It's the keyboard layout.

[_wb_]

perhaps, but I don't think ED wants more than one meta label per key. (see OP.) otherwise he would have chosen a different layout (we had a few at the time with your qualifications). we might even lose another key to a second keyboard shift.


we are spinning our wheels quite a bit, perhaps over nothing. i agree though, that the latest _wb_ lacks some Je ne sais quoi. (he seems to be breaking his own principles.) i like http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/fb9f7d7dbe0e66f38f70fd7a01896878though.


it's iterative refinement, sometimes you make a good step, sometimes you make a bad one. i like _wb_'s idea of putting /? together and \| together, though, since those are companions on the US keyboard. Inspired by that, does anybody prefer:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/81113d4bd6bfadaa66dd9e913025ed7c


over:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/1417479de73c9231d7e258fd0eb779a4


?

I do.

I think it's OK to put / together with | and \ too, to make a pattern like \ | / or / | \. The latter even looks a bit like an Atari logo

We all have the problem that there are too many keys that 'belong' in the top-right corner (according to US-QWERTY), and there's no room for them all: -_=+[]\{}| is just too much. That's why I think it makes sense to make an exception for [ ] \ { } | w.r.t. the general principle that keys should be close to their US-QWERTY position (a principle that is violated anyway by , . '), and move them over to the left in a nice pattern. In particular I like it that both ./ and ~/ are easy combos in my most recent proposal.

Another rationale behind my most recent proposal is that the keys in the center are a bit harder to reach and develop muscle memory for than the keys near the edges. So by using the middle area for "international stuff", I hope to optimize the overall efficiency.

 

[Eight Bit]

Layouts like this are far more viable: http://www.keyboard-...b411baa5a39beeb

I don't feel the same way, srry

 

[codifies]

Layouts like this are far more viable: http://www.keyboard-...b411baa5a39beeb

Pros:

Meta on the correct side (oooh contentious)

Cons:

Too many symbols per key

f11/f12 isolated (seriously guys whats wrong with BS / return)

tab key second class citizen

So guess I don't agree either...

 

[TrashyMG]

f11/f12 isolated (seriously guys whats wrong with BS / return)

They are keys that if accidentally hit without the modifier could do bad things like submit or enter text by mistake or hitting backspace may delete something or go back on a webpage or something...  


The Pandora has Insert and Delete on the backspace key so maybe it may not be so bad, however my opinion is that Enter shouldn't have any modifiers on it. 

 

[WizardStan]

Too many symbols per key

Can you justify this? There's only 3 which is exactly as many as the on the Pandora's number row, and I've never heard anyone complain that that has too many symbols. With that in mind, it seems to me it is pretty well settled that three characters is entirely reasonable for a single key. If you disagree can you explain why?

tab key second class citizen

At least by having the tab and fn on opposite sides it's a much better position than on the Pandora. It's a reasonable compromise to a deficiency of keys. So a question: looking at that keyboard, if not Fn-Space, where would you put the tab? What current primary key would you displace?

 

[_wb_]

Too many symbols per key

Can you justify this? There's only 3 which is exactly as many as the on the Pandora's number row, and I've never heard anyone complain that that has too many symbols. With that in mind, it seems to me it is pretty well settled that three characters is entirely reasonable for a single key. If you disagree can you explain why?

tab key second class citizen

At least by having the tab and fn on opposite sides it's a much better position than on the Pandora. It's a reasonable compromise to a deficiency of keys. So a question: looking at that keyboard, if not Fn-Space, where would you put the tab? What current primary key would you displace?

3 per key certainly works if you look at individual keys, but if a large proportion of the keys have 3 labels, the overall impression of the keyboard will be that it looks quite cluttered.

Tab and Fn on opposite sides is practical for repeated Tab presses, but not for a single Pandora-style button mash. A dedicated Tab is better still, and much more useful than dedicated backtick/tilde.

 

[Grench]

 

[_wb_]

As far as I understand, it is perfectly possible to let DOSBox/qemu/whatever work fine with any mapping, in the sense that if I want to put ~ as Meta+Q or : at Meta+K, those symbols are actually produced. This is a matter of correct configuration and/or porting, and to some extent this will have to be done anyway, since we don't have a normal full-size keyboard no matter how closely we try to imitate one.

Another issue is related to the assumptions that emulated DOS/Windows programs make about how your keyboard looks like. They could very well assume that 9 0 - = backspace are adjacent keys, five in a row, and in some way rely on that. Or they could use the numeric keypad for something (e.g. 8-direction movement). They could make all kinds of assumptions that all boil down to the user having a standard US-QWERTY keyboard. A slightly larger fraction of those assumptions become true if _+{}| are on Shift + -=[]\;/. So in that sense, yes, "compatibility is improved". But that is in my opinion a rather weak sense of the word "compatibility". Because even in the days of DOS, other keyboards existed than US-QWERTY. German QWERTZ keyboards and French AZERTY keyboards also existed in the 1980s. So at least for applications and games that had some kind of international popularity, their assumptions would rather be general things like a numpad being available and F-keys being dedicated keys (assumptions we cannot satisfy anyway, at least not simultaneously), than specific things like [ is on the right and Shift+[ is {.

Not to say that there were plenty of applications and games that just assumed US-QWERTY, and they were just broken if you had a different keyboard. I remember games that use WASD for movement, which is not funny on an AZERTY keyboard But the only way to really enjoy such games like they were intended, is by attaching a US-QWERTY keyboard to your Pyra. The improvement you get from putting _+{}| on Shift + -=[]\;/ is rather tiny compared to all the things that are still 'wrong': no dedicated -=[]\;/ keys for example, no numpad, no dedicated F-keys, lots of missing keys. A game that puts player one at WASD and player two at PL;' is not going to work well on the Pyra keyboard, no matter what you do, unless you attach a real keyboard. There is no way around that, besides doing game-specific remappings.

 

[Grench]

As far as I understand, it is perfectly possible to let DOSBox/qemu/whatever work fine with any mapping, in the sense that if I want to put ~ as Meta+Q or : at Meta+K, those symbols are actually produced. This is a matter of correct configuration and/or porting, and to some extent this will have to be done anyway, since we don't have a normal full-size keyboard no matter how closely we try to imitate one.

Another issue is related to the assumptions that emulated DOS/Windows programs make about how your keyboard looks like. They could very well assume that 9 0 - = backspace are adjacent keys, five in a row, and in some way rely on that. Or they could use the numeric keypad for something (e.g. 8-direction movement). They could make all kinds of assumptions that all boil down to the user having a standard US-QWERTY keyboard. A slightly larger fraction of those assumptions become true if _+{}| are on Shift + -=[]\;/. So in that sense, yes, "compatibility is improved". But that is in my opinion a rather weak sense of the word "compatibility". Because even in the days of DOS, other keyboards existed than US-QWERTY. German QWERTZ keyboards and French AZERTY keyboards also existed in the 1980s. So at least for applications and games that had some kind of international popularity, their assumptions would rather be general things like a numpad being available and F-keys being dedicated keys (assumptions we cannot satisfy anyway, at least not simultaneously), than specific things like [ is on the right and Shift+[ is {.

Not to say that there were plenty of applications and games that just assumed US-QWERTY, and they were just broken if you had a different keyboard. I remember games that use WASD for movement, which is not funny on an AZERTY keyboard But the only way to really enjoy such games like they were intended, is by attaching a US-QWERTY keyboard to your Pyra. The improvement you get from putting _+{}| on Shift + -=[]\;/ is rather tiny compared to all the things that are still 'wrong': no dedicated -=[]\;/ keys for example, no numpad, no dedicated F-keys, lots of missing keys. A game that puts player one at WASD and player two at PL;' is not going to work well on the Pyra keyboard, no matter what you do, unless you attach a real keyboard. There is no way around that, besides doing game-specific remappings.

Wow... after all of this you still don't understand the issue on DosBox/QEMU/others.

As far as I understand, it is perfectly possible to let DOSBox/qemu/whatever work fine with any mapping, in the sense that if I want to put ~ as Meta+Q or : at Meta+K, those symbols are actually produced.

That is 100% incorrect. DosBox/QEMU/others have no idea what ~ mapped to a key by itself is. They know that when they receive shift+` that they then need to produce a ~ character. ~ has no meaning by itself. This is because it is reading directly from keyboard actions. It doesn't run through an interpreter layer that can be remapped. It is reading key presses only based on the 'root' key. None of the following exist as direct mapping:~!@#$%^&*()_+QWERTYUIOP{}|ASDFGHJKL:"ZXCVBNM<>?

Those symbols can only be registered as shift +

`1234567890-=qwertyuiop[]\asdfghkl;'xcvbnm,./

If the symbols printed on the key tops match that pairing, then what you see on the key is what gets produced. If the symbols are scattered all over and key pairs broken, then shift+the root symbol is required to produce the desired symbol and what is printed for what would be a shifted symbol does -nothing-.

A game that puts player one at WASD and player two at PL;' is not going to work well on the Pyra keyboard

I once had a game called 'Rampage' that allowed 4 players on one keyboard.Player 1 WASD, Player 2 YGHJ, Player 3 UpLeft,Right,Down, Player 4 5123.

Putting 4 players around 1 keyboard was hilarious and great coed fun.

I have no expectation of THAT working on a 4.5" wide keyboard.

I just want the symbol printed and selected to be the symbol produced in all applications - including DosBox/QEMU/others. Positional mapping isn't as big of a deal for DosBox/QEMU/others, but retaining key pairs IS.

Positional mapping is more to the idea of retaining some positional semblance to a US English keyboard for the mental mapping of where to go to find things.

 

[comradekingu]

Grench, you do know DosBox has support for other things than US layout? Qemu isnt an issue, and there are more ways to fix old broken software than there is to fix a broken layout.

Wb, Is a regular keyboard cluttered when it has 3 symbols per key on the numbers?

 

[Eight Bit]

Okay, so here's what I did... Don't laugh

I showed my mother(62) a couple of examples of keyboards people had made and asked her which she likes.

I then asked her what she would do...

This is what she came up with.

The language specific letters of the standard french and german keyboards should be on the exact same keys on the pyra keyboard where possible or otherwise near their original location. (except for ß as there's no room next to the number row)

I then filled in the remaining keys with the symbols and diacritics until all keys had an Fn label.

Ofcourse some great ideas from others were used aswel, like the F11 and F12 keys.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/e653fb76b8fbfe86f1d394ebd81308ef

 

[Grench]

Grench, you do know DosBox has support for other things than US layout? Qemu isnt an issue, and there are more ways to fix old broken software than there is to fix a broken layout.

If only a person could make such statements and 'make it so'. Reality appears to differ with your viewpoint.

 

[comradekingu]

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Language_File

 
http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/CONFIG

-writelang localfile

Write the current language settings to file. "localfile" is located on the local drive, not a mounted drive in DOSBox. The language file controls all visible output of the internal commands and the internal DOS

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/KEYB

http://www.dosgamers.com/dos/dosbox-dos-emulator/keyboard-layout

What internationalization is it thats lacking?

It should be possible to make a new layout, wherever dosbox gets the layout-locale setting from.

 

[Grench]

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Language_File

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/CONFIG

-writelang localfile


Write the current language settings to file. "localfile" is located on the local drive, not a mounted drive in DOSBox. The language file controls all visible output of the internal commands and the internal DOS

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/KEYB

http://www.dosgamers.com/dos/dosbox-dos-emulator/keyboard-layout

What internationalization is it thats lacking?

It should be possible to make a new layout, wherever dosbox gets the layout-locale setting from.

International keyboards and key pairing are two different things.  It will still expect the key pairings from those to exist and be consistent through that language's support.  The shifted values still need to pair with their un-shifted versions.

If you consider it to be 'simple' to 'fix DosBox', do it.  The Pandora version has been 'broken' since 2008.  Many very bright people have tried to fix it and failed.  Maybe you're smarter than them all.

 

[comradekingu]

I never said simple, i said possible. If you care, you fix it.

 

[bzar]

f11/f12 isolated (seriously guys whats wrong with BS / return)

Those combinations are way too good real estate for as rarely used keys as those. I don't care if it looks a bit funny to have them elsewhere

 

[comradekingu]

I dont care if they are printed at all, its not like Im going to forget that 1 is F1 and so on.

 

[FaeMinx]

Ok, I am sure to be out of the loop here.


And it is guaranteed that I do not have all the information, and my response will be somewhat niave, but there is one important point here.


Does ED (and comradekingu) want the Pyra to be as use able for the average user as possible?


If that is so, I think I may be fortunate in that


1) I have owned and used the Pandora for years, and have been involved in this community.


2) My level of technical know how puts me pretty close to the entry level required to enjoy these devices (with some online assistance).


So what I can or can not do could be regarded as the lowest common denominator that these devices should be aiming to cater for, yes?


Assuming that, let me now respond to the point of contention between Grench and comradekingu:


I grew up in the 80's. I grew up with Dos, and then Windows.


Of course I am interested in emulating software from those times and architectures.


So compatibility is important to me.


Dosbox on Pandora has irritated and frustrated me. I have waited since the beginning for it to be fixed somehow.


If it is so easy to fix, why has no one done it?


If the response is, because I care I should do it myself... Well sorry, then you simply do not care about users like me... because that is beyond my capabilities.


Exagear sounds very exciting to me... it will sound less exciting if a user like me will be frustrated by it.


I don't care about this to the exclusion of everything else, but I am simply making the point that if catering to users like me is of any importance at all, then:


'If you care, you fix it'... is not a response, it is outright dismissal.

 

[bzar]

Well, you could fit the demographic of "the lowest common denominator that these devices should be aiming to cater for", but are still not a representative sample of it. Your input can be useful, yes, but it's still an individual opinion, albeit from a group that's good to hear from.

That said, welcome to the discussion

 

[FaeMinx]

Thanks


It's just that I was asked to contribute before, even though I didn't believe I was qualified.


It was stated that as I use a Pandora, and will be buying a Pyra... My opinion and contribution matters.


If it really doesn't matter, that's okay too.


But I feel Grench has a point that hasn't been fully responded to / resolved in a satisfactory manner.


Personally, I wouldn't mind if some custom layout was auto loaded when running dosbox or Exagear that fixed the issues. Can this be done?