I might be posting in the wrong thread, likely this post is totally worthless anyway and I definitely haven't read up on this thread up to this point as whatever layout you decide on I will destroy as soon as I get my hands on my Pyra.
But I want to share what changes I made to the
Pandora keymap to make it "just work" for me. I.e. this is what I use daily and this will give some idea of what I'll be doing to the Pyra too, in time...
The change described in a moment has been incremental in many ways: I tweaked it to this point, but am unlikely to tweak further as no new needs have popped up for quite a while...
So... you will want to look at a Pandora when reading this, I'm typing this on mine.
X in gamekeys is enter, Y is space (real nice in many games), A and B are left and right mouse by default, but also joystick 1 or 2, joystick 1 or right Amiga, it all depends on what I want at a given moment for a given game or emu...
Gamekeys can be switched to second mode with CTRL-PowerswitchFlipRight, they become what I tag as "redundant weirdo keys" sometimes needed for games: CapsLock, NumLock,ScrollLock,Break/SysRq. It is just easier to have these behind a switch than not at all or in some SDL trickery...
The Pandora key is a Fn-like modifier for me. So Pandora+Up,Down does PageUp and PageDown, Pandora+Left,Right is Home,End.
Pandora+A,B,Y,X are keypad minus, kpplus, kpdel and kpenter. The minus and plus have proven really practical for throttling in for example flightsims.
Pandora is modifier, because I can easily reach it with both of my thumbs from either side of the keyboard when tabletyping. This modifier is mapped to two keys: right trigger is also Pandora except when triggers are switched to mousekeys.
CTRL is left shift (again reachable symmetrically), left trigger is also left shift except when swithed to mousebutton. Having modifier next to shift is important because they are often pressed at the same time (learned the hard way... crampy days...).
Triggers are switchable to mousekeys with keycombo ALT-powerflip right.
Because of the two powerswitch flip modes, I had to expose those flips to dwm status bar and also to software (so I know they are not on when I type in a password to locked screen) I did this by adding a couple of integer reading/writing proc-nodes. So now I can see at a glance what mode I am in from the screen. So, not confusing at all though all "switch modes" might seem like it at first.
But actually I use the extra modes quite rarely (mousetriggers more often, "redundant keys" practically never).
Anyway... last "game area" key: ALT is now a META for handling windows etc. It also allows me to control SDL (switching gamekeys A and B to joystick mode, panning, switching left nub and direction pad to joystick mode, etc.). And once again:good place for it, because of symmetry.
Now the main keyboard, it is practically totally rewritten as you can probably figure out already from the above:
Space is tab. I hate it that space takes up two keys. Easily reachable key gone to waste right there...
My numberkeys have the same shifted symbols as your regular PC US keyboard... took me all of 5 minutes to "unlearn" the odd Pandora default setup when I switched that... Numbers modded are functionkeys, of course.
Shift is left control, enter is right control (Why some of these changes? Answer to most: they are practical in case an emugame uses both and also reachable with both hands when I type on a desk).
LessThan is left ALT, GreaterThan is ALTGr (i.e. the right ALT).Fn is right shift (out of the way when thumbing, nice for the pinky on the desk).
The missing pieces are all behind the Fn-like Pandora modkey (or right trigger key).
Q is still Esc, but moving right from Q I got an actual numeric keypad while holding the mod. Again. nice for some sims. So: w,a,. --> keypad 7,4,1 etc. Keypad ends around halfway the keyboard, so g is ` and like its supposed to, shifted it gives a ~. Above it modded Y is INS, below it modded V is KPDOT. And after that I guess I'll just give you the symbols as it's pretty self explanatory:
uiop is -=\ and F12
hjkl is [];'
bnm is ,./
These work like in a PC US keyboard when shifted, so I often press both triggers, or when typing on a table just stick my thumb in Pandora and CTRL (they are nicely right there in the middle and next to each other, slighly distanced from others so no accidental presses
.
Especially the keypad area gets very little use, but when I sorted the keyboard I kind of figured "what the heck" and dumped it there because I had so many keys to spare. In fact I even got some national characters and the symbol ½ mapped to some modifierkeys for convenience.
I might do one final improvement: numeric keypad lock for some games which use NE, SE, SW and NW constantly for controlling (some old PC games do... not very interesting ones, though...).
Just thought I'd share this info in case it gives anyone any ideas. Sharing the actual setup would be quite a bit trickier, since it is a very hacky combination of kernel modifications (some of which I would not put into production as-is, but hey, these are for me me me ;-), xmodmapping and even some code changes to my WM and SDL - it all really interoperates and is not out-of-the-box usable as parts.
Oh... just looking at the original Pandora keys, I do not have brightness up/down - I got three levels, bright, medium, dim, which rotate by flicking the powerswitch right. And I don't do FnLocks ever... does anyone, really?-) So no key for that.
Powerswitch left puts my Pandora to low CPU speed, no WLAN, activate lockscreen, disable display. Returning powerswitch to middle wakes it up and asks for password.
Simply closing the lid keeps everything but the display up and running, usable when compiling or downloading...
But that last bit had nothing to do with keyboard. Sorry. Once again, I've rambled enough for now, ask in case you wonder about anything.
