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

[comradekingu]

After a discussion with ED, it is time for the fan favourite, the vote. Before you cast a vote, please read the writeup presented:
 
Latest layouts: Updated 11 august 2014
Saber
WB2perkey
WBlessclutter
Comradekingu
 
Proposed layout (see above for updated layouts): http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/cc6bbd4e51cf9e5c2631568cee8a2663

 
The keys marked in red below are present in ANSI, ISO and JIS classes of keyboards. The white keys are typing keys. The pandora didnt have enough keys, and while the pyra does, isnt currently utilizing this to make it a full keyboard.
Having keys there makes the keyboard international, huge win, more sales.

Spoiler

I dont know what the plan is for the layout, but it seems incoherent, and also it doesnt make sense to slalom type on a reduced english layout.

PCB LAYOUT Proposal. Reduced english layout.

 
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/e7df9420cdabea7b8f3007cb848a7672 
Good: It has tab in the most obvious position
Bad:  Fails as a keyboard for most people in the world, about half the customerbase, not full keyboard, but reduced english.
         Wastes a key by having dual shift. (also has L sh on the right and R sh on the left for some reason...)
         Wastes a key by incorporating a double space that isnt dead center.  fixed.
         Seems to have divided F-row since power-control buttons are marked F1-F4

While we know about the international issue from the pandora.
All this needs to be tested, we are also trying to figure out good layouts, which is a semi-seperate issue. Disregard the F-row and symbols for the topic at hand.
Separating space to get an extra button seems to already be agreeable. (The nubs now can both click, and there are 4 shoulders.)

Almost full layout proposal

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/86900c4a202a87fd6b887b13b8487509
Good: 3 keys for international roams many users.  2/3 keys can be totally omitted for typing with the exception of ;:'"
Bad:  2/4 isnt easy to remap Having to map enter somewhere else is an ugly hack.
               Enter is in a place where many layouts have their compose key to do  and stuff like that, doing without it, means you have do do that elsewhere, which means more ugly hacks.
               ;:'" cant be omitted from typing when remapping
               The F-row is seperated
 
Another almost full layout proposal:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/07c793fdec592dcc7022cb1e50a80f87 
Good: Only 2 prints per key.
Bad: No super or AltGr
 
VERY CLOSE TO FULL LAYOUT proposal:
 

 
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/5a72c0b1508cc5a09fb3e9c57f85f2fa
FULL LAYOUT proposal:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/edb1df73659f8dd56df65b0ca590cc38
Good: 4 keys for international users roam very very nearly all, and creates less trouble, since | key is often dedicated compose. 3/4 keys can be totally omitted for typing (fixed) 4/4 of the needed buttons can freely change to input what a full keyboard is to people.
         , and . is next to enter and space, and all handled by the right hand on the right side of the keyboard, instead of shifting focus and diverting motorical input.
Bad: tab is a secondary of left.  (fixed) But tab is still not in the most obvious position.
         1/4 ;:'" cant be omitted from typing when remapping (fixed)

http://oi60.tinypic.com/16kxrmx.jpg http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/3273ade9cf3eb68d2f974ff4bf60d382

http://oi62.tinypic.com/2r60kgm.jpg http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/fbfbad3f00488d0205f63eccbac879de
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2yvm809.jpg
http://oi58.tinypic.com/157jgoz.jpg
 

older versions

Having the 4 standard buttons is crucially important to something like half the market for the pyra:

Spoiler

 
Russians:  143 millions
Germans: 80 millions  (homeland of pyra production, and currently very large userbase of pandora)
Turks: 76 millions
French: 66 millions
Italians: 59 millions
Espanians: 46 millions
Ukrainians: 45 millions
Poles:  38 millions
Arabians:  many millions
Danes:  5 million
Swedes: 9 million
Finns:     5 millions
Norwegians:  5 million
 
And a many others, including south-america (spanish and portugese) and asia, you get the idea.
 
This spreads out historically to, http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/membermap/  which may be a bit shifted towards UK users since that was where craig sold pandoras from, and also much lighter on non-anglo users, since those are the ones who suffer the most from not having the standard amount of keys.
 

Without two keys to the right of L and two keys to the right of P, it means a keyboard is useless for anything other than typing english. (Which is 400 million users.)
This was a huge problem on the pandora, and if there is the same two keys wide spacebar on the pyra, it means INTL-layout doesnt work
Pull out the ÜÖÄ keys on a regular (german example), or what those correspond to on another keyboard, and your layout is reduced to typing shift+^ *  every time you want to use a key that is in one of those places.
Most languages do not work without those keys, which is the most basic flaw a keyboard can have. Most importantly, people dont buy it for that reason.
Its not a fixed rule, but fail at typewriter functionality and you will annoy people greatly.
 
The current keymat and case-design has a 2-width space.  As we all know keys on the layout are limited, and for those of you that have tried to make functional layouts, this is all the more an issue with each key less there is to work with.
 

Spoiler

Full desktop keyboards are 105-key, of which we cannot incorporate all, and many of which make little sense in todays world. They were added to the typewriter with varying levels of consideration, none of which was for mobile use, and most of it happened before I was born. That was the 80s, computer capability and use has changed _a lot_ since then. They keyboard is though largely unchanged.
 
The first mobile keyboards that were used to great extent were the T9s that we know from dumbphones and limited space smartphones, a hack if anything, but it garnered use by little and small for SMS. Then there were some phones with full typewriter-layout, e61, n900 and others and so on, before the touchscreen came to be the ruler of all.
 
The reasons touchscreen beating keyboard for mobile isn't because its better to use, but they are many:

• its more costly to produce a keyboard
• The labels differ
• the amount of keys on them differ

so you have to have keymats that are regional. Also you want a big screen, and a bigger keyboard is contrary to that. This means only phones for US-layout, which relates to ANSI keyboard layout more than ISO is the only thing you can get. Phones for different markets have to be different, so that means the top end, which people buy a lot of, is almost exclusively touchscreen only now. The exception being blackberry - passport Which really throws all balls in the air and lands back where we started, at the typewriter, which has been a tend the last years.
 
But what makes it a US-layout?  Yes they have the same A-Z in largely the same places as the rest of us, but they are missing the Ö Ä Ü'keys, or ÆØÅ or whatever your desktop keyboard has on the buttons close to enter.  From now on called INTL-keys.
 
You can not type basic English phonetically without for example Ø, and the amount of letters in the English alphabet has varied with time, so thats also arbitrary, but i digress.
 
For (almost) everyone else, those letters are crucial.
 
The T9 shifted space around willy nilly, and that worked. Typing INTL-keys meant tapping 4 or 5 times instead of 3, which wasnt much worse. On a regular keyboard the difference to typing shift+^ and then for example O, is huge compared to the ease of having the other letters represented by their own keys.
 
Space can change position, it can even be a single key, but INTL-keys should not move, they are as essential to the people that use them, as the rest of the letters are.
 
Space has traditionally been a bar-type key. I liken this to the enter, which has also been a wide key.
 
The reason why this is, is because on a desktop keyboard it makes it makes space available to both thumbs, and enter reachable with big and small hands, since your hands are otherwise covering the letters.
 
We carry these conventions with us onto mobile, just like modern desktop keyboards carry a lot of baggage.  The enter has changed to be a single-width key, and that is fine, because it is expected on the right hand side, and with only thumbs, it is easy enough to reach. You have the same motorical precision there as you have for the other keys, (more-so with most people being right handed)
 
Space has been cut down to two spaces, which makes some sense if you put it dead center, equidistant from both thumbs.
 
Yes, the T9 placing of space was fully weird, and while it worked, most people who bought nokia, kept buying nokia, and sony-ericsson, which had it in a different place, had its following. Chargers were different for all, crazy times.
 
Placing the spacebar anywhere but dead centre low down, is done because one lacks (horizontal) rows on the keyboard. When that is done, it is sometimes single-space. And it does happen with typewriter-layout keyboards too. 1   2
 
I understand the recognizability of a spacebar, but if you end up having to look for return and backspace, you cant even do the most basic typing without looking for keys anyways. This is the advantage.
 
It can be lessened by printing |___| on the key, just like enter is ←| (similar anyhow)
 
And back to the topic, even though one extra button doesn't make for +3 or 4 INTL buttons, it does make incorporating them just feasible, any less and you run into problems. (Same with dvorak curiously.)
 
Full keyboard layout is much much better for INTL-language people, and it doesn't exclude the english (and some others) users. Dvorak is an example of a nice possibility that is a side benefit of separated space.
 
If you wondered why the US-keyboard laptops/phones arent popular in Europe, its less to do with keylabels, and more to do with the amount of buttons.
 
Which means even if you are from the US, the pyra will sell more devices to more people if it has separated spacebar. That is 100% an exclusion argument, there is no getting around it for INTL-users.
 
Here is the current full-keyboard-proposal for the pyra.   It also takes more into account convention of placement of other chars according to ANSI and ISO layout convention.
 
Then there is the convention, which i hope everone understands better now, and we can vote about it.
 

Pros for seperate:                 INTL-layout, more buttons, test more thing layouts. Also possibility for more advanced layouts dvorak, colemak? Neo layout used by Elw3 and Fahrstuhl
 
Pros for non-seperate:         Recognizability of space as a bar key
 
Make a case with two buttons where there is now a spacebar, along with either a keymat that fits, (or hack up some to make it fit). (The PCB already has separate pads, so it registers as two separate buttons to the OS)
Then we can try ALL the layouts, because there are many different ideas and paradigms. Which we can discuss in the thread.
 
Edit: You do not need to read this whole thread, these are the posts that are informational:
ED:
Space doesnt need to be a bar key
Max prints per letter 3, each key 7x3, no noise  Visual example of key imprint (legend) layout
Fn isnt Meta, and the name isnt decided (puzzle suggested)
No funny foreign stuff on the keyboard
WB:
Shoulderbuttons are more effective It is since agreed that it makes sense to not remove shift from the keyboard, but to include it as a shoulder.
Visual example of many +1+1  +1+2 and +2+2 layouts
Statistical example of why omitting extra keys make no sense
Frequency of keys used in english
Comradekingu:
Research on how meta+backspace can be escape and altGR+backspace can be delete
layout of KISS power-toggles
Visual example of why comma space  and dot enter shift are combos that should be easily accesible without slalom-typing
Why adding a shift on the left makes no sense
Why altGr is altGr and meta+ will never replace it when there is no +QWERTY

We meed to sort out the colour of the letters on the keymat.

 

[Bosbeetle]

hey a keyboard layout thread.....

 

[elw3]

hey a keyboard layout thread.....

Can i have Neo? 

 

[elw3]

To chare my IRC enlightenment: the pandora has 9 keys between shift and enter while i need 11.

He basically means there are not enough keys.

Yea but making them more to support more languages ....{add cons}

 

[Bosbeetle]

I don't get the problem in having to pres a key combination instead of a single key to get the å, ë or the ø for that matter.

unless you're finnish and häve to put dots on äll ä's änd älmost äll words häve ät leäst seven ä's

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, we could make the space key into a one-width key, so we gain one more key.

It's not possible adding anymore keys somewhere else.

 

[Bosbeetle]

Well, we could make the space key into a one-width key, so we gain one more key.


It's not possible adding anymore keys somewhere else.

I opt for a ¿ key

btw Im typing all these on a US keyboard it isn't that difficult even things like µm or °C can be easily done without them being printed on the keys even. 

 

[_jr_]

Thanks for the writeup Kingu. I agree that the number of keys is crucial and a single key can make a significant difference. I use a modified US layout on my German N900 (3 rows of 13 keys each, double width space) because 4 cursor keys and punctuation are more important (to me) than äöüß, but that means it now sucks at entering German text (even though SHIFT-Fn combinations are easier due to its small size). Having just two additional keys would make it feasible to have both (using SHIFT, FN, SHIFT-FN to stack 8 additional combinations for the lower and upper case letters; though to become comparable to the Pandora it would require a 4th row of keys, but it really is a different form factor). The Xperia X10 mini pro with the same number of keys (4 rows of ten, *triple* width space bar) is comparable, but IMO sucks slightly more because the increased height to width is slightly uncomfortable (and putting a landscape keyboard on a portrait phone is kind of dumb). To make my argument more compelling I'd like to tell you that the additional column of the Xperia pro keyboard makes it perfect, but unfortunately I've never used one for an extended period of time

 

[comradekingu]

I wouldnt be against having a good layout switcher as a standard panel applet, in asia this is a must. Also a switcher that its easy to add things to. Some people code on their pandoras (wb now, probably more if we get it right) and im sure those special type-cases (heh) are better when you can roll your own personal haskell-layout.

I don't get the problem in having to pres a key combination instead of a single key to get the å, ë or the ø for that matter.

unless you're finnish and häve to put dots on äll ä's änd älmost äll words häve ät leäst seven ä's

Then you do see the point, its exactly like that for a whole range of countries,

Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, etc etc.

ill make a complete list when i get time.  But _every single one_ uses those keys for something. Since they are so central, its most often very oft-used punctuation-chars, like ' ^ *  or hyphenated letters.

 

[fusion_power]

It sould be made more easy for sure onto the Pyra than typing äöü... onto the Pandora where you have to push 4 and more buttons to get umlauts, that's just ridiculous.

Well, we could make the space key into a one-width key, so we gain one more key.
It's not possible adding anymore keys somewhere else.

I find space key should be still recognizable as "classic" space key, so 2 button width is the best solution, unlike there is really a need for one additional button.

 

[Grench]

We already have a keyboard layout thread. (Saber) The current version is well thought out and supports most European languages.

Before we go demanding that other options are explored, would you be willing to comment in this thread with what you see as shortfalls?

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15275-unofficial-keyboard-layoutsjune-28-2014/

As to the international keyboard layouts - I hate those awful keyboards with the giant 2 row clunky enter key.

That said, I'm not opposed to breaking the shift button into two buttons. It's a thumb keyboard. There isn't any practical reason for any one key to be double sized.

I think that if you examine Saber's layout closely, you'll find that the dedicated sym (symbol) key gets you to the characters you want with minimal hassle.

Although it would be fine to have an additional modifier shift/sym/Fn key in place of the right half of the current space bar, do we really need a 4th keyboard map?

 

[fahrstuhl]

Can i have Neo?

+1

Well, we could make the space key into a one-width key, so we gain one more key.It's not possible adding anymore keys somewhere else.

Well, the separable pads are there, so I was going to cut the space key in half myself. How well would that work with the material of the keymat?

 

[DAP]

If EvilDragon would at least make perferations around the space bar, and another pair of keys, one could buy two keymats, tear out the space bar and tare out the pair of keys from the other mat and put them where the space bar was. There would need to be some way of keeping that pair of keys in place though.

 

[_wb_]

Three dedicated keys for Ü Ä Ö or their Scandinavian counterparts does not solve the problem in other languages that have more than three extra symbols (e.g. French has at least Á À Ê Ç É È Ê Œ). A dedicated compose key and perhaps dead key diacritics are better solutions in my opinion.

Actually the dead key diacritics are not that important, as long as there is a dedicated compose key (or something that can be used as a dedicated compose key, like a redundant shift key) and the compose diacritics ('`^",.-/) are easy enough to type.

Typing ê on the Pandora is not convenient: Shift+Enter Shift+6 E. If the number row is not that hard to reach anymore, and Shift+Enter is replaced by a dedicated compose key, then it's already much better.

There's no way to put all accented letters as direct dedicated keys behind an additional "Int" modifier key. There simply are too many of them. Unless you want to restrict yourself to a specific subset (e.g. just German, French, and Scandinavian) but then the Hungarian/Polish/Czech will be pissed.

 

[comradekingu]

wb:

Æ used to be a english letter too, now its a central sound for which they lack a letter. English has þ , which is now written th, it used to be Y before that. These things are rather strange and we don't control them, making all people adhere to all the shortcomings of minimal US-layout does not work.

French is a language that is strictly written, so they have a lot of accents.  Some of their layouts have Ç, some dont. Portugese always does.

Accent aigu, grave and retroflex enunciation isn't the same as dedicated letters. And so they often have less use and dedicated keys, depending on the language.
 
For the case of argument English is the only language that lacks letters, being at 26 total. Having a compose key doesn't make other languages have 26.
 
Different languages use their keys for different things, but they are always there. For diacritics or additional letters. For good reason, you cant type english with 23 letters, that is called a hack.

Replacing typewriter-keys opens up exactly the kind of problem you are describing, of which there are always 3+. Those letters are always important.
 
Even english expects to find those 3-4 keys exactly where they should be, which is one thing that actually makes sense on desktop keyboards. Breaking with that convention is a no-no.

This is what we are able to do:

+2 on qwert

+2 on asdf    (this is +3 on reduced enter-key ISO layouts, but they have one less on zxcv on the right side since they have longshift, and on the left <>-button isnt for typing)

 
Having a compose key is a nice addition for typing things that arent dedicated, as is done on a regular keyboard, but it will never be a substitute for what is dedicated on your layout.
Ie. making tonality easier is not as important as having all the letters available on dedicated keys.  Lets for case of argument say layouts make sense to their users and that we cant change the world by failing at basic typewriter design.
 
Most languages make no sense without their full alphabet, but all languages suffer when you remove 3 central keys from the keyboard. Lets not place them elsewhere, we are not that clever.

Before we start making hacks, lets get the _number of keys right_ otherwise you are left with something that works only somewhat good for only half of the population. And _not at all_ for the bulk of the rest.

 
The number of keys is 64 with the space separation +4 L/R buttons. A full keyboard is much more than that. So you have to pick, and sometimes include things which the desktop keyboard doesnt have.
 
Middleclick is usefull, caps lock isnt.  All in respect to having 64 to work with and nubs for control.
 
Compose diactrics could alternativly be whatever nub that isnt used for mouse movement LEFT accent aigu, TOP retroflex, RIGHT whatever the other one is called DOWN accent grave

Fusion_Power:  Yes. having a recognisable spacebar in dead centre middle is preferable, but that is a secondary concern to being able to type omlauts in german. Given a limit of 63 keys, feel free to try and make it happen.  I could only manage it at 64, which is the final max end of.

I will try to help you out, this is the only layout that has the extra keys http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/75c1dba0bb2e239f857d961223cbbe76  first fuse space with ". and :"-key.

1. The number of keys on the middle row  (ASDF) is 11, thats where you can fit those.  Its the same as on ANSI, and ISO with full enter-key (the blue button is part of the enter). You need to have them all be dedicated typing keys, no Caps or enter.
2. Typing a , or a . on a pandora means you have to use the other hand to type space, that isnt good because it shifts focal and motorical attention. space follows comma, and enter often follows . So they are close by.
3. Shift is the most central thing except space comma dot and enter, so that needs to go bottom left, close to where you expect to find it. Placing it somewhere else ruins tapering of letters, which is established in 1.
4.  You need to have a backspace that is evidently placed.
5. The top number row is the only one with 12, thats why F1 - F12 needs to be here.  Otherwise you end up running F12 in a different row than the others (like on the pandora), and that is ugly.

Explanation of choices:

No keys have more than 2 symbols to keep it clean, that you could change. The top row has an arrangement of things alternative to the numbers that follows ANSI and ISO standard for the most people.

I think ctrl and alt is functionally separate from a plain typewriter, so those are in a block-schematically other area.

In much the same way of thinking, backspace and DEL are destructive chars, you dont want to accidentally those any more than you want to alt+f4. Taken from keyboard thread.

Fn buttons suck, you could incorporate one, I went with dedicated keys up top since thats what they were intended to be. No reason you should look up there if you arent finding something. Brightness is ABXY +2

The colourscheme lends the eye to two distinct differences, this is borrowed from mechanical keyboard forums, and my own findings.

Needs work:

Sorting out mouse and window manipulation: If scrolling is easier on nub2 i dont know yet, havent tried it. Alt+tab functionality is very key imo.

The alternative symbols on asdf and zxcv  is arbitrary a is @  d should be -  (dash), but people expect to find that close to bottom right, so i dont know. Ive tried to cluster / | \ slash pipe backslash and put them in coding position. That means b is bracket [ ]  but all this is because µ Micro is M.  Arguably that could be the ? and all symbols on bottom could be shifted one position left.

With only 2 symbols per key, ? cant be top right,  because intuitive visual scanning is in a Z, which puts bottom left before bottom right, even though bottom right is more central and ? is a central key.

SDF and Ä hasnt got alternates, i think currency symbols dont make sense personally,

+-*    and ¨   which leaves 6   8 open  (making new template)

 

[_wb_]

If you consider the French special letters optional (just omit the accents and people will still understand), then the German Ä Ü Ö ß are also optional, since you can write them as AE UE OE SS and everyone will understand.

A standard Belgian keyboard looks like this: (note: I don't like this layout and I don't use it myself, but I sometimes have to use it anyway since it is the standard here)

How does that fit with your "at most 4 extra keys" claim? We have dead key diacritics for 5 types of accents (~ ' ` ^ ", the circumflex being a dedicated key) and dedicated keys for é è à ç ù µ (don't ask me why we have ù and µ though).

Not to mention non-Latin based layouts like Russian and most Asian layouts.

To be honest, I think it is reasonable to have an English QWERTY layout, with some Fn keys for the German letters, but no other specific letter keys. Compose works well enough to type all of those special letters, as long as it is a dedicated Compose key and the diacritics are not too hard to reach. There are simply too many letter keys [*]to try to make a universal international keyboard, and no, just 3 extra keys are not enough to please everyone.

[*]Here is a partial list of letters that are in use in at least some languages (most of them also with an upper case version):

ß æ œ ç ş ż å ů ñ

á é í ó ú ý

à è ò ù

ä ë ï ö ü

č š ž ď ť ň ě ř

â ê î ô û

ā ē ī ū ō

ą ę į ų

đ ł ø

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

1000 times no for me as it has the Windows logos

 

[Bosbeetle]

ugh azerty

however I think it is just what you're used to...

 

[comradekingu]

If you consider the French special letters optional

I dont, nor does the french

(just omit the accents and people will still understand), then the German Ä Ü Ö ß are also optional,

No they arent. Only the ß is optional on regular layout in that it isnt a key of its own. It is present on Neo. Number of keys on a german keyboard, exactly the same.

since you can write them as AE UE OE SS and everyone will understand.

Nobody wants to type german, or other germannic languages like that, nor do they want to buy keyboards that omit them, if I had a speech impediment you would still understand what i am saying.

German people dont consider their letters optional, as evident by their language. As further evident by their keyboard. As pronouced in this thread. As evident by the vote.

As evident by how people from germany, and other places, do not buy keyboards that dont have those buttons.

Those buttons are also integral, no matter its use, to other people.

Wasnt able to save new layout, but just paste it in as raw data on http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/

Spoiler

{backcolor:"#444444"},


[{c:"#333333",t:"#ffffff",w:2,h:0.5},"(L1)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREV",{x:8,w:2,h:0.5},"\n\n(R1)\n\n\n\nNEXT"],


[{y:-0.5,w:2,h:0.5},"(L2)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSTOP",{x:8,w:2,h:0.5},"\n\n(R2)\n\n\n\nPLAY / | |"],


[{y:-0.5,x:2,c:"#000000"},"Wifi","\n\n3G",{x:1,a:7,w:2},"POWER",{x:1,a:4},"BT","\n\nHDMI"],


[{y:0.25,x:9,a:7,f:9,w:0.8,h:0.8},"\n\n\n\n☀▲"],


[{y:-0.9499999999999993,x:5.25,a:5,f:5,w:1.5,h:0.8},"\n\n\n\nSTART\n\nalt"],


[{y:-0.8000000000000007,x:1,f:3},"⬆\n\n\n\nPgup\n\nPrtScr"],


[{y:-0.9499999999999993,x:10,f:9},"\n\n\n\nscrollup"],


[{y:-0.5500000000000007,x:3.25,f:3,w:1.75,h:1.75},"\n\n\n\n\n\nO",{x:2,w:1.75,h:1.75},"\n\n\n\n\n\nO"],


[{y:-0.5},"\n\n\n\nhome\n\n⬅ Tab",{x:1},"\n\n\n\nEnd\n\nIns ⇨"],


[{y:-0.9499999999999993,x:5.25,f:5,w:1.5,h:0.8},"\n\n\n\nSELECT\n\nalt gr",{x:2.25,f:9},"\n\n\n\n←alttab",{x:1},"\n\n\n\nalttab →"],


[{y:-0.05000000000000071,x:1,f:3},"toggle\n⬇\n\n\nPgDn\n\nscrolls"],


[{y:-0.9499999999999993,x:5.25,f:5,w:1.5,h:0.8},"\n\n\n\nMENU\n\nctrl",{x:3.25,f:9},"\n\n\n\nscrolldn"],


[{y:-0.5,x:9,a:7,w:0.8,h:0.8},"\n\n\n\n☀▼"],


[{y:-0.05000000000000071,x:0.5,a:5,f:3},"!\n\n\n\n\n\n1","\"\n\n\n\n\n\n2","#\n\n\n\n\n\n3","$\n\n\n\n\n\n4","%\n\n\n\n\n\n5","^\n\n\n\n\n\n6","&\n\n\n\n\n\n7","*\n\n\n\n\n\n8","(\n\n\n\n\n\n9",")\n\n\n\n\n\n0",{a:4},"<---\n\n\n\n\n\ndel"],


[{c:"#ffffff",t:"#111111",a:5},"F1\n\n\n\n\n\nQ","F2\n\n\n\n\n\nW","F3\n\n\n\n\n\nE","F4\n\n\n\n\n\nR","F5\n\n\n\n\n\nT","F6\n\n\n\n\n\nY","F7\n\n\n\n\n\nU","F8\n\n\n\n\n\nI","F9\n\n\n\n\n\nO","F10\n\n\n\n\n\nP","F11\n\n\n\n\n\n☆","F12\n\n\n\n\n\n☆"],


[{x:0.5},"\n@\n\n\n\n\nA","\n+\n\n\n\n\nS","\n-\n\n\n\n\nD","\n√\n\n\n\n\nF","\n=\n\n\n\n\nG","\n{\n\n\n\n\nH","\n}\n\n\n\n\nJ","\n~\n\n\n\n\nK","\n`\n\n\n\n\nL","\n_\n\n\n\n\n☆","\nsup\n\n\n\n\n☆"],


[{c:"#000000",t:"#ffffff"},"\n\n\n\n\n\nshift",{c:"#ffffff",t:"#111111"},"\n?\n\n\n\n\nZ","\n/\n\n\n\n\nX","\n|\n\n\n\n\nC","\n\\\n\n\n\n\nV","\n[\n\n\n\n\nB","\n]\n\n\n\n\nN","\nµ\n\n\n\n\nM","\n;\n\n\n\n\n,","\n:\n\n\n\n\n.",{a:4},"<\n\n\n\n\n\nspace",{c:"#000000",t:"#ffffff"},">\n\n\n\n\n\nenter"]

The letters with the stars ☆ is what you need to have on a keyboard. Because, you cant nix buttons that are important without making it a disaster. Same as with AZERTY, it works ok for someone who types QWERTY nixing keys means not only does the A button reside somewhere else, it isnt there.  Yes, the english language lacks vocals, vocals! It couldnt be more of an issue without effectivly making it all T9

Here is a list of all keyboards and typewriters that has those extra keys for respective languages:

ALL the them

end of list

The pandora didnt have enough keys to have them. There is no good reason to fall into that same hole again.

 

[_wb_]

German people dont consider their letters optional, as evident by their language. As further evident by their keyboard. As pronouced in this thread.

As evident by how people from germany, and other places, do not buy keyboards that dont have those buttons.

Those buttons are also integral, no matter its use, to other people.

Sure, and the Czech alphabet has 42 letters (actually only 41 because Ch consists of two normal letters) and their keyboards have 11 extra dedicated letter keys and 14 dead key diacritic symbols.

The point is: for many languages that use extended Latin, three extra letters is not sufficient.