The big Pyra keyboard poll

[Glyph Reader]

I think the Wonky key idea is great, _wb_!  I don't think the hardware modifiers would be used enough that they would need their own keys, so the Wonky key frees up some space on the top row and makes more key-combos possible. 

-Glyph Reader

 

[comradekingu]

WB:

While the concepts may or may not work, i feel the threshold of entry is too high. It appears confusing. The uptake will be coloured by this perception. It is to some point also carried along in the learning process, as once you turn someone off from an idea, it then easily becomes a dredge to adapt to it.

The less explaining to be done, the less weird it is. Something that communicates uniformity will aspire confidence rather than to raise questions.

I think we should make the initial impression as easy as it can possibly be. Simple to the point it can be done. Less clutter is more clarity. Meeting the balance at a level where everyone can establish a basic understanding is crucial.

 

[_wb_]

The Wonky key can be made much easier for users by showing an overlay menu as soon as you press it, which shows the current state of all hardware toggles (with nice icons etc), as well as the letters you have to press to toggle them. No need to remember anything then.

The default action of a Wonky tap could then be to just keep showing the overlay menu, allowing the user to toggle stuff using the touch screen, mouse, keyboard letters or dpad. At the very bottom of the overlay menu, there would be an option to go to a configuration dialog to select a default Wonky key behavior: there you can change it from "show the menu" to "directly toggle X, Y and Z". I imagine that you could also configure other hardware-related things in that dialog, like default settings on startup etc.

Same with the brightness button: as soon as you press it, it shows an overlay with the current brightness/led settings (with nice icons and indicator bars), with guihints that make it clear how you can change any of them (e.g. dpad up/down for finetuning screen brightness, dpad left/right for finetuning keyboard backlight, left nub to set the hue of the logo led (in a color wheel fashion), ABXY for its brightness and saturation, letters S K L to toggle Screen Keyboard Logo lights, etc), and at the bottom, an option to get a configuration dialog to change the Brightness key behavior: the default could be "cycle screen brightness between low,medium,max" for the normal key, "toggle keyboard backlight" for Meta+Brightness, but other actions could be assigned and the number of steps between min and max and their values can be configured. Also things like auto backlight dimming after inactivity, lid-open and lid-closed logo led defaults, color-coded status info settings for the logo led and POWER button led, etc etc.

So the brightness button label should then only have the icon ☀, and the hardware button label could be the wonky chip icon (or something else, but I think that wonky chip looks great as a key label, and I think it's clear enough that it refers to "hardware").

Does that satisfy your simplicity requirements, comradekingu?

 

[comradekingu]

Good ideas, this is my gripe:

The connection between chips, (wonky or not) and powersettings isnt as clear as the connection between powersettings and a power symbol.

Maybe a toggle by default and if held for a while it brings up the onscreen.

 

[_wb_]

Good ideas, this is my gripe:


The connection between chips, (wonky or not) and powersettings isnt as clear as the connection between powersettings and a power symbol.


Maybe a toggle by default and if held for a while it brings up the onscreen.

I don't see powersettings as the main purpose. It's also about privacy and avoiding mobile data costs, about switching between hdmi output options (mirrored or extra desktop), about CPU frequency settings, etc. It's about hardware configuration in general, not just about power saving or power on/off.

The power symbol causes confusion with the POWER button imo.

 

[comradekingu]

Did you mean only? Im not saying that, i  agree it has other facets.

From my tests, powersymbol works.

The power on/off symbol is a different symbol, which is right next to it. Remotes have one of those for the television, and one you can program for the decoder. Is there an actual problem?

As a whole, its not just saving, its power settings. Turning things on and off is a powersetting. The same is changing scaling, and governor etc.

If it wasnt about powersaving, the convenience of having everything always on would take precedence. Mobile internet is the real concern, but only to some people, of the people who chose to get it.

You could not care about power, but at least it has a meaningful impact no matter the user.

If it was about hardware config, it would be a natural place for audio config, catch my drift?

 

[laserbeams]

I haven't been following this nearly as close as I should have been, but _wb_ I really like your most recent proposed layout. There is strong parity with standard keyboard layouts, similar key press orders for commonly used punctuation, and generally uncluttered key tops. My only real misgiving is the = key, which I feel might be better suited to Meta+'/" instead of Meta+C, since it's behind a Meta key press anyway.

I'm not sure that the backlight requires a dedicated key; to me that seems like it would be accessed using a Fn/Hardware/Wonky combination, but it's not bad.

As for the current "wonky" icon, the wonkified "QFN" style chip may be more modern, but it also looks like a fabric patch. Perhaps a DIP chip or wrench icon would be more logical, and then just call it the "Hardware" key. Wonky is cute, but feels unnecessary. Maybe the Open Source Hardware logo would be good for that, IF and only if the OSHW logo could be applied to the Pyra as it is being designed. (Did the Pandora have the OSHW logo on the label? I feel like it did...)

Edit: Forgot to mention, a hardware mute toggle would be very nice to have.

 

[_wb_]

If it was about hardware config, it would be a natural place for audio config, catch my drift?

Sure,  why not. All kinds of hardware config. Video config (hdmi, resolution setting, maybe bpp and refresh rate setting etc), audio config (mute, software volume, mic settings etc), connectivity config (wifi, gps, 3g, bluetooth, usb), power saving stuff, overclocking, SD card mass storage mode, etc etc.

I haven't been following this nearly as close as I should have been, but _wb_ I really like your most recent proposed layout. There is strong parity with standard keyboard layouts, similar key press orders for commonly used punctuation, and generally uncluttered key tops. My only real misgiving is the = key, which I feel might be better suited to Meta+'/" instead of Meta+C, since it's behind a Meta key press anyway.

I'm not sure that the backlight requires a dedicated key; to me that seems like it would be accessed using a Fn/Hardware/Wonky combination, but it's not bad.

As for the current "wonky" icon, the wonkified "QFN" style chip may be more modern, but it also looks like a fabric patch. Perhaps a DIP chip or wrench icon would be more logical, and then just call it the "Hardware" key. Wonky is cute, but feels unnecessary. Maybe the Open Source Hardware logo would be good for that, IF and only if the OSHW logo could be applied to the Pyra as it is being designed. (Did the Pandora have the OSHW logo on the label? I feel like it did...)

Edit: Forgot to mention, a hardware mute toggle would be very nice to have.

Thanks!

As for the location of =, I put it close to < and > because those are frequently used together (e.g. less-than-or-equal is often <= or =<, greater-than-or-equal is >=, also some programming languages have arrows like =>, ==> , <=> in their syntax.

The reason I didn't put any Meta-label on the /? key is that that key is at position L+1, which means that some people may want to remap it to M (for AZERTY) or Ö (German or Swedish layout) or Ø or whatever. If you remap the keys at positions P+1 and L+2 (the most common locations for extra keys), then you can keep the original symbols (- + / ? ' ") at their original location, but with Meta, which makes it possible to do those remappings in a relatively clean way.

I'm not sure if the Pyra will really be fully Open Hardware: at least the GPU will not have a FOSS driver. But I don't know much about the various open hardware licenses, so I don't know to what extent that is a problem. Can anyone use that logo, or are there criteria somewhere?

 

[laserbeams]

As for the location of =, I put it close to < and > because those are frequently used together (e.g. less-than-or-equal is often <= or =<, greater-than-or-equal is >=, also some programming languages have arrows like =>, ==> , <=> in their syntax.

The reason I didn't put any Meta-label on the /? key is that that key is at position L+1, which means that some people may want to remap it to M (for AZERTY) or Ö (German or Swedish layout) or Ø or whatever. If you remap the keys at positions P+1 and L+2 (the most common locations for extra keys), then you can keep the original symbols (- + / ? ' ") at their original location, but with Meta, which makes it possible to do those remappings in a relatively clean way.

I'm not sure if the Pyra will really be fully Open Hardware: at least the GPU will not have a FOSS driver. But I don't know much about the various open hardware licenses, so I don't know to what extent that is a problem. Can anyone use that logo, or are there criteria somewhere?

Ah! I was not aware of the common usage of L+1/2 keys, you seem to know what you're doing to make this as accessible as possible.  I don't think something has to be -fully- open, but the Pyra might still be generally too closed for the OSHW logo.

 

[oxym]

I like the layout of the keys, but I have a comment regarding modifier keys. I think it wolud be good to have separate AtlGr and Meta/Fn key. In polish-programmers keyboard layout using AltGr with:

azxcenlo produces ążźęńłó, so it would be nice to be able to achive the same with pyra keyboard.

On a side note, I believe that most of the Polish people is not aware that the key is called AltGr and are calling it simply "Alt" (I'm not exception here).

Another side note: There is one thing I don't understand about the physical layout of the keys, that is: why the spaces between the keys are so big? I'm using Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid 4 and both of them have almost no space between the keys. I have taken the layout provided by _wb_ and changed the space between the keys to half of the original size:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/f46d66ef5b3f025d2d1019b721c95ebc

now it is possible to fit there 4 to 8 more keys.

 

[TrashyMG]

now it is possible to fit there 4 to 8 more keys.

No what he have there is set, with the exception that the spacebar could be made into a single key freeing up one spare which _wb_'s layout is already taking account for..  

 

[Klumpen]

 

[rygD]

It isn't looking too good for the Any key...

So much software will now not work.

 

[Natsu]

It isn't looking too good for the Any key...

So much software will now not work.

If it is easy to remap keys, probably remap a FN key into that.

 

[ible]

It is really too bad we can't get the any key. I will probably remap User1 to the Any key, and User2 to the Every key. (That or the Gnocchi.)

 

[rygD]

It isn't looking too good for the Any key...


So much software will now not work.

If it is easy to remap keys, probably remap a FN key into that.

It would be a great help if it were actually labeled.  I already have trouble finding things on my Pandora that are, but have unextpected locations.  With such a crucial key I really don't want to forget where it is because it isn't labeled on the Pyra (or the Pandora).  I guess I can put it on user 1 like ible said.

Does anyone know if caps lock usually functions as an Any key by default.  I know using it in that way comes with problems, however I really want a custom key cap for it on my full size keyboard now, and caps lock isn't getting any use.  I could probably get one for Esc or another small key a bit cheaper.  I was thinking of doing it for the spacebar, however I prefer to keep that blank

 

[moxie]

Since we apparently are having a PM spam campaign about this very topic going right now, I'm going to lock this until further investigated.

People, I know we are a bit touch-and-go on rules and so on, but we sort of depend on an implicit basic rule on the boards:

Rule 0: Don't be a complete moron

That, in my opinion, would preclude spamming random board members about a long dead and buried poll topic that is already decided. If you think it doesn't, please report to your nearest though readjustment center. Thank you.

 

[moxie]

Seems notes are being taken and serious talks are being given, and thus we can unlock this again. Off we go, and remember Rule 0

 

[Natsu]

Kind of depressing that this needed to be locked in the first place. :/

 

[rygD]

Rule 0: Don't be a complete moron

This seems rather insensitive.  It isn't my fault.