It's the keyboard layout.

[thatgui]

Screen brightness keys have been discussed to death in other keyboard threads.  ED may or may not be open to changing things, so feel free to provide a solution you think maximizes other keys.

Maybe one button with and "infinite increment": bl(=brightness level)1=>[press]=>bl2=>[press]=>....=>bln=>[press]bl1=>... ?

 

[Kiga]

I also think that ßÄÖÜ should be unlabeled as it's useless because you just have to put them on BAOU and everybody will remember.

3 shift is an overkill as everyone will always use the same or maximum two.  I'd replace one by a dedicated Esc key.

 

[dimag0g]

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 don't see much difference in importance between accented letters and "letters on their own". In French, "a" and "à" are both valid words, and so are "préfère" and "préféré". It would be just fair that everyone use the same input method, and since there is not enough keys for every need, it's got to be a compose key of some sort.

 

[dimag0g]

I also think that ßÄÖÜ should be unlabeled as it's useless because you just have to put them on BAOU and everybody will remember.

ß is an S rather than a B. But I agree that labeling is not needed here.

 

[Saber]

This is a big big if here, but if diacritics usurped the German umlauts by default under AltGr, I'd place them as so:

AltGr + u for umlaut

AltGr + i for circumflex

AltGr + j for dead grave

AltGr + k for acute

Eszett could be at AltGr + l or relegated to Compose mode, s + s. Eszett, Euro, and Micro can still be used for remappers.

Concerning a single Shift key, I don't know the why, but there may be technical reasons why there wasn't a sticky Shift keyboard key on the Pandora. This may or may not apply also to the Pyra. 

For Mr Loon,

SysRq, or rather Magic SysRq by holding SysRq with an Alt key, was asked for by others so it's in this layout for now. 

 

[_wb_]

I like the position of the äöß and so on keys as they are now, and I think like B-zar that it is reasonable to call that block "international keys" or something, and then expect a good tool to switch in different highly used national keys there. I don't think it is worth it to try to move stuff to letter-likenesses (putting Ö under O), because that means more extensive remappings for different national mappings. That does not mean that we do not need a compose possibility - we need the ability to write glyphs that are not in our most used set, too - but there must be a possibility to make the keyboard minimally usable for writing text in non-english languages without having to play "hela havet stormar" with all the keys in order to fit the foreign characters in. A block of "international keys" does just that.

You seem to be assuming that a block of 3-4 keys is enough for everyone. This is true for German and the Scandinavian languages, but most other European languages need more than that.

Anyway, I don't see why grouping the "international keys" in a compact block (i.e. ßÜÖÄ at UIJK) would make remapping any easier than putting them at letter-likeness-based positions (i.e. ßÜÖÄ at SUOA). In terms of remapping effort, I see no difference at all. Mnemonically there could be a difference: if you're used to typing on a full-size German or Swedish keyboard, then perhaps having those keys closer to their normal spot and in the same relative positions may help if you're relying on a kind of muscle memory, though I'm not sure about that.

I would argue to keep both options open: do not print any labels for international keys, and let the user decide how to remap.

Here's a slightly modified version of my proposal, and an illustration:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/aa7b3e57dbbb952bcc724a2d051b0c9c

The blue and green would not be printed, it's just to show some options for remapping. Green would be to get a block-style Norwegian layout, blue would be to get letter-likeness-based German layout. As you can see, you can even combine two languages if you want.

 

[moxie]

Nah, I think 3-4 keys are enough for the most used letters, not all of them.

And the problem with mapping-by-letterlikeness is that it usually does not work like that. Sure, O and Ö is similar in shape, but nobody thinks of Ö as a modified O, and thus O is not really the logical place to look for it. Not to mention that neither Å nor Ä is a modified A, and if they were, which one would be on A?

Swedish people would be looking for a triangular key group - Å to the right of P and ÖÄ to the right of L. Failing that, they will expect the same kind of general three-key shape somewhere else. They will most certainly not be looking under A.

And the point of blocking them together would be to make it possible for other glyphs to have standardised places, so that you could print i.e. a euro sign on the E (if that's what you'd like) and not have to bother that the printed glyph won't match the given one if you remap to a norwegian keymap. To be able to keep most of the keymap the same, no matter the language, for consistency.

 

[_wb_]

Nah, I think 3-4 keys are enough for the most used letters, not all of them.

French keyboards have dedicated keys for é è ç à ù, and a dedicated dead key circumflex and diaeresis.

Polish keyboards have Ł ż ą ó ś ń ć ź ę.

Spanish keyboards have ç ñ ¡¿ and dead acute, grave, circumflex, diaeresis.

Italian keyboards have à è ì ò ù ç é.

Czech keyboards have ě š č ř ž ý á í é ů ú.

Hungarian keyboards have ö ü ó ő ú é á ű í.

Can you for each of these languages tell me precisely which 3-4 keys would be enough?

 

[dimag0g]

Much as I hate compose keys while typing, it's the only way we can:

a ) accommodate all those special letters on a small keyboard and

b ) remain consistent about what you print on the physical keys, no matter the language.

People who type in their language a lot will have to use xmodmap and remember which key is which. It will be easy for German (so please don't print ßÄÖÜ on physical keys!), and perhaps harder for other languages, but that's as good as I can see it.

 

[fusion_power]

It could be an solution to have an option to setup the special letters for your keyboard per software. So if it's set to german, you have ä ö ü if you press the special buttons, if set to another language you may have à ú ó at the same buttons or whatever, without the need to have a special button combo to press or different printings for the keyboard.

 

[CrystalGamma]

Nah, I think 3-4 keys are enough for the most used letters, not all of them.

And the problem with mapping-by-letterlikeness is that it usually does not work like that. Sure, O and Ö is similar in shape, but nobody thinks of Ö as a modified O, and thus O is not really the logical place to look for it.

Well, I do: (in German) Ö (/ø/) is the front equivalent of O (/o/) and Ü (/y/) of U (/u/) ... I often catch myself typing u when I meant to write ü (intending to add the dots later, as you would in handwriting).

I, for one, would welcome an easy-to-reach dead key for the diaraesis/umlaut diacritic. (Hell, I prefer dead keys on my desktop KB and was annoyed by the change of the ~ behavior in the default German layout of XKB, thankfully we still have the "legacy" layout).

 

[dimag0g]

It could be an solution to have an option to setup the special letters for your keyboard per software. So if it's set to german, you have ä ö ü if you press the special buttons, if set to another language you may have à ú ó at the same buttons or whatever, without the need to have a special button combo to press or different printings for the keyboard.

If I'm not mistaken, this software is called xmodmap and that's exactly what I have in mind. But having a default can-input-them-all layout with a compose key still seems like a good idea to me.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

Everyone, please read the thread before writing. 8 pages in now, I find the number of comments that have been aptly demonstrating imprudence, by reinventing concepts that had already been introduced by other people before in this exact same thread, to be disappointingly high.

French keyboards have dedicated keys for é è ç à ù, and a dedicated dead key circumflex and diaeresis.

Polish keyboards have Ł ż ą ó ś ń ć ź ę.

Spanish keyboards have ç ñ ¡¿ and dead acute, gravoe, circumflex, diaeresis.

Italian keyboards have à è ì ò ù ç é.

Czech keyboards have ě š č ř ž ý á í é ů ú.

Hungarian keyboards have ö ü ó ő ú é á ű í.

Can you for each of these languages tell me precisely which 3-4 keys would be enough?

...I think I might be missing something here, is there any reason that there cannot or should not be (>=)11 "customizable" blanks instead of 3-4, other than that memorizing them might be more difficult?
I would think that everyone who speaks a language with a significant number of non-ASCII letters would always really like it if ALL(-ish?) of these letters were located /somewhere/ on an easily accessible keyboard meta layer, compared to the cumbersome compose-typing, even if those letters aren't visible on the physical keys. Maybe instead of physically printing any of those letters onto the "customizable" slots, it would be better to print a set of more generic symbols ("a set" meaning that they share a common appearance, random example: circles with numbers in them), and instead make the customization software really helpful.

 

[sebt3]

French keyboards have dedicated keys for é è ç à ù, and a dedicated dead key circumflex and diaeresis.

Polish keyboards have Ł ż ą ó ś ń ć ź ę.

Spanish keyboards have ç ñ ¡¿ and dead acute, grave, circumflex, diaeresis.

Italian keyboards have à è ì ò ù ç é.

Czech keyboards have ě š č ř ž ý á í é ů ú.

Hungarian keyboards have ö ü ó ő ú é á ű í.

Can you for each of these languages tell me precisely which 3-4 keys would be enough?

I would go for dedicated dead keys for most accent type é`^¨ñ. You can forget the ¸ for french as it's scarcly used. with theses 5 I think you cover the most languages

 

[Grench]

Numbers top row and top line.

Should be DosBox compliant.

Internationalized for English, German, French and Spanish.

Room for upper/lower for 5 more letters (in numeric section) or 10 more symbols.

Fn+shift is chordable by right thumb or left fingers. All symbols present easily available.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/1b69e4582033cc5e5a0060623784a86f

Enjoy.

Just realized I left an extra tab key set in - don't panic. We can pick which we prefer - dedicated or combined with space.

 

[slaeshjag]

^ My only complaint is the alt-gr alternate function for space

 

[Grench]

^ My only complaint is the alt-gr alternate function for space

So you don't like the tab functionality on the space but prefer the dedicated position on the left. (Currently layout shows both options.)

What would you rather have as an alt-gr (Fn) on the space bar? Or should it not have one? (simply be space)

Fortunately, using this method there are -lots- of keys to play with.

 

[slaeshjag]

Space does have a few defined features in combination with alt-gr, so it should probably be left unmapped.

 

[Grench]

Space does have a few defined features in combination with alt-gr, so it should probably be left unmapped.

Fixed / updated.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/cd0430879fc6886e4a8b5ce36e9bf88d


Edit:


Added a few more keys from a 'real keyboard' as Fn alternates for center keys.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/044c50106e552ce71e4c6d097d3e5412


Additional refinement - swapped left alt & ctrl to put ctrl in the lower left corner where it should be.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/0fcd2e9fb211a0a8905e74637508827c

Fixed some old mapping hiding behind the new mapping:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/9f2a8a43865dd6e20b675ae69a52b983

Color reduction - got rid of blue and green to simplify printing.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/20b071525e2343dcc4728577f0e24c83

 

[WizardStan]

Color reduction - got rid of blue and green to simplify printing.

I want to complain that F1 should be Fn-1 (etc...) but I can't justify that. It only makes sense historically and ... uh... lexiconically? As if both being numeric means they are related and should therefore be on the same keys. But those are both poor arguments. It may seem a little weird at first but I think ultimately we need to accept, it works.People can fight over the international keys that go on A,S,D,F,Z,X,C,V,4,5,6,7,8, and even 3 if they want, but for the rest of the "standard" keys I think you nailed it. Maybe we fight about the location of " vs @ some more but otherwise I like it.