It's the keyboard layout.

[slaeshjag]

My current laptop keyboard has altgr labels for 12 keys. Asus must hear a lot from users wondering what the rest of the keys does :roll:

 

[WizardStan]

However, I feel that the DosBox compatibility issues cannot be overcome with the Saber layout

I was going to say that the DosBox compatibility issues cannot be overcome at all, but then you went and did something I don't think anyone had considered: actually take advantage of the DosBox chorded Fn-Shift requirement and put them on the keyboard! Why not? It theoretically brings an extra 33% more keys (in practice much fewer but still more than zero), eliminates the DosBox compatibility, actually makes it possible to put keys in approximate places that most people have already memorized they be (shift-] is } even if I have to remember that ] is altgr-. first, it's still actually one fewer thing to remember). It's a pretty good move.I don't know if I like this exact layout (five keys on the bottom row being entirely useless to me) but I do like the direction it's going and think we can come up with something along those lines. AltGr-Shift keys have my support!

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Çç is not that much used in french, so a C combination is enough.

The delete mini button is surrounded by much used ones, it's likely to be accidentally pressed.

 

[Saber]

Dagnabbit, the universal translator be broke ah'gin.

 

[Grench]

However, I feel that the DosBox compatibility issues cannot be overcome with the Saber layout

I was going to say that the DosBox compatibility issues cannot be overcome at all, but then you went and did something I don't think anyone had considered: actually take advantage of the DosBox chorded Fn-Shift requirement and put them on the keyboard! Why not? It theoretically brings an extra 33% more keys (in practice much fewer but still more than zero), eliminates the DosBox compatibility, actually makes it possible to put keys in approximate places that most people have already memorized they be (shift-] is } even if I have to remember that ] is altgr-. first, it's still actually one fewer thing to remember). It's a pretty good move.

Thank you.

I don't know if I like this exact layout (five keys on the bottom row being entirely useless to me) but I do like the direction it's going and think we can come up with something along those lines. AltGr-Shift keys have my support!

Like I said, I haven't optimized the positioning much at all yet. I wanted to float the general idea out there and see if anyone liked the general idea or had reasons it wouldn't work at all.

The net is that by doing this there are so many keys available that I ran out of symbols to populate on all of the possibilities.

I still prefer the terminology of Fn over AltGr though, but I'm not going to quibble over a modifier key name so long as it -works-.

I'm out of time to mess with this today. You're welcome to run with the idea and optimize key placement if you have the time to do it. I had considered migrating the Fn/AltGr/modifier key into the lower left cluster so that Fn could be chorded with Alt, Ctrl and Shift - but then was struggling with what to put in that lower right corner.

If the space bar were centered (I know - not happening), we have enough keys that we could do a full modifier set in both lower corners and make chording ambidextrous...

 

[moxie]

I meant "accented" as in {ascii base-character that has extra bits in its graphical representation}, do you know a better word for it

I don't get what you mean? Is R the same as P with some extra bits in its graphical representation? 

 

[Antartica]

I adapted my proposal, looking at Saber's proposal and ED's remarks about it. This is the resulting compromise:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/96ce05fe6ad1693cb29247f4d18b7974

Is there any reason for not having AltGr and shift in the same side?

I would greatly appreciate having them one above the other (shift above AltGr) to be able to:

1. Map additional keys to AltGr+shift+key

2. Use always the same thumb for the modifier.

Rationale:

The first one is to enable the user to use xmodmap to reconfigure the keyboard for the non-supported languages -- in my case, for Spanish, I would like to map 'ñ' to AltGr+N (and 'Ñ' to AltGr+shift+n) and also move some symbols out of a key to have a dedicated dead key "acute accent" (´). The moved symbols could be relocated to AltGr+Shift+some-key.

The second one is to (IMHO) fix a shortcoming on the Pandora's keyboard . The Pandora has Fn and shift in opposite sides, and it is annoying when you aren't sure of the modifier to use to enter a specific symbol --as in: "was left thumb + 7 or right thumb + 7?" you try one, fail (Murphy?), and have to reposition both hands to try the other combination.

 

[moxie]

Leave the ßÄÖÜ unlabeled, but default-bound to those. We'll define them as "freely bindable" in the layout, so no software should expect them to create those characters, but try to obey whatever xmodmap or whatever says they are. Then people can put dead-key diacritics there if they want to

Quoted for GREAT JUSTICE! 

 

[rygD]

_wb_, you make a good point about having a dedicated Tab because you often need to hit it repeatedly.  This is the same reason I prefer a dedicated Delete key.  I would need to try out using one that is brought out via a modifier to see if it is a problem, but my guess is that it will work fine, just slightly inconvenient.  I can't think of any common key combinations that use Delete, so those may not be a problem either.

Yes, a dedicated Delete key would be kind of nice. But a dedicated Insert key is kind of pointless (most people don't even use Ins at all), and since it also makes sense to have Ins and Del close to one another, you are forced to do something pointless (make Ins dedicated) just to do something nice (make Del dedicated).

On the other hand, Delete is probably one of those keys like Esc that you don't want to hit accidentally. It can after all cause files to be deleted and nasty stuff like that.

I like to have dedicated + and - for zooming (something you tend to do repeatedly), and also for --long-style-parameters, dashes (-- and --- in TeX), to make ascii separator lines like this ---------------------, to increment or decrement a variable (k--, c++). Not very important, but it's nice. Zooming is pretty important if all you have is a small screen.

I agree with you on Insert (it still messes up what I am doing occasionally when I accidently hit it, so it too can be destructive).  I don't use + and - very much, but definitely - more for various command line things, and when posting here, working on documents, or with email.  It might be nice to easily zoom with the rather small display.  I am not sure if Delete or - would be more important to me.  If we had Grench's locking modifiers I would be all for keeping Delete, Escape and all other 'bad' keys behind others.  I guess if they lock you have the risk of locking by accident and messing some things up, which leads me back to dedicated keys...  Maybe we could put all of those on the same key.

 

[fusion_power]

...page 6 and counting...

 

[rygD]

...page 6 and counting...

I am guessing it will be 4 times that, at least, by this weekend.

 

[comradekingu]

hem 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 m

No you cant, because it doesn't work. Reinventing keyboard paradigms with things that are known to be less than feasible is not ok, because if it was it would be done in that fashion already. People dont want to change and they dont want something that doesnt work. These are the regular users everyone seems so concerned about.

To get back on track:

Put the P+2 and L+2 keys in the P+2 and L+2 positions, like a keyboard. Label them according to US/UK convention, because that is the biggest market.

When Ive asked for a reasoning as to how the layout ED proposed came to be I've thus far assembled this much.

It is "centered" when you consider only the A-Z letters, which has nothing to do with a keyboard, and everything to do with missing keys. Also for UK/US one language-people, since they have expected functionality in those positions for them.

Those keys are missing on a pandora, which for some reason, to some people, makes it a better convention than regular keyboards.

Regular keyboard is good, it is known to work, and it is habitually engrained. On one of those you will find the symbols are on the number-keys and the letters are on the letter keys. Mixing that changes things. Not only that, it also changes expectations of how AltGR works. Putting symbols all over the keyboard makes it look crowded, but it is ok because of ???

Since we all agree normal keyboards are normal, at least acknowledge all the international users who dislike the pandora keyboard. We didnt make that up just to be difficult. There are ways to deal with it, and hacks not to be found anywhere else fails on a multitude of levels. It doesn't work, and nobody wants to learn something new, that doesnt work. Ugly spiral of nope.jpeg. This works depending on what region you are in, and they are the same for everyone:

Dedicated keys

Compose key

AltGr+

Dead-key diactrics

French number hotkey diactrics

If it isnt any of those, your battle is lost.

Dont remove functionality, and you dont add hacks. Otherwise you have a reduced functionality English only keyboard.

Then there is the forever strange wide-space. The only logical approach I've been able to see with that is it looks more like a space from a 10finger keyboard. Ok, fair argument, thats recognizable, and some people are bent on it, make it a bigger key, but compromise before you throw the tub out with the bathwater-baby.  Make it double-wide, and have the right side (which is less central) be punctuation.

(space     * * *)  Make the regularpress of right-side doublewide into a dot.  le space←   → .  Free combo.  That means you don't have to venture all the way over to the other side of the keyboard every time there is a new sentence. Like here. And again. Every time. This happens. Alot.

 

[sqff]

I meant "accented" as in {ascii base-character that has extra bits in its graphical representation}, do you know a better word for it

I don't get what you mean? Is R the same as P with some extra bits in its graphical representation?

No, I mean diacritical marks on latin letters. I called them accents at first, because in French they are called "accent aigu" and similar. That is why I store all diacritics as "accents" in my head (I rarely have to talk about them, and consider the dots in ï to be "accents" as well). The gist is: there are many of those and you will not satisfy all Europeans with one keyboard layout (朌Æøéèëäüöïñãç, only from the top of my head). So why not print and write configurations for 4 or 5? If it costs that much more, then they could be extras, introduced later. I just dread the sight of an overcrowded keyboard with annoying dead keys and äs or üs. If the keyboard is produced like suggested I will reconfigure it and glue stickers on the keys or something like that.


I really resent your style of argument, instead of trying to make a point about the content of what I said (which is harmless) you are trying to find a technical flaw in how i phrased it. Who has ever suggested reproducing the R letter using a modifier and a P? What I said was way more accurate than what you pretend to derive from it.

 

[comradekingu]

Since ISO keyboards are all the same amount of typing-keys (And ANSI for case of argument) in the same positions, you can satisfy to great extent the need of all europeans by implementing the extra letter keys in the positions they are supposed to be in.

If you do the same regular style for English, there is minimal ugly hacks by switching from one to the other. Someones accentuation is someone elses extended/"regular letters"

For things less frequent, you need a common way to do all of them, at-least that solves a lot of headache. And thats found in US-international layout, called dead-key diatrics. Its the best you can get away with given the amount of keys on a normal keyboard.

Curiously in the early morse and typhography days you could often find similar looking stuff using one letter. Big F is P if i remember correctly. The 1870s typewriter has a numberrow omitting 1. I imagine its because I looks roughly the same.

Modern English gets away with using less letters because they do this for some letters. A U O can mean many things. They have the sounds of æ ø å and other stuff, but only phonetically.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

I really don't mind turning as much as possible into accent keys to save up buttons for less flexible stuff, quite the contrary. I'd rather prefer to have the more widespread ones like ¨ more easily accessible instead of using dedicated keys for the umlauts created with it.

It really annoys the hell out of me that the German Linux layout stopped considering ~ to be an accent key recently, now I have to use a "deprecated" layout... well, at least it's still available as an official layout.

 

[Saber]

...page 6 and counting...

I am guessing it will be 4 times that, at least, by this weekend.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

 

[Gammel Holte]

Changing keyboard layout too much from standard is not very advisable. Look at the major concerns Lenovo created 1 iteration ago. Ideally you should optimise for minimal mental adjustment to go from a PC to Pyra. back and forth.

I'd stick to something close to US International (compose keys), so that Vi / Emacs / ... users are not screwed up. Keep Esc, Super, Ctrl, Alt, /, []... as close to where they are as possible, and also in dedicated keys.

It's gonna be tough to keep everyone happy. I'm Scandinavian, so US International with compose is suboptimal, but it's good enough. For major optimizations, remapping is gonna be needed anyway.

 

[jes3]

If the Pyra ends up getting only 1 Shift key, can we have that single shift key work like the FN key on the Pandora? What I mean is that you only have to press the FN key and not hold it down. You'd just press the Shift key, release, then press and you get a capital "S," for example. I'm very glad the Pandora has a shoulder button that works as a Shift key. Otherwise, I'd have a hard time Shifting the keys right next to the Shift button.

 

[DAP]

I would be happy with the double wide space key split into two normal keys, and a good keyboard editor.

With the keyboard as is, it is impossible to have the keymap I want. Two letters need to be where that space bar is.

 

[ekianjo]

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.

You can always ask your software to automatically convert the combinations - why do you need keys just for that ?

And since when German is a priority for the keyboard layout ? There's people using the pandora everywhere, not just in Germany, so I fail to see why this device should be German friendly but not French-Spanish-Dutch-whateverotherlanguage friendly as well. After all the most spoken languages internationally (i.e. not a national level) should be prioritized, i.e. English and Spanish at least. If German is supposed to be supported than French should be supported as well since there are as many speakers of French as of German in the world, and French is actually used as an international language more than German.