Keymat Layout - the Final Poll!

[Saber]

^

I seem to have a shadow stalking me on this board. Must be a lucky number day.

Here is my attempt to start from layout 7 and rework it to take the best elements from the other proposals with many votes:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/6c42d11dbc48dd6de88a0b05f20eebe0

We need more attempts like yours, but you may want to recirculate some of the symbols, like - + _ = as they are exiled too close to the middle. Also, braces ( and ) on Shift 9 and 0 still unreachable with left thumb when using the only keyboard Shift on the right.

 

[Haraldur]

Suggestion for a temporary rule for this topic: ban the keyboard-layout designers from posting in this topic, or, at least, from replying to each other.

 

[hitbyambulance]

whichever one ED likes the most is the one i vote for.

So you vote for people and not for the actual choice? 

in this case, yes. 

- i don't have enough experience with handheld keyboards to make an informed decision (as i don't have a Pandora, for one), other than it should be well suited for English (Germanic language) typists, so

- i trust ED will make the best decision in this regard.

 

[Grench]

Suggestion for a temporary rule for this topic: ban the keyboard-layout designers from posting in this topic, or, at least, from replying to each other.

Outright banning us all from posting to the topic would be OK.

Banning us from replying to each other would digress rapidly into a series of posts from a few people bashing other people's layouts in a negative campaign style - with no response. That last part is a problem because, as we've already seen, there are a few who are not above fabricating negatives or harping on the inconsequential as if the sky were on fire.

But outright excluding all of us from the conversation might work. It's hard to answer legitimate questions that way though.

Maybe set a rule where we are ONLY allowed to comment or answer questions about layouts or features that we are a proponent of. That might work. Only positive statements allowed from the designers. I can be on board with that.

 

[fusion_power]

I'm just blind or do some layouts completely missing the "!" Exclamation mark? "

Not sure why layout 7 is so popular, I'm more for layout 1 but still can't decide. It may be a good decission from ED to check for the most voted layouts and merge them into one final layout.

 

[Haraldur]

Maybe set a rule where we are ONLY allowed to comment or answer questions about layouts or features that we are a proponent of. That might work. Only positive statements allowed from the designers. I can be on board with that.

Even better.  I tend to skip over the long exchanges.

 

[Saber]

Suggestion for a temporary rule for this topic: ban the keyboard-layout designers from posting in this topic, or, at least, from replying to each other.

Outright banning us all from posting to the topic would be OK.


Banning us from replying to each other would digress rapidly into a series of posts from a few people bashing other people's layouts in a negative campaign style - with no response. That last part is a problem because, as we've already seen, there are a few who are not above fabricating negatives or harping on the inconsequential as if the sky were on fire.


But outright excluding all of us from the conversation might work. It's hard to answer legitimate questions that way though.


Maybe set a rule where we are ONLY allowed to comment or answer questions about layouts or features that we are a proponent of. That might work. Only positive statements allowed from the designers. I can be on board with that.

Ban people working on the layouts from arbitrarily exchanging their thoughts with one another. Brilliant.  :rolleyes:

 

[Grench]

I'm just blind or do some layouts completely missing the "!" Exclamation mark? "

Not sure why layout 7 is so popular, I'm more for layout 1 but still can't decide. It may be a good decission from ED to check for the most voted layouts and merge them into one final layout.

All of the keyboards have ! at shift+1. It looks like the fonts used did not survive the image processing to get into poll format well.

To me, the biggest thematic difference between 1 and 7 is the placement of the Esc key. Otherwise they are very similar.

If you can't decide between 2-3 of them, then vote for all 2-3 that you think fit the needs. Voting for multiple layouts that you like was not discouraged in ED's original post and the poll accepts multiple entries.

 

[Grench]

Suggestion for a temporary rule for this topic: ban the keyboard-layout designers from posting in this topic, or, at least, from replying to each other.

Outright banning us all from posting to the topic would be OK.

Banning us from replying to each other would digress rapidly into a series of posts from a few people bashing other people's layouts in a negative campaign style - with no response. That last part is a problem because, as we've already seen, there are a few who are not above fabricating negatives or harping on the inconsequential as if the sky were on fire.

But outright excluding all of us from the conversation might work. It's hard to answer legitimate questions that way though.

Maybe set a rule where we are ONLY allowed to comment or answer questions about layouts or features that we are a proponent of. That might work. Only positive statements allowed from the designers. I can be on board with that.

Ban people working on the layouts from arbitrarily exchanging their thoughts with one another. Brilliant.  :rolleyes:

We're past that point though. We've exchanged ideas and suggestions. Some people liked particular ideas - others did not. That is why we have a set of fractured results now. We'll let the community give it's input on what, thematically, they prefer. Then ED can decide what the final looks like or pick one to use as a new 'base' to build additional permutations on or declare a committee to assist him.

Any way it shakes out, though, the negative campaigning by bashing other layouts to try to gain favor isn't appropriate in this thread. That is politicking for votes - not exchanging ideas for development. If you want to exchange development ideas, that's what the last dozen keyboard threads were about.

 

[comradekingu]

So lets try to look beyond the numbers and compromise here:

The most popular is layout 7 at 25%, which is less than ideal, so I think many things fail for a multitude of reasons:

It works ok, and includes a managable way to type for germans, however it is only germans and a little bit of french, not where its supposed to be, and it is Fn-typing. Not optimal.

The alternative is numbers not primary, which isn't good, but dedicated german keys are, lets do both.

The same layout does the US pairs, a unique quality, which is incompatible with this noob-friendliness, so there are atleast two things to work from.

There is a problem at backspace, solution, move orangebutton to PrtScr (which can go away) and switch things around to implement backspace somewhere dedicated.

Getting rid of doublewide space helps too. This fixes a lot of issues, some way to go still.

So what about the ones that tried to do the same language support, 8 and 9, they actually appear not to, which fails, and it has no stated F-keys, nor a stated way to do the actual switching, total fail. Advanced users do not like this.

It is however compatible with noobs, so lets try not to lose them.

Clutter is bad, so it all needs to happen as visually non-intrusive as possible. This is the best I can do, which also is better in a lot of ways people do care about than 8.

One common big mishap to avoid is unergonomic and often used keys, like ? on the same side as their keyboard modifier, lets avoid that. Layout 4 does, but is too weird with the ESC.

Another such big mishap is accidental Fn presses, which compares to being able to input F-keys with shoulders, the only downside to avoiding it.

Everything needs to be communicated, and explaining things is out of question.

 

[FaeMinx]

I'm going to wait till the 11th hour to vote.


Who needs soapies when one has keyboard threads?

 

[Saber]

Suggestion for a temporary rule for this topic: ban the keyboard-layout designers from posting in this topic, or, at least, from replying to each other.

Outright banning us all from posting to the topic would be OK.


Banning us from replying to each other would digress rapidly into a series of posts from a few people bashing other people's layouts in a negative campaign style - with no response. That last part is a problem because, as we've already seen, there are a few who are not above fabricating negatives or harping on the inconsequential as if the sky were on fire.


But outright excluding all of us from the conversation might work. It's hard to answer legitimate questions that way though.


Maybe set a rule where we are ONLY allowed to comment or answer questions about layouts or features that we are a proponent of. That might work. Only positive statements allowed from the designers. I can be on board with that.

Ban people working on the layouts from arbitrarily exchanging their thoughts with one another. Brilliant.  :rolleyes:

We're past that point though. We've exchanged ideas and suggestions. Some people liked particular ideas - others did not. That is why we have a set of fractured results now. We'll let the community give it's input on what, thematically, they prefer. Then ED can decide what the final looks like or pick one to use as a new 'base' to build additional permutations on or declare a committee to assist him.


Any way it shakes out, though, the negative campaigning by bashing other layouts to try to gain favor isn't appropriate in this thread. That is politicking for votes - not exchanging ideas for development. If you want to exchange development ideas, that's what the last dozen keyboard threads were about.

Maybe your well is dry creatively but others aren't. We shouldn't be delusional here and place too much weight in this poll or as you see it, distort things in your head, by thinking in terms of curbing favor in the vote. Resigning our thinking to what is behind or just in front of us will only deliver us a patchwork of a keyboard layout. 

 

[Caine]

Pfew, that was quite a study. Apologies in advance for my way too long motivation for my choices.

I am in favour of layouts 7, 6 and 1.

While layout 6 has some very strong points going for it, my biggest fear with it is that its merits will be poorly understood and the keyboard will be deemed weird by most. This has the potential to negatively affect reviews.

Overal themes I like in the layouts mentioned:

• Modifier placement.Shift & Fn on shoulders on one side and on keyboard on the other. This avoids finger acrobatics when having to press a shifted/Fn'ed key on the same side as the modifier. A very important quality to me. When typing tabletop this is much less of a constraint as the pinky can easily hit the modifiers.
  
  Also, slight preference for Ctrl/Alt on the right due to Emacs usage (Ctrl + x, Ctrl + c are very common prefix combinations. Many common combinations of the left side of the keyboard).
  
• True "dosbox compatibility" (layout 6) or cheat-sheet dosbox compatibility layout 7 and to a lesser degree layout 1.
  "Dosbox compatibility" is about maintaining the same assumptions about the keyboard layout as the most commonly target keyboard layout (US qwerty).
  
  This avoids key combination conflicts which lessens the need for developers to completely rethink keyboard shortcut design (which is a highly non-trivial semantic adaption when porting software). It also aids my memory due to pairing keys as they are ingrained in my mind.
  
• Logical positioning of keys on the keyboard. I.e. the closer to the "usual" position the better (primarily for US qwerty, secondary for German and then for the others, such as e.g. French). I personally only care for US qwerty, but the Pyra is a German device.
• Availability of international keys and diacritics
• Absence of layout design mistakes E.g. key up/down behaviour is poorly defined when a key occurs twice, therefore triple modifier keys is wrong.E.g. two key-down events of the same key without a key-up event in between should not be possible, this can lead to weird behaviour and needs special treatment in the driver. I am not convinced the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
  
• Ease of use for Typing, programming, gaming as well as ease of Emacs, Awesome Wm, console and Vim usage.I do these things a lot. They are important to me and I believe they are useful for others. Naturally I understand that my heavy Emacs usage is the exception not the rule, but for me portable Emacs is the primary use-case of the Pyra. Similarly, I intend to run awesome wm on the Pyra. I would very much like to have a free modifier which I can utilize as my window-manager modifier key.
  
• Gaming buttonsThere seems to be concensus on this with the exception of one aspect: ins vs backspace. I simply prefer ins on the gaming keys. It feels more logical and familiar that way. More tidy. I can live with it either way though.
  
• My detailed ascii evaluation table:
  
  
  Spoiler

  | | Modifier | Dosbox compliance / | Key | International | Mistakes | |
  | Layout | placement | Shift pairing | Placement | Keys | | Comment |
  |--------+-----------------------+----------------------+-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-----------------------------------|
  | 1 | very good | Neutral (*4) | Good | good german & french | | |
  | 2 | bad | Good | Bad/Neutral backspace, ,<.> | good german & french | Fn+backspace conflicts while gaming | Math, Greek? Too uncommon, remove |
  | 3 | very bad (*1) | Good | Good | good german, diacritics | Super, SysRq (not entirely sure) | |
  | 4 | very good | Bad (no system) | Bad, random, () misplaced | decent german (no paragraph), | | |
  | | | | | french diacritic, bit of spanish | | |
  | 5 | neutral, see mistakes | Bad " | Bad, random, quote section messy | mainly compose based? | triple shift | |
  | 6 | good (*2) | Excellent! | Good, but odd | very good, multilingual | | Might feel weird to the masses |
  | | | US Qwerty compliant! | | with extensive diacritics | | |
  | 7 | very good | Good | Very good, systematic | good german & french | | |
  | 8 | very bad (*3) | Bad (no system) | impossible --> single width space | DIY, clear keys mappable, w/o labels | four alt keys, function keys | |
  | 9 | very bad (*3) | Bad (no system) | Bad/neutral | DIY | four alt keys, function keys | |
  | 10 | neutral, see mistakes | Bad (no system) | Neutral | good german, french diacritics | triple shift | |
  | 11 | very good | Bad () ~` | Bad/neutral, () misplaced, ~` | good german & french | | |
  (*1) Super is a key of its own, not a replacement for Meta or Fn.It is my preferred modifier for Awesome-wm and should be accessible both tabletop and handheld.
  
  Also, there is no shoulder Fn possible due to this.
  
  (*2) This satisfies the left/right modifiers but violates Ctrl+Alt on the right. There is no
  
  easy way to fix this without violating the regular ,< .> /? placement but it hurts emacs usage
  
  and Pandora backwards compatibility.
  
  (*3) Weird Fn placement, function keys not clear (is that Fn+number? What about F11 and F12?)
  
  Also, the super key is missing. I need that modifier.
  
  (*4) -_ placement is decoupled and <> swapped with ;:
  Disqualifiers:
  
  - 3, 8 and 9 have issues with their modifiers. Therefore they fail my acceptance criteria.
  
  - 5 and 10 need to remove their extra shift keys
  
  - 8 and 9 need to adjust their quadruple alt.
  
  Strong layouts
  
  - 1 scores good, I prefer the regular ,< .> vs the way chosen and some shifted pairs could be better
  
  - 6 is an extremely strong layout. It does require shifted Fn and is certainly the odd-one-out. As said, I fear it might be perceived as complex and weird despite all its merits
  
  - 7 is an extremely strong layout. Good balance of known placement, US compatibility and international support.
  
  Disclaimer:
  
  These metrics are based on my own perception. I do not use international keys and cannot comment on the nativeness of their placement very well.
  
  Saber, comradekingu. Design wise I have been more in the Grench and _wb_ camp and thus I may come accross very critical on some decisions in your layouts. However, I wish to express my gratitude to you guys for working so hard on this for the past months. You have greatly influenced the discussion and given clear alternatives to the other layouts. This is always a good thing. Thank you guys for offering a choice.
  
  Likewise, my thanks to all the others for the countless hours spent on refining the designs. I regret I could not participate as actively this time as I would have liked. Most of the discussion I spent lurking on the side. That said, I enjoyed the discussion and applaud all of your efforts to make the best of this in spite of the animosity that the community tends to express towards keyboard layout discussions. I have learned a lot during the past months. My thanks for that, I hope many more interesting discussions will follow in the future.
  

 

[Neelix]

The most popular is layout 7 at 25%

Actually Layout 7 is at 44.3%. (the forum software doesn't calculate the percentages properly for multi-choice polls)

Layout 1 is at 32.8% and layout 10 is at 23.7%

-Neelix

 

[comradekingu]

Id be comfortable at 80%+

 

[_wb_]

^

I seem to have a shadow stalking me on this board. Must be a lucky number day.

Here is my attempt to start from layout 7 and rework it to take the best elements from the other proposals with many votes:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/6c42d11dbc48dd6de88a0b05f20eebe0

We need more attempts like yours, but you may want to recirculate some of the symbols, like - + _ = as they are exiled too close to the middle. Also, braces ( and ) on Shift 9 and 0 still unreachable with left thumb when using the only keyboard Shift on the right.

If someone chooses to refuse to use shoulder button modifiers, then they should configure their keyboard Shift and Fn to be sticky, to avoid that problem.

 

[Løra (Lolla)]

Ok, I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down. There's no point everyone getting personal and grr at each other.


You all have different opinions - granted, some opinions don't make a lot of sense - but still..


Peace and harmony

 

[from]

Welp, to be utterly useless and much too late to the party, here comes my layout:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/3f17a9a6ccc3ad908f108638fbbb6fe4

Yeah, nobody else likes it, but it's nigh perfect for me.

 

[_wb_]

Id be comfortable at 80%+

That is only possible if you would make a poll with only two options, one of which is completely crap.

All the layouts proposed in the current have benefited a huge lot from the keyboard discussions we've had over the past two years or so. There's a little bit of every keyboard designer in every design currently floating around. Good ideas have been copied, strange ideas have been considered, we have brainstormed wildly, and explored significant regions of the enormous search space of all possible keyboard layouts. It has been an interesting journey.

No matter what happens now, I'm pretty confident that the result will be OK.

Here is one more minor tweak to my blend of layout 1 and 7:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/8d1adf110786ec5aebde71b5c5a7cf8c

CapsLock on Fn+Tab, SysRq on Fn+Pause, all the special letters in one row.

 

[Grench]

Spoiler

Pfew, that was quite a study. Apologies in advance for my way too long motivation for my choices.

I am in favour of layouts 7, 6 and 1.

While layout 6 has some very strong points going for it, my biggest fear with it is that its merits will be poorly understood and the keyboard will be deemed weird by most. This has the potential to negatively affect reviews.

Overal themes I like in the layouts mentioned:

• Modifier placement.Shift & Fn on shoulders on one side and on keyboard on the other. This avoids finger acrobatics when having to press a shifted/Fn'ed key on the same side as the modifier. A very important quality to me. When typing tabletop this is much less of a constraint as the pinky can easily hit the modifiers.
  
  Also, slight preference for Ctrl/Alt on the right due to Emacs usage (Ctrl + x, Ctrl + c are very common prefix combinations. Many common combinations of the left side of the keyboard).
  
• True "dosbox compatibility" (layout 6) or cheat-sheet dosbox compatibility layout 7 and to a lesser degree layout 1.
  "Dosbox compatibility" is about maintaining the same assumptions about the keyboard layout as the most commonly target keyboard layout (US qwerty).
  
  This avoids key combination conflicts which lessens the need for developers to completely rethink keyboard shortcut design (which is a highly non-trivial semantic adaption when porting software). It also aids my memory due to pairing keys as they are ingrained in my mind.
  
• Logical positioning of keys on the keyboard. I.e. the closer to the "usual" position the better (primarily for US qwerty, secondary for German and then for the others, such as e.g. French). I personally only care for US qwerty, but the Pyra is a German device.
• Availability of international keys and diacritics
• Absence of layout design mistakes E.g. key up/down behaviour is poorly defined when a key occurs twice, therefore triple modifier keys is wrong.E.g. two key-down events of the same key without a key-up event in between should not be possible, this can lead to weird behaviour and needs special treatment in the driver. I am not convinced the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
  
• Ease of use for Typing, programming, gaming as well as ease of Emacs, Awesome Wm, console and Vim usage.I do these things a lot. They are important to me and I believe they are useful for others. Naturally I understand that my heavy Emacs usage is the exception not the rule, but for me portable Emacs is the primary use-case of the Pyra. Similarly, I intend to run awesome wm on the Pyra. I would very much like to have a free modifier which I can utilize as my window-manager modifier key.
  
• Gaming buttonsThere seems to be concensus on this with the exception of one aspect: ins vs backspace. I simply prefer ins on the gaming keys. It feels more logical and familiar that way. More tidy. I can live with it either way though.
  
• My detailed ascii evaluation table:

Spoiler

• 
  | | Modifier | Dosbox compliance / | Key | International | Mistakes | |
  | Layout | placement | Shift pairing | Placement | Keys | | Comment |
  |--------+-----------------------+----------------------+-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-----------------------------------|
  | 1 | very good | Neutral (*4) | Good | good german & french | | |
  | 2 | bad | Good | Bad/Neutral backspace, ,<.> | good german & french | Fn+backspace conflicts while gaming | Math, Greek? Too uncommon, remove |
  | 3 | very bad (*1) | Good | Good | good german, diacritics | Super, SysRq (not entirely sure) | |
  | 4 | very good | Bad (no system) | Bad, random, () misplaced | decent german (no paragraph), | | |
  | | | | | french diacritic, bit of spanish | | |
  | 5 | neutral, see mistakes | Bad " | Bad, random, quote section messy | mainly compose based? | triple shift | |
  | 6 | good (*2) | Excellent! | Good, but odd | very good, multilingual | | Might feel weird to the masses |
  | | | US Qwerty compliant! | | with extensive diacritics | | |
  | 7 | very good | Good | Very good, systematic | good german & french | | |
  | 8 | very bad (*3) | Bad (no system) | impossible --> single width space | DIY, clear keys mappable, w/o labels | four alt keys, function keys | |
  | 9 | very bad (*3) | Bad (no system) | Bad/neutral | DIY | four alt keys, function keys | |
  | 10 | neutral, see mistakes | Bad (no system) | Neutral | good german, french diacritics | triple shift | |
  | 11 | very good | Bad () ~` | Bad/neutral, () misplaced, ~` | good german & french | | |
  (*1) Super is a key of its own, not a replacement for Meta or Fn.It is my preferred modifier for Awesome-wm and should be accessible both tabletop and handheld.
  
  Also, there is no shoulder Fn possible due to this.
  
  (*2) This satisfies the left/right modifiers but violates Ctrl+Alt on the right. There is no
  
  easy way to fix this without violating the regular ,< .> /? placement but it hurts emacs usage
  
  and Pandora backwards compatibility.
  
  (*3) Weird Fn placement, function keys not clear (is that Fn+number? What about F11 and F12?)
  
  Also, the super key is missing. I need that modifier.
  
  (*4) -_ placement is decoupled and <> swapped with ;:
  
  Disqualifiers:
  
  - 3, 8 and 9 have issues with their modifiers. Therefore they fail my acceptance criteria.
  
  - 5 and 10 need to remove their extra shift keys
  
  - 8 and 9 need to adjust their quadruple alt.
  
  Strong layouts
  
  - 1 scores good, I prefer the regular ,< .> vs the way chosen and some shifted pairs could be better
  
  - 6 is an extremely strong layout. It does require shifted Fn and is certainly the odd-one-out. As said, I fear it might be perceived as complex and weird despite all its merits
  
  - 7 is an extremely strong layout. Good balance of known placement, US compatibility and international support.
  
  Disclaimer:
  
  These metrics are based on my own perception. I do not use international keys and cannot comment on the nativeness of their placement very well.
  
  Saber, comradekingu. Design wise I have been more in the Grench and _wb_ camp and thus I may come accross very critical on some decisions in your layouts. However, I wish to express my gratitude to you guys for working so hard on this for the past months. You have greatly influenced the discussion and given clear alternatives to the other layouts. This is always a good thing. Thank you guys for offering a choice.
  
  Likewise, my thanks to all the others for the countless hours spent on refining the designs. I regret I could not participate as actively this time as I would have liked. Most of the discussion I spent lurking on the side. That said, I enjoyed the discussion and applaud all of your efforts to make the best of this in spite of the animosity that the community tends to express towards keyboard layout discussions. I have learned a lot during the past months. My thanks for that, I hope many more interesting discussions will follow in the future.
  

Wow - thank you for the most comprehensive analysis and well thought out response yet. Kudos - and thank you for the time.