä: 3.577% (as common as 'c' or 'f' in english)


ö: 0.444% (about as common as 'k' and 'j' in english)


Try typing english while using 4 key combos for c and either k or j. 5 keys for capital letters.


EDIT: Also, 'ä', 'ö' and 'å' are not considered as "accented" versions of 'a' and 'o' in finnish, but rather their own letters like 'f', 'r' or 's'. For example "rähinä" and "rahina" are completely different words, so you can't just rely on people substituting 'ä' and 'ö' where necessary.

I did not object to a layout that has these letters, You misunderstand what I said and probably didn't read what came before. I mean that German is not *much* worse than Finnish and I do type German with the compose key (including ä and ö) and since the combinations are pressed in sequence and not simultaneously, it's not difficult for me. You can use any localised layout that you wish. I just point out that the compose key covers the rest for me, and I would like a layout with it as a primary key. See below for what I mean by accented.

As has been said before: You're wrong, here. Those of us that use å, ä and ö in our languages have them not as accented letters, but as standalone letters in and of themselves. Which means that ä is about as common as p or b, and stuff like y, j, z or q is far less common than any of the åäö letters. And that is swedish - in finnish, ä is in eleventh place, before m, r, v, h, j...


Not that finnish should be the governing standard for how the keymat should be organized, of course. But the point is that the argument "well, those accented characters are just accents, so whatever" is wrong - those of us who use them in our languages, use them rather frequently

I meant "accented" as in {ascii base-character that has extra bits in its graphical representation}, do you know a better word for it (EDIT: found it in one of the previous posts: "letters with diacritics")? § is a non-ascii symbol, but not an accented letter, it is a ligature (EDIT: this was meant to say: so I can't use the term non-ascii; I'll use the term diacritic in the future). So, I am definitely not wrong. In addition, I did not object to having a German keyboard (it has äs and ös) or a French one. I merely assert that every one who complains about the compose key is a whiner. Because it is awesome. What I said was, that if you collect all non-acii characters of all european langauges, you will have a long list. Compose helps with that; it covers a lot more, than 4 localised layouts. I stand by my recommendation to have a compose centered layout in addition to German, French and UK.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

What about the accent aigu "é" ?

Also wouldn't it be more convenient to have a separate "¨".

The "ï" is actually missing, so it will allow more combinations, and even add space for more characters.