Testing alternative Layouts that require single-width space. INTL layout vs Big Space, and other key

[slaeshjag]

It is also used when programming, and in the terminal. ~ expands to your home directory, and is used as an invert bit-opertation in C.

 

[Caine]

It is also used when programming, and in the terminal. ~ expands to your home directory, and is used as an invert bit-opertation in C.

Damn, how could I forget the homedir on the terminal
I am starting to get the idea that we should just take a minor improvement over the Pandora keyboard layout and have people modify it in software as they wish.

Too bad the keycaps are glued and thus not easily replaced.

Plain pandora like layout

Spoiler

Perhaps we should not over-focus on international symbols as it seems impossible to converge to a solution that satisfies everyone.

 

[comradekingu]

I know that, but where is it ` and ~ commonly used?
 
Since we are already messing with people on the numbers row, giving them a hacked US layout, its better to decide on the altGRs, and print those.
 
we ought to implement the "missing"  keys here, and omit some of the lesser used things, like the n^2 and n^3    like n*n*n   however one writes that.
 
- and _ is connected so i propose   shift+space is - and altgr+space is _
 
`  ˝  '  ''   and whatnot will have to move to the numbers row.
 
 
Caine: the international layout you speak of, is the full keyboard layout. The only one who does that is me +3(+1)   and  +4  , and wb 1(+3)

The reason why what you linked to doesnt work, is because its a P+1   halfway L+1     +1(+1)
 
You need  a clean P+1 and L+2    or ideally P+2 and L+2

Edit: good job on the numbers row, that is what we need to focus on.

 

[Caine]

I know that, but where is it commonly used?

Just about every path on a Linux system referring to the home directory is not enough?
<edit>Oh sorry, you also meant the backtick.

Both are commonly used in shell-scripts, so under the hood of a Linux system they are essential.

</edit>

 

[TrashyMG]

I know that, but where is it ` and ~ commonly used?

For me everyday I use the Pandora and well Linux in General.

 

[comradekingu]

Good reasoning. It is important enough to have on its own accord.    I imply and assume here that it isnt used in human language input of any sort or magnitude.

Since international letters not being used in coding is the reason i put all the coding specific things in the coding cluster, tilda and backtick replaces the button that changes language input.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/8d93d336ad60582d9a442bf3ae031e40

Would you rather have - and _ on  space   or in the numbers row, where it can be put close to + and =               ?

Edit: i think Caines 7 8 9 0 make a lot of sense, and it goes nicely with grouping common functionality.

What is lost is the ISO euro "- _" button to the right of ,.   But the , ;   and . : is kept from it, since it makes a lot more sense than the equivalent ,<  and .>

 

[Caine]

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/8d93d336ad60582d9a442bf3ae031e40

<edit>Seems saving those layouts doesn't work in Firefox. Thanks to comradekingu for pointing to midori</edit>
Putting brightness up/down on the gaming controls seems like a recipe for disaster. One of the gaming controls is meta, so you are going to see constant brightness changes while gaming. Keep those gaming controls single purpose please.

<edit>TAB on the d-pad? I assume that is meta+right to hit tab. Same problem as above,

your going to modify your dpad button when striking L1 (meta) + right which means your directional keypress will be lost.

</edit>

 

[klapse]

I updated the full keyboard propsal in  firstpost.

Looks pretty good. Where is Esc?

 

[Caine]

Here is my latest, quite new proposal. I like it a lot:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/9b4da3a33d15eaef3ddbc74e58393a78

Is the idea of having the Pyra key as a system wide menu or kill button out of the window? Or are you suggesting a double tap for Pyra menu? Seems awkward.

- Left and right shift key, so three shift keys in total if you include the shoulder button.

I like the double shift, but I prefer to have a better meta button than the Pyra key.If we have the bottom right as meta and meta+space for shift, then a very simple to perform double button press (much like the pandora Fn+Tab) gives you the second shift.

- The two keys to the left of POWER are two user-definable "menu" keys. The ones to the right of POWER set brightness, and the Meta versions of that top row are the hardware toggles (no primary toggles to avoid accidental presses).

Good idea, but those will risk accidental hardware toggles. I wouldn't like to accidentally turn on 3G. Maybe we should pair the user defineables with the brightness buttons, they seem less "harmful".

- Compose key is at Meta-RShift; at first I thought a dedicated compose key would be better, but then I realized that most compose commands are for diacritics with ` ' " (or maybe - and ~), which means you can just hold down L2 for the first two thumb presses, e.g. L2+(RShift F) U to get ü.

The compose key is pretty useless for plain US layouts, perhaps which button to use for compose should be part of the customization itself.

 

[Saber]

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/8d93d336ad60582d9a442bf3ae031e40

Putting brightness up/down on the gaming controls seems like a recipe for disaster. One of the gaming controls is meta, so you are going to see constant brightness changes while gaming. Keep those gaming controls single purpose please.


<edit>TAB on the d-pad? I assume that is meta+right to hit tab. Same problem as above,


your going to modify your dpad button when striking L1 (meta) + right which means your directional keypress will be lost.


</edit>

Aren't these reasons enough not to put a single or duplicate Meta or Sym or whatever on a shoulder button? Anyways, is it not more intuitive to press the D-pad directions with a held key from the bottom right side of the key layout(where Fn was on Pandora) then to hold L2 with (I),(II) or ABXY?

What I'd like is we avoid using keys from the Alt family(Alt, AltGr, Meta) as punctuation modifiers and substitute our very own modifier(Sym), which is how they do it for smartphones and Kindles. Of course there will be only one of these keys and it will far removed from the gaming controls to prevent conflicts. 

 

[comradekingu]

Keyboard only combos are more intuitive, but functionally inferior. The reason is because you typically need two thumbs on the keyboard (unless really close to eachother (like tab on pandora)) which is almost twice the movement of just one+shoulder.

I dont know what sym means, nor how it differs from meta. Straight off the bat sym confuses me, and if we can do without that is less confusion, but therein lies that i dont know what the benefit of sym really is.

Thought meta was a new and unencumbered thing.

Lets see first if the layout and alt shift and altGR + number row provides enough input.

 

[Caine]

What I'd like is we avoid using keys from the Alt family(Alt, AltGr, Meta) as punctuation modifiers and substitute our very own modifier(Sym), which is how they do it for smartphones and Kindles. Of course there will be only one of these keys and it will far removed from the gaming controls to prevent conflicts.

As far as I understand it, Meta is intended to be just that. A dedicated software modifier. I don't think its name is final yet.

 

[Saber]

Keyboard only combos are more intuitive, but functionally inferior. The reason is because you typically need two thumbs on the keyboard (unless really close to eachother (like tab on pandora)) which is almost twice the movement of just one+shoulder.

I dont know what sym means, nor how it differs from meta. Straight off the bat sym confuses me, and if we can do without that is less confusion, but therein lies that i dont know what the benefit of sym really is.

Thought meta was a new and unencumbered thing.

Lets see first if the layout and alt shift and altGR + number row provides enough input.

Well, Sym is just short for Symbol which is what they call it on the Blackberry and Samsung smartphones and the Kindles. It's very recognizable. AltGr though has it's own established predefined character set, but if we use it for punctuation symbols we wipe all those expected characters we could have away. Meta is the same or is closely related to the Alt/AltGr key.

I'll further add that the Sym key as I see it would be just the undefined Hyper modifier. Linux doesn't use it natively but we can.  

 

[Glyph Reader]

I guess I'll say something.

Personally, I really like Saber's layout, with _wb_'s layout being a close second.   

Whatever layout ED/the community decides on, I can live with it.  

-Glyph Reader

 

[Askarus]

For me Saber's layout is near perfect.

Only the compose key is a problem for me.

Also ESC being on "q".

Would prefer it on TAB or give it an extra button (instead of compose or Caps lock)

 

[_wb_]

Backtick is also used for quotes and grave accents in LaTeX, and as grave accent in compose combinations.

I'm a bit hesitant to put meta-symbols on the number row, because in languages with lots of accents (e.g. French and most eastern European languages), the number row is used for dedicated accented letter keys. If it's kept meta-free, they can remap more easily without lots of cascade effects (for the same reason I want to keep P+2 and L+2 meta-free).

@comradekingu: I just saw that your latest proposal has both Meta and AltGr, and uses unlabeled combinations like Esc = meta+backspace and Del = AltGr+backspace. That is insane and unnecessary. Also I really want a shift shoulder button. And dpad and action buttons should really not have other meanings when shoulder buttons are held, because that makes it really hard to configure games to use shoulder buttons without messing things up.

 

[Saber]

For me Saber's layout is near perfect.

Only the compose key is a problem for me.

Also ESC being on "q".

Would prefer it on TAB or give it an extra button (instead of compose or Caps lock)

There's a few ways:

1. Make Escape accessible by Shift + 1. Exclamation mark could move next to the Question Mark to it's right and the rest of that row moves one to the right(micro gets the boot).

2. Like ED had it in the "Mock Keyboard" layout, Escape becomes Sym + PYRA key.

3. As _wb_ has it, on the leftmost hardware key up top.

One other way is to switch Caps Lock and Escape positions where Escape is Sym + Tab and Caps Lock is Sym + q. 

Also, Caps lock could be a double tap of Left Shift so it wouldn't interfere in any Sym + Shift combos. 

When you say you don't like Compose is it because it shortens the Spacebar or because you don't see it's significance as a primary key when it could be under a Sym level?

 

[_wb_]

We can call the Fn-replacing modifier whatever we want, as long as it translates internally to either Super, Hyper or Meta. We can call it "Pyra" if we want.

Thought meta was a new and unencumbered thing.

It is not new, it has significant retro geek value

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_key

Here is my latest, quite new proposal. I like it a lot:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/9b4da3a33d15eaef3ddbc74e58393a78

Is the idea of having the Pyra key as a system wide menu or kill button out of the window? Or are you suggesting a double tap for Pyra menu? Seems awkward.

We could also make it so that if you press that button and release it, it pops up a menu (like recent Ubuntu does when you press left Alt or left Super), but it still acts as a modifier key as well. Of course then you can't make it sticky.
In my proposal there are two dedicated menu keys to the left of POWER. I think it makes sense to use one of those like we use the Pandora button on the Pandora.

- Left and right shift key, so three shift keys in total if you include the shoulder button.

I like the double shift, but I prefer to have a better meta button than the Pyra key.If we have the bottom right as meta and meta+space for shift, then a very simple to perform double button press (much like the pandora Fn+Tab) gives you the second shift.

The whole point of two shifts on the keyboard is that you can safely remap them however you want, because everyone knows that L1 is all the shifts a power user needs. Having double shift as a default makes it look nice and user friendly though.

- The two keys to the left of POWER are two user-definable "menu" keys. The ones to the right of POWER set brightness, and the Meta versions of that top row are the hardware toggles (no primary toggles to avoid accidental presses).

Good idea, but those will risk accidental hardware toggles. I wouldn't like to accidentally turn on 3G. Maybe we should pair the user defineables with the brightness buttons, they seem less "harmful".

Those keys are not so easy to press accidentally, especially not because they only do "harm" when you also happen to hold down Meta. It's nice if the menu buttons and brightness controls are primary keys and the toggles are Meta-keys in my opinion. (hardware toggles should not be needed as frequently as menu buttons and brightness control)

- Compose key is at Meta-RShift; at first I thought a dedicated compose key would be better, but then I realized that most compose commands are for diacritics with ` ' " (or maybe - and ~), which means you can just hold down L2 for the first two thumb presses, e.g. L2+(RShift F) U to get ü.

The compose key is pretty useless for plain US layouts, perhaps which button to use for compose should be part of the customization itself.

Sure, you can choose your own location for the compose key. I just thought it would be useful to have a default (Meta-RShift). I would probably map it to both RShift and Meta-RShift, so that button becomes a dedicated compose button, other people may want to put it on LShift or LShift+RShift or whatever.

No comments on my proposal to call the extra action buttons IN and OUT?

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/23ba7b54b7f5b28037dc95a2381d880b

With Meta they should map to keypad + - (although this does not need to be on the label), so you can use them for zooming shortcuts like Ctrl-+/- and Ctrl-Alt-+/- (and of course programs like PIV and any game that involves zooming could use those buttons for that). Also, IN resonates with the primary function Insert, and it's not a far stretch from OUT to Delete.

 

[Askarus]

One other way is to switch Caps Lock and Escape positions where Escape is Sym + Tab and Caps Lock is Sym + q.

That's what I would do.

When you say you don't like Compose is it because it shortens the Spacebar or because you don't see it's significance as a primary key when it could be under a Sym level?

Both.

If we want to shorten the space bar then it should be or something more important than compose.

Don't know what to use it for.

What's the menu button?

Is it that one on a regular keyboard that brings up the right click menu?

If yes, that would be really awesome.

I miss that on the Pandora so much.

And why Caps lock on Tab?

It's the least important key for me (The most annoying one as I often press it accidentally).

I'd put it not on a position that easy to reach.

ESC should be on the tab button.

Also the caps lock is not that important for thumb typing as you can still use both thumbs when holding the shift shoulder button.

 

[Saber]

One other way is to switch Caps Lock and Escape positions where Escape is Sym + Tab and Caps Lock is Sym + q.

That's what I would do.

When you say you don't like Compose is it because it shortens the Spacebar or because you don't see it's significance as a primary key when it could be under a Sym level?

Both.

If we want to shorten the space bar then it should be or something more important than compose.

Don't know what to use it for.

What's the menu button?

Is it that one on a regular keyboard that brings up the right click menu?

If yes, that would be really awesome.

I miss that on the Pandora so much.

And why Caps lock on Tab?

It's the least important key for me (The most annoying one as I often press it accidentally).

I'd put it not on a position that easy to reach.

ESC should be on the tab button.

Also the caps lock is not that important for thumb typing as you can still use both thumbs when holding the shift shoulder button.

Yeah, that's right. The Menu key is the key you were thinking of. 

Okay I'll make those changes and add them to the layout and anything else if I can. If I'm being honest though, I'm not set on the "Sym" name. It's a bit on the bland side actually. Sounds a bit sterile really. Wonder if some kind of arrow pointing up would do instead?