It's the keyboard layout.

[benoitb]

Well, I have to admit azerty is not the most logical keyboard layout, with the "." being behind a shift while ":" nd "!" are direct-access.

 

[codifies]

Well, I have to admit azerty is not the most logical keyboard layout, with the "." being behind a shift while ":" nd "!" are direct-access.

Still its no excuse for casual racism, interesting how a personal attack was censured (rightly so) yet the racism slides by...

 

[comradekingu]

The pandora layout is a hack. Its a crux when you do the same thing when you dont have to.

wb: Why so cryptic, whats wrong with the US international diactric-symbols? And why not all of them?

The french will look for their letters on number row, because thats where they are used to finding them. Big and small versals with shift makes sense too, albeit isnt standard. All of which is only possible while maintaining more important things (US shiftrow symbols) by having a language-layer key.

US-International has only grave, tilde, acute, umlaut and circumflex. I have all of those, in the same spot as US-International (` ~ ' ") except for circumflex, because Meta+^ is already taken for Shift+F6. Unless of course you map to the "real" US-International, which makes ` ~ ' " ^ all dead keys, with no option to get just the symbol except by adding a space after the dead diacritic.

Of course you can always use my layout and set your keyboard layout to US-International, which means Right Alt (R2) becomes AltGr and you get ÅØÆ at AltGr+WLZ, and « »  ¬ ¶ ç ¡ ² ³ at AltGr+[ ] \ ; , 1 2 3 and so on. Could be practical if you are already familiar with US-International; in particular, for Spanish US-International is quite good since it has áéíóúñ easy to remember at AltGr+aeioun.

The French who expect to find AZERTY with éèà on the number row are screwed anyway, also in comradekingu's proposal, because we have QWERTY, not AZERTY the number row is misaligned, which is a big problem if it contains letters (imagine the QWERTY row shifted one position to the right w.r.t. the ASDF row). Perhaps you can expect French people to blindly swap AZ and QW and put M at L+1, but you can't expect them to blindly remember all of the AZERTY number row symbols, AltGr+symbols and punctuation symbols, which are completely different than on US-QWERTY.

No, I think it makes much more sense for French people to adjust to US-QWERTY, as long as they can type àèé reasonably efficiently (frequently used letters) and çùâêîôûäëïöü in some way (it doesn't have to be a single thumb press for those letters, but preferably something faster than a three-thumb-press Compose sequence).

But they can remember what button it was on when it wasnt on numbers at all? Number for number is still better than something new, or a different system.

 

[_wb_]

Well, I have to admit azerty is not the most logical keyboard layout, with the "." being behind a shift while ":" nd "!" are direct-access.

Still its no excuse for casual racism, interesting how a personal attack was censured (rightly so) yet the racism slides by...

"French" is not a race though

Anyway, moving on, should we continue to explore the "left-aligned" option à la http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/bcb0a44b3ad7a399117c436f7266b0a8

or should we stick to the "centered" approach à la http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/0b99ecad9af3db480acff3346300446b

?

Here is a variant on the "left-aligned" approach:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/228495bde6c2da2b042b634d168df24a

It allows you to keep primary , . when remapping primary üöä/åöä/åøæ/åæø, at the cost of losing Tab and keyboard shift, and moving - + to the Meta layer. Those who don't need those three extra letters get a dedicated dash/minus key, near its normal spot.

 

[codifies]

"French" is not a race though

The French - refers to the race of people living in France...

And you can use a baguette as a stylus for the touchscreen.

Yeah - quite ingrained with you isn't it

regarding the layout left or right oriented - The majority of people are right handed ("Studies suggest that 70–90%" according to wikipedia) so holding modifiers with the left thumb and pressing different targets accurately with the right would seem easiest for the majority?

 

[sebt3]

And you can use a baguette as a stylus for the touchscreen.

This passive-agressive comment is far from welcomed here.


Insult is the arguements when someone have nothing more to add to his point of view.


You failed, hard

Retracted just like you did fair enough

The French - refers to the race of people living in France...

Yet, still *not* a race. Our race is Western European but dont cover only France

 

[ible]

perhaps this thread should be locked. it's a little off topic and things seem to be getting a bit too heated.

let's cool our keyboard-making jets and wait for the inevitable news.

 

[codifies]

Yet, still a race. Our race is Western European but dont cover only France

Alas I wish Europe really was that united...

I too think we'd all be better off from a few weeks off from thinking about keyboards...


Maybe it might allow people time to take on board other peoples ideas and allow a melding of all the best ideas.

 

[Grench]

Anyway, moving on, should we continue to explore the "left-aligned" option à la http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/bcb0a44b3ad7a399117c436f7266b0a8

or should we stick to the "centered" approach à la http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/0b99ecad9af3db480acff3346300446b

?

Here is a variant on the "left-aligned" approach:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/228495bde6c2da2b042b634d168df24a

It allows you to keep primary , . when remapping primary üöä/åöä/åøæ/åæø, at the cost of losing Tab and keyboard shift, and moving - + to the Meta layer. Those who don't need those three extra letters get a dedicated dash/minus key, near its normal spot.

I'm not a fan of the 'left aligned' designs, but if there were a version with properly paired symbols I might give it more consideration. ('DosBox compliant') Symbol pairs are broken and spread all over the place.

The above centered version is still a failure to me. Again, symbol pairs are broken and spread all over the place.

Some of your newer ideas (Greek and math on dead keys) are interesting, but frankly, I can't stand the rest of the layout they're being applied to.

Maybe a hybrid of these two?

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/0b99ecad9af3db480acff3346300446b

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/467f092b9169fe6c6b411baa5a39beeb

I don't have time to make one today.

 

[_wb_]

Here's a Grench-compatible left-aligned layout with comradekingu-style P+1, L+2 remapping options:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/3beb632035d15fd830271fb1c937c4ac

Biggest problem: keyboard Meta and Shift cannot be mashed, so {}|~_+?: are not comfortable using the keyboard alone (you would have to do Shift+Meta first to get sticky ShiftMeta, then the letter key that has the symbol). Of course those who use shoulder button modifiers don't have this problem.

 

[_wb_]

Here is a somewhat more radical layout idea:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/88ca710d77cf497fc9fe352211a409f6

• Grench/DOSBox compliant
• no Meta in the lower keyboard section, it moved to the Pandora logo key
• no primary Tab
• lots of primary punctuation keys:  ; ' , . -
• letters which often have diacritics (vowels AEIOU, also S for ߪŠ, Z for ŽŻ, C for ÇČ and N for Ñ) don't have a Meta label, so language-specific stuff can be mapped there
• P+1, L+2 are important-but-not-so-important punctuation symbols, so they can become Meta keys and primary ÅØÆ or ÜÖÄ etc can be mapped there

 

[_jr_]

Thanks, I was thinking of something along this line for the last days. Why not go all the way and remove all non printing keys from the main area and all modifiers from keys, e.g. change: keyboard Alt to INS, keyboard Ctrl to DEL, INS to BS, DEL to Enter, BS to -, - to [, Enter to ]. This leaves the main keayboard area with just 4 symbol meta bindings (besides F keys and without counting currency, math, and greek): ` = / \ as well as Tab. I'm not sure whether the keyboard shift should be the Meta or whether Tab or \ should be put there. Single width space would additionally allow / to be moved to where it belongs (and possibly enable a viable canadian french mapping). I admit that I have no clue whether this would actually be usable, but it seems to be as close to a real keyboard as it could possibly be.

 

[Grench]

Loss of mashable meta+shift makes both of those into a bit of a train wreck. I don't think that left-aligned with a double-wide trailer space is going to work.  The loss of functionality is just too much to overcome.

I made an attempt at left justified while retaining Fn+Shift capability.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/adb6cc0407b110afb2c312eddda04f9e

I'm not a fan of that one either.  To 'make it fit' I had to put backspace on Fn+space, which sort of makes sense in a cruel way AND the keys that had to go to the L+1 and P+2 (yes, I know...) are far too common to relegate to these 'remapping' positions.

I still like this one best:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/467f092b9169fe6c6b411baa5a39beeb

The only 'flaw' that seems to really bother people is the lack of a 'dedicated tab' button.  (Even though it's MUCH easier to use than the one on the Pandora.)

So, I started thinking - how to do that WITH a dedicated tab...

There wasn't as many screams of agony as I would have expected from a shifted over number line so...

Since backspace is anti-space, could be Fn+Space...

One of the things I like about the above example is that it maintains the main diacritic keys 'on top' so that they're Fn+key paired to their root symbols...

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/5cb09bc085edf78d3847f884cd527f23

I considered swapping Comp and Backspace, but backspace as anti-space as Fn+space was just too tempting.

 

[_wb_]

Talking about: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/5cb09bc085edf78d3847f884cd527f23

Backspace as a non-primary key is a huge no-go for me.

If you really want to misalign the number row to make room for `~ left to 1, then Backspace should be either where Enter is, or else it could be where Del is. Then the two extra action buttons could be Del and Backspace (there's a symmetry to that) and Ins could go on Meta+Space.

 

[bzar]

Yet, still a race. Our race is Western European but dont cover only France

Alas I wish Europe really was that united...

Race is a bad term for this. Ethnic group or national identity is probably closer to what you mean. There are no clear biological races within humans.

 

[comradekingu]

The issue is there for everyone else (period).

What about the Japanese? Do they expect us to believe Godzilla could traipse through Tokyo and not get a single foot splinter?  

I don't see what kind of significance your analogy has, but every other language that I know of make use of , and . as important linguistic traits, and use it habitually as dedicated buttons on keyboards.

To trade full alphabet for things you use a lot, especially for language (as the two then cant be combined) is solving one thing by creating something incompatible.

This question has been raised in a poll, and <> [ ] { } holds a majority of the total over ' " ` ~ delete and tab.

Ideally you could create a set and fit it into a layout that had more popularity, but [ ] { } is already expected on these buttons for English, which is the default.

<> is the button found only on 105-keyboards (not US).

 

[_wb_]

Thanks, I was thinking of something along this line for the last days. Why not go all the way and remove all non printing keys from the main area and all modifiers from keys, e.g. change: keyboard Alt to INS, keyboard Ctrl to DEL, INS to BS, DEL to Enter, BS to -, - to [, Enter to ]. This leaves the main keayboard area with just 4 symbol meta bindings (besides F keys and without counting currency, math, and greek): ` = / \ as well as Tab. I'm not sure whether the keyboard shift should be the Meta or whether Tab or \ should be put there. Single width space would additionally allow / to be moved to where it belongs (and possibly enable a viable canadian french mapping). I admit that I have no clue whether this would actually be usable, but it seems to be as close to a real keyboard as it could possibly be.

Yes, moving Backspace and Enter away gives interesting, though highly unorthodox possibilities:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/5cb09bc085edf78d3847f884cd527f23

Here is a left-aligned layout which has no modifiers at all in the main (lower) keyboard part:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/85a544c76edafa8b11f386e22f866442

At the Pandora ABXY, we get Del Backspace Enter Tab; the two new action buttons are PgUp and PgDn, and Home/End move to the very top.

Shift goes on the center row (so it can be pressed with both thumbs), Meta and Super go to the very top, which is not very convenient but good enough for tabletop typing.

I used German/most of Europe style punctuation: < > on a key on the left of Z, , : and . : as pairs. Slash, dash, plus, backtick and apostrophe ( / - + ` ' ) are all primary keys now. This means that all punctuation symbols commonly used in natural language and on the command line (except pipe) can be typed without Meta: comma period semicolon colon questionmark exclamationmark apostrophe quote dash slash underscore plus equals backtick tilde lessthan greaterthan ( , . ; : ? ! ' " - / _ + = ` ~ < > ) are all primary or shifted symbols!

But I suspect that completely unorthodox keymaps like this are just too different from the Pandora one to have a chance. It would be pretty nice though.

 

[Saber]

The issue is there for everyone else (period).

What about the Japanese? Do they expect us to believe Godzilla could traipse through Tokyo and not get a single foot splinter?  

I don't see what kind of significance your analogy has, but every other language that I know of make use of , and . as important linguistic traits, and use it habitually as dedicated buttons on keyboards.

Yes, but why discuss exhaustively something immaterial? Okay, Azerty has . under Shift. Good for all that. Lovely really but... it doesn't matter here(being the Pyra keyboard) as it will never come to be.

 

[comradekingu]

Because if everyone else expects , and . as primary functions on dedicated keys, swapping it out with their alphabet or other keys, is suboptimal. Making the default less standard, and the practice of getting full support rather pointless. The whole idea behind having all letters is because its more efficient, doing away with comma and dot reverts that back to in-efficient.

 

[Grench]

Talking about: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/5cb09bc085edf78d3847f884cd527f23

Backspace as a non-primary key is a huge no-go for me.

If you really want to misalign the number row to make room for `~ left to 1, then Backspace should be either where Enter is, or else it could be where Del is. Then the two extra action buttons could be Del and Backspace (there's a symmetry to that) and Ins could go on Meta+Space.

That brings up a bit of 'spatial analysis'.

We have a lot of keys that we want to be 'primary' in the main keyboard area.  There are also 'sets' that shouldn't be broken up.

01 `~ Diacritic base

01 '" Diacritic base

10 1234567890

01Backspace

01Tab

10 QWERTYUIOP

09 ASDFGHJKL

01 Enter

07 ZXCVBNM

02 ,< and .> Diacritic base

02 Shift and FnMetaGeorge

01 Space

So we want 46 items in total on primary keys.  The Pyra has 45 primary keys.  Many of these are, 'ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE'.

-04 The Diacritic Base keys cannot move to FnMetaGeorge layer or loose their intuitive nature as there would need to be TWO labels for each of these symbols, one for the key and a whole other key for the diacritic.

-26 The letter keys aren't going anywhere.

-01 Enter MUST be present

-02 Shift and FnMetaGeorge MUST be present 

-10 Number keys...  I could sink those a layer deep, but people claim it's bad, so they have to be top layer.

-01 Space MUST be present on it's big double wide trailer button - it would be too confusing not to be.

So, that uses 44 of our 45 keys and we haven't put Tab or Backspace in yet.

Pick one.  Tab or Backspace MUST be on the Fn+Space key.

Version with Tab on Fn+space key:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/467f092b9169fe6c6b411baa5a39beeb

Version with Backspace on Fn+space key:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/5cb09bc085edf78d3847f884cd527f23

The option behind curtain #3 is to completely hose up the diacritics by making the `~ or '" diacritics not actually on the `~ and '" keys - which is a visual and usability mess.

So, pick one.  Tab or Backspace.  Which one can't live on Fn+space?

OR we could shift QWERTYUIOP up a row and put the 1234567890 on the Fn layer.  THAT frees up a whole pile of keys.