It's the keyboard layout.

[Bosbeetle]

Ah were finally at the page number the linux kernel used on the pandora is at (3.2).67

 

[_wb_]

Maybe I found a simple solution for german Umlaute and maybe even some other special characters. I don't know, if the multiplexing of the keyboard allows this, but what about typing "a" together with "e" for ä etc. (o+e = ö, u+e = ü) This is meant without any metakey, just "a" and "e" at the same time. Even if you fear that this could accidentally activate a special character, I doubt there are a lot of words, that have an "a" following an "e" in them. This way, we would probably spare a lot of special keys and labels. However, I can't tell if this works for other languages, too.

This mechanism would not work. There are words that contain AE/EA, OE/EO, UE/EU in many languages, and we need to be able to type them without risking to trigger the Ü Ö Ä mechanism. Also, what would happen if you press e.g. A and hold it? Would it do nothing until you release it, producing "a" if you just release it and "ä" when you press E? On a normal keyboard, pressing A and holding it does this: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…

Also, pressing A and E together is hard to do because both are left-thumb keys.

 

[ible]

I think it will be easier if everything is behind (at most) one modifier (besides things like Ä, which should be Shift+Meta).  Shift+Meta might not sound like a pain for stuff like ?:"{}_+~ but can we be sure that the Shoulder buttons feel comfortable hitting them both at the same time?  Or can we guarantee those symbols to be on the opposite side of the keyboard from the mashable Shift+Meta?  (Even still I would prefer the use of shoulder modifiers.)  I use those symbols for coding, and would prefer just one modifier.

I think the layout I like best of _wb_'s latest is:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/b6276c5e3640800937bf864eba313d1e

because it doesn't put all the symbols in the not-easy-to-hit center region.

 

[WizardStan]

can we be sure that the Shoulder buttons feel comfortable hitting them both at the same time?

If they're on opposite buttons it'll be no worse than hitting ctrl-shift on the Pandora. And perhaps even having them on the same side is still easy to press both.The exact placement of the shoulder buttons is something we can decide later, actually: which is which is only tangentially related to the shift+meta concept and once ED finally rejoins the conversation we can ask him to test on his prototype just how easy it would be to press such combinations.

Or can we guarantee those symbols to be on the opposite side of the keyboard from the mashable Shift+Meta?

Yes. We are designing the keyboard as we see fit. That is absolutely something we can guarantee.

 

[_wb_]

I hope the shoulders can be pressed in all combinations, because I want to be able to do Ctrl+Alt+something and Ctrl+Shift+something, where "something" can be an F-key or some other Meta-key like + or -.

Also I think we should decide the exact placement of the shoulder buttons early enough: I want them to be labeled with their modifier symbol.

 

[TrashyMG]

I hope the shoulders can be pressed in all combinations, because I want to be able to do Ctrl+Alt+something and Ctrl+Shift+something, where "something" can be an F-key or some other Meta-key like + or -.

Also I think we should decide the exact placement of the shoulder buttons early enough: I want them to be labeled with their modifier symbol.

Shoulders, D-Pad and the game buttons are all using their own GPIOs so I'd say it's a fair guess to say that there would be no issue with combinations.

 

[_wb_]

I hope the shoulders can be pressed in all combinations, because I want to be able to do Ctrl+Alt+something and Ctrl+Shift+something, where "something" can be an F-key or some other Meta-key like + or -.


Also I think we should decide the exact placement of the shoulder buttons early enough: I want them to be labeled with their modifier symbol.

Shoulders, D-Pad and the game buttons are all using their own GPIOs so I'd say it's a fair guess to say that there would be no issue with combinations.

I mean ergonomically.

 

[WizardStan]

Also I think we should decide the exact placement of the shoulder buttons early enough

Agreed that they need to be defined early since they need to be printed to them (probably), but assuming that all combinations are comfortable enough I don't think keyboard layouts should hinge on their exact placement. If the keyboard is good "if only shift were on the opposite side" then that's something that's pretty easy to change without affecting the rest of the layout. Getting hung up on whether we need a specific modifier on the left or right is an exercise in futility, I think.

 

[Grench]

shoulder buttons

I want them to be labeled with their modifier symbol.

From the pictures I've seen, the shoulder buttons are going to be relatively small compared to the giant flapping paddles of the Pandora.

Do you envision these labels being ON the shoulder buttons where someone would have to turn the unit around to read them?

Maybe have them printed on stickers that get applied to the vertical portion of the lower case? Stickers because printing to that surface would be very expensive.

Potentially putting the labels for the shoulders on the lower hinge area of the screen bezel would require only 1 sticker with all 4 labels on it?

Sticker doesn't have to 'look like crap'. Could be white letters on clear tape.

 

[Urben]

From the pictures I've seen, the shoulder buttons are going to be relatively small compared to the giant flapping paddles of the Pandora.

Do you envision these labels being ON the shoulder buttons where someone would have to turn the unit around to read them?


Maybe have them printed on stickers that get applied to the vertical portion of the lower case? Stickers because printing to that surface would be very expensive.


Potentially putting the labels for the shoulders on the lower hinge area of the screen bezel would require only 1 sticker with all 4 labels on it?


Sticker doesn't have to 'look like crap'. Could be white letters on clear tape.

I'm for putting stickers on the bottom next to the screen. Over the bottom screws. Of course they should be pretty dark.

 

[comradekingu]

Maybe I found a simple solution for german Umlaute and maybe even some other special characters. I don't know, if the multiplexing of the keyboard allows this, but what about typing "a" together with "e" for ä etc. (o+e = ö, u+e = ü) This is meant without any metakey, just "a" and "e" at the same time. Even if you fear that this could accidentally activate a special character, I doubt there are a lot of words, that have an "a" following an "e" in them. This way, we would probably spare a lot of special keys and labels. However, I can't tell if this works for other languages, too.

That reminds me of every time i have to spell my name when my locale isnt supported. Not good. Anything besides typing letter for letter, where letter is at the key people are used to, is a non starter.

But before all that, this way of doing it of doing it fails, not because it isnt logical, but because its unexpected. You only treat it differently because you already are in the know, thats where most people arent.

We cant expect people to expect.

 

[_wb_]

Maybe I found a simple solution for german Umlaute and maybe even some other special characters. I don't know, if the multiplexing of the keyboard allows this, but what about typing "a" together with "e" for ä etc. (o+e = ö, u+e = ü) This is meant without any metakey, just "a" and "e" at the same time. Even if you fear that this could accidentally activate a special character, I doubt there are a lot of words, that have an "a" following an "e" in them. This way, we would probably spare a lot of special keys and labels. However, I can't tell if this works for other languages, too.

That reminds me of every time i have to spell my name when my locale isnt supported. Not good. Anything besides typing letter for letter, where letter is at the key people are used to, is a non starter.

But before all that, this way of doing it of doing it fails, not because it isnt logical, but because its unexpected. You only treat it differently because you already are in the know, thats where most people arent.

We cant expect people to expect.

So you are saying that 'people' who speak your language, Norwegian (which is 0.07% of the world population, slightly less than 1% of the EU), who buy a niche electronic handheld device of which probably only a couple of thousands will be sold, will expect it to ship with dedicated, primary keys labeled as Å, Ø and Æ (where the Ø is on the left of Æ, mind you, not the other way around like those Danish barbarians!) ?

In that case: OMG, the Norwegian 'people' have unrealistic expectations!

 

[_wb_]

shoulder buttons


I want them to be labeled with their modifier symbol.

From the pictures I've seen, the shoulder buttons are going to be relatively small compared to the giant flapping paddles of the Pandora.


Do you envision these labels being ON the shoulder buttons where someone would have to turn the unit around to read them?


Maybe have them printed on stickers that get applied to the vertical portion of the lower case? Stickers because printing to that surface would be very expensive.


Potentially putting the labels for the shoulders on the lower hinge area of the screen bezel would require only 1 sticker with all 4 labels on it?


Sticker doesn't have to 'look like crap'. Could be white letters on clear tape.

Stickers would be fine, and would have the advantage of being visible without having to turn the unit around.

Labels ON the shoulder buttons (not printed but engraved, like the L and R on the Pandora shoulder buttons) would also be nice. Of course those labels would have to be small.

⇧ and ◆  for Shift and Meta should be small enough for an engraved label on the button itself, for Ctrl and Alt it is probably not possible to have their name spelled out. We could use the ISO symbols for Ctrl and Alt, which are ⎈ and ⎇, but then I would suggest to also use those symbols together with the spelled out name on the keyboard itself.

Like this: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/4867cad30e3b9b4d567961dc83c6a061

 

[_wb_]

Also I think we should decide the exact placement of the shoulder buttons early enough

Agreed that they need to be defined early since they need to be printed to them (probably), but assuming that all combinations are comfortable enough I don't think keyboard layouts should hinge on their exact placement. If the keyboard is good "if only shift were on the opposite side" then that's something that's pretty easy to change without affecting the rest of the layout. Getting hung up on whether we need a specific modifier on the left or right is an exercise in futility, I think.

Yes, I agree. But unless there is a good reason to do something else, I would maintain backwards compatibility with the Pandora and let L1 be Shift and R1 be Ctrl. Then there are only two possibilities left: L2=Meta, R2=Alt, or L2=Alt, R2=Meta. The former makes most sense to me (since Shift and Meta 'belong together', they're both 'meaning-altering' modifiers, like Ctrl and Alt 'belong together' as 'shortcut-forming' modifiers in my mind), but the latter would be better if it turns out that pressing L1 and L2 simultaneously is hard to do.

Out of all the 4! = 24 possible ways to do the shoulder modifier placements, only two remain if we go for Pandora-compatibility (and I don't see why we should not go for compatibility, in this particular matter). That simplifies things

 

[comradekingu]

Maybe I found a simple solution for german Umlaute and maybe even some other special characters. I don't know, if the multiplexing of the keyboard allows this, but what about typing "a" together with "e" for ä etc. (o+e = ö, u+e = ü) This is meant without any metakey, just "a" and "e" at the same time. Even if you fear that this could accidentally activate a special character, I doubt there are a lot of words, that have an "a" following an "e" in them. This way, we would probably spare a lot of special keys and labels. However, I can't tell if this works for other languages, too.

That reminds me of every time i have to spell my name when my locale isnt supported. Not good. Anything besides typing letter for letter, where letter is at the key people are used to, is a non starter.

But before all that, this way of doing it of doing it fails, not because it isnt logical, but because its unexpected. You only treat it differently because you already are in the know, thats where most people arent.


We cant expect people to expect.

 
So you are saying that 'people' who speak your language, Norwegian (which is 0.07% of the world population, slightly less than 1% of the EU), who buy a niche electronic handheld device of which probably only a couple of thousands will be sold, will expect it to ship with dedicated, primary keys labeled as Å, Ø and Æ (where the Ø is on the left of Æ, mind you, not the other way around like those Danish barbarians!) ?


In that case: OMG, the Norwegian 'people' have unrealistic expectations!

Flurgs are people too you know. We get our own, sometimes its a common one for germannic scandinavia, where those non-barbarian danes get theirs atop ours. Doesnt matter though, even though its the same issue for all.


It doesnt help a technology buisiness that rural parts of india and china skew the numbers.


This is from a betatest e-mail i just got from Netgear, available in: Australia, Austria, Belgium,  France, Germany, Hong Kong,  Ireland, Italy,  Netherlands, Nordic, Spain, Switzerland, Singapore, and UK


Sure Canada and the US should be there, but you get the sense that the selection includes exactly what they estimate their market to be.

Edit: I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore#Languages http://gate2home.com/Chinese-Keyboard  looks promising. China is a no-go btw, other than gray imports, because its impossible to sell foreign electronics there. Their standards are much more rigid than ours. Its viable for top luxury european made products, but they again do quite well. Mostly because the wealthy chinese dont want chinese products.

Something that stems from there being a huge difference between internal products, and products made for export. With "made in china" on both of them, they sort of tarnish their own brand in the mind of the economic elite I think.

 

[_wb_]

And here is one more:

_wb_ MES-1 v5 ("DÖFÄGÅ") : http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/1722e6471a407736d417f2334c741cd4

Meta/Shift on the left, uses Shift+Meta all over the place (3 labels on most keys), fully "DOSBox compliant"

This proposal has all the symbols you can find on US-QWERTY, standard German QWERTZ, standard French AZERTY, and the standard Spanish QWERTY keyboard.

Literally all of them. Not a single little symbol is missing! It just barely fits by putting Shift+Meta labels on every Meta-symbol that does not have or need an upper case variant.

It also has all the letters needed for the Scandinavian languages; it can produce all Western European languages exactly as efficiently as on their original keyboards if you don't count the Meta shoulder button presses.

Is it cluttered? Yes.

Is it too cluttered? I'll let you judge that.

Is it possible to label the keys like this in a legible way? Yes, I think so.

Is this an ultra-multilingual layout? Yep.

Is that really necessary? I don't know, but I think it's pretty neat that it can be done.

Bonus: backspace, enter, tab and space are completely free of Meta labels, which looks nice imo. Also it has the advantage that Meta with those keys can default to the key itself, which means that you can do <punctuation> followed by <enter or space> combos without having to worry about releasing Meta fast enough.

So in summary, I have made the following multilingual proposals so far:

_wb_ MES-1 v1 ("GÀHÖJÄ") : http://www.keyboard-...551349c3ee89ba2    [MES-1 coverage chart: https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing]

Meta/Shift on the right, no labeled Shift+Meta symbols

_wb_ MES-1 v2 ("HÖJÄKÈLÀ") : http://www.keyboard-...aeca6898e6b8244     [MES-1 coverage chart: https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing]

Meta/Shift on the right, does not use Shift+Meta for ASCII symbols (only for ₤ and §)

_wb_ MES-1 v3 ("RÜDÖFÄ") : http://www.keyboard-...b9ea7a87449ace8   [MES-1 coverage chart: https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing]

Meta/Shift on the left, uses Shift+Meta for {}|?, supports Scandinavian languages, every symbol close to US-QWERTY location

Here is one more layout:

_wb_ MES-1 v4 ("GÜVÖBÄNÑ") : http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/b6276c5e3640800937bf864eba313d1e

Meta/Shift on the left, based on the previous one but no more Shift+Meta, simple and clean labeling, only major languages, no § µ £ Å Æ Ø

(swapping _ and / in this one would look better, but it would break US-QWERTY positions)

 

[Grench]

And here is one more:

_wb_ MES-1 v5 ("DÖFÄGÅ") : http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/1722e6471a407736d417f2334c741cd4

Meta/Shift on the left, uses Shift+Meta all over the place (3 labels on most keys), fully "DOSBox compliant"

This proposal has all the symbols you can find on US-QWERTY, standard German QWERTZ, standard French AZERTY, and the standard Spanish QWERTY keyboard.

Literally all of them. Not a single little symbol is missing! It just barely fits by putting Shift+Meta labels on every Meta-symbol that does not have or need an upper case variant.

It also has all the letters needed for the Scandinavian languages; it can produce all Western European languages exactly as efficiently as on their original keyboards if you don't count the Meta shoulder button presses.

Is it cluttered? Yes.

Is it too cluttered? I'll let you judge that.

Is it possible to label the keys like this in a legible way? Yes, I think so.

Is this an ultra-multilingual layout? Yep.

Is that really necessary? I don't know, but I think it's pretty neat that it can be done.

Bonus: backspace, enter, tab and space are completely free of Meta labels, which looks nice imo. Also it has the advantage that Meta with those keys can default to the key itself, which means that you can do <punctuation> followed by <enter or space> combos without having to worry about releasing Meta fast enough.

Thank you for coming back to a viable layout. I could live with this one and generally like it. I would only make 2 changes/tweaks.

1. Swap the shoulder button assignments left to right so that Meta/Fn and shift are on the right shoulder in opposition of the keyboard meta/Fn and shift.

2. I know it's 'more clutter', but I would like to see the dotted circle return for the dedicated diacritics at Meta+keys to visually differentiate them from standard symbols. For me this would be a visual, "It has a dotted circle, I can ignore that." For people who need the diacritics it would be the opposite.

Otherwise, I think this is a solid alternative.

 

[Neelix]

Yeah I like that one too. 

I also agree with the idea of putting keyboard and shoulder meta+shift on opposite corners,   though personally I'd be more inclined to move the keyboard meta and shift to the lower right, rather than moving the shoulder button versions. (putting . and , back at the lower left)  While that might seem counter-intuitive to some I've gotten kind of used to it on the pandora.

- Neelix

 

[Grench]

Yeah I like that one too. 

I also agree with the idea of putting keyboard and shoulder meta+shift on opposite corners,   though personally I'd be more inclined to move the keyboard meta and shift to the lower right, rather than moving the shoulder button versions. (putting . and , back at the lower left)  While that might seem counter-intuitive to some I've gotten kind of used to it on the pandora.

- Neelix

I would be OK with that as well.

 

[codifies]

While it is a bit cluttered I could live with this too, I'm getting scared too many people agreeing :-o