The big Pyra keyboard poll

[Grench]

Also, needs super for the media keys? I thought the idea behind having them on the shoulder was so you could control your audio with the lid closed? I guess you do need some modifier if they are also to be the keyboard modifiers though, as in DeadBeef at least, you can't bind a modifier key to actions.

Actually, I wonder about using the lid sensor as the modifer. Lid open, they act as keyboard modifiers, lid closed they become media keys? You could also use super+shoulder to get at the media keys with the lid open, but not having to use a modifier on the keyboard when the lid is closed would be beneficial I think.

Oooh... cool concept with the key-combination-function = lid switch. I'm going to steal a portion of that.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

@wb not sure if it is already talked about in the many reams of posts, but the control buttons, AYXB or whatever they are called, I believe the game labeling (AYXB) should be larger than the keyboard functionality (page up/down/etc.) where as they are currently the other way around. This is based on the fact I believe these buttons will be used 1000+% more as game buttons over their keyboard functionality.

 

[_wb_]

As a configurable option maybe.


I wonder, for the occasions where you need shift and meta (e.g. compose key and shifted dead keys) can you use L1 and L2 and shift and meta, or do you need to use the keyboard shift as documented in the comments?

Of course you can use L1 and L2 for dead key diacritics -- the whole point is to reduce the number of thumb presses. I would make the default Compose key only work as Meta+(keyboard shift), not Meta+(shoulder shift), so you can use L1+L2 without accidentally entering compose mode. But of course the position of the Compose key should be configurable. I will probably use the keyboard shift as a dedicated compose key.

Also, needs super for the media keys? I thought the idea behind having them on the shoulder was so you could control your audio with the lid closed? I guess you do need some modifier if they are also to be the keyboard modifiers though, as in DeadBeef at least, you can't bind a modifier key to actions.


Actually, I wonder about using the lid sensor as the modifer. Lid open, they act as keyboard modifiers, lid closed they become media keys? You could also use super+shoulder to get at the media keys with the lid open, but not having to use a modifier on the keyboard when the lid is closed would be beneficial I think.

Yes, the idea is basically that the lid is the second Super key -- closing the lid is a RightSuper keypress, opening it is a RightSuper keyrelease. So when the lid is closed, the shoulder buttons are media keys (by default), and when the lid is open, you need to hold Super to get access to the media keys.

Of course when a dedicated media player has keyboard focus, it could be coded to interpret the shoulder keys (even without Super) as media keys. But media keys are most useful when some other application has keyboard focus, so you can skip a song without having to Alt-Tab away from whatever you're doing.

@wb not sure if it is already talked about in the many reams of posts, but the control buttons, AYXB or whatever they are called, I believe the game labeling (AYXB) should be larger than the keyboard functionality (page up/down/etc.) where as they are currently the other way around. This is based on the fact I believe these buttons will be used 1000+% more as game buttons over their keyboard functionality.

It may be a fact that you believe that, but what do you base your belief on? Do you have usage statistics? It's also a fact that I believe that they will be used more as keyboard keys than as game buttons. But I'll readily admit that that belief is based only on my own Pandora use.

Also, why do gamers need big labels? When gaming, you are not looking at action buttons, you are mainly using muscle memory and pressing buttons based on their location, not their label. The labels aren't right most of the time anyway, at least when playing emulated games. The only games for which ABXY are actually correctly labeled, are native Pandora games. Native Pyra games can use either A B X Y to describe their action buttons, or  ⇤ ⇥ ⇞ ⇟, or both -- whatever works best.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

My belief is based on reading the forums and having a "feel" for how much Pandora activity is games vs apps. Perhaps I could just look at the ten most downloads apps on the repo and see if they are predominantly game controls of keyboard typing? Not perfect perhaps but I can't think of anything better or fairer?

 

[Rockthesmurf]

So, most downloaded, according to the repo:

1. Firefox 31.0
2. DraStic
3. PPSSPP
4. PCSX ReARMed
5. Mupen64plus v2.1
6. PNDManager
7. UAE4ALL
8. Snes9x4P
9. PicoDrive
10. DosBox EX + Games Downloader

So, from that, Firefox maybe some amount of keyboard, how much is hard to tell, but certainly it would be fair to see more keyboard than gaming controls. For the rest, I'd say joypad buttons are going to be used more than page up/page down; sure you could use page up/down in DoxBox EX if you decided to run some text editor software in DosBox EX, but that doesn't seem like a common use case, it certainly isn't the things I see in the forum threads when most people talk about DosBox.

 

[comradekingu]

I suppose urls is most of what is typed in FF, but i think it doesnt really count as a typing app, since it mostly remembers or helps typing (by default).

Also i think if the pandora keyboard was full functional effective layout and/or better in other ways, along with the wifi connectivity, things like pidgin would see more use. Certainly i would use it a lot more myself if thats meaningful data.

Come to think of it FF is where many write their emails, so it atleast counts for potential.

 

[Saber]

Since I tend to ignore the box...

Right nubclick = left mouse click IS a bit cumbersome - but logical within the limitations of left nub as mouse.

What if we made the right nub as mouse and left nub click = left mouse click?

Just because it was done the other way on the Pandora doesn't mean we have to restrict to that.

So - roll that thought around a bit...  right nub = mouse movement?  Great idea or hateful concept?

Yes, why not! Could be the default, to make the clicks make more sense, at least on paper.

I'd probably configure my Pyra to use left nub for movement and right nub for clicking because I'm used to that, and because it makes sense to me: left side is arrows and mouse movement (i.e. micro-navigation; even Tab can be micro-navigation if you use it to go from field to field in a form), right side is scroll wheel, pgup/pgdn/home/end, and "confirmation"-things like click, Enter, action buttons (i.e. macro-navigation).

Agree with having Right Nub be for mouse movement since most people are right handed, and Left Nub for various clicks. Left and Right Nub centers should correspond to Left Mouse Click and Right Mouse Click like Grench suggested. Now that there is center clicking for the Nubs, it makes sense to do it this way now. Good idea.  :wub:

 

[levi]

The only situation where you absolutely need page up and page down, that I know of, is when in the terminal - up/down arrow go through your history, but to see your scrollback you need page up. Granted, in X you've got scrollbars (unless you've disabled them as I have), but not having to faff with the nubs when in the shell is a boon.


I suspect though that a large percentage of people who buy keyboards without labels on are linux users, so I don't see an absolute need to even label those buttons as page up/down.


@wb If an app is stealing keyboard focus, will background apps even receive media key messages? I guess that's a general linux question since we're not inventing media keys here.


Actually, that reminds me - I do two things to my media player when in an app most of the time - pause the music and load up a new file/playlist. Pausing you could do with a media key but loading up a new file you'd need to tab away - and that's something not all full screen Pandora apps let you do. I'm not sure how you'd make sure that's possible, and it's not really a discussion for a keyboard thread, but anyway, it's something I'd like to be able to do on my Pyra.

 

[_wb_]

I use PgUp/PgDn all of the time. How do you view/edit multi-page documents without it? Do you just keep pressing arrow keys (and have incredible patience)? Do you always use the mouse to drag the scrollbar down to where you want it to be, or to click on the scrollbar?

How do you navigate a long web page? I'm just wondering here -- I always use Home/End/PgUp/PgDn to quickly go where I want to, I wonder what other people do.

What do you use to go to the beginning/end of a line of text in an editor (or on the command line)? I use Home/End. I guess sometimes you can use Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, but in many applications those do different things.

When editing text, I use those keys all the time. E.g. sequences like this: Home, Shift+End (one line selected), Ctrl-X (cut), PgDn, PgDn, Up, Up, Up, Up, End (find the right spot), Enter, Ctrl-V (paste).

I also use these often on my Pandora: Ctrl+Home/End to go to the beginning/end of the document (in LibreOffice), Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn to switch between tabs (e.g. browser tabs or terminal tabs), Shift+PgUp/PgDn to view the scrollback of a terminal.

@Steven: so are you saying that the keyboard is basically not really used on the Pandora? Maybe the Pyra should not have a keyboard at all then?

@wb If an app is stealing keyboard focus, will background apps even receive media key messages? I guess that's a general linux question since we're not inventing media keys here.

I guess it should be possible. I don't know what the exact mechanism is, but it should be something like how the brightness keys work on the Pandora regardless of what application has keyboard focus.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

@wb: nope, my suggestion wasn't that the keyboard isn't used, if you reread what I said, my suggestion was merely that the buttons should be labeled with their gaming letter ABXY larger than their textual PgUp/PgDown function (currently it is reversed). I suggested that the gaming functionality is used 1,000% more - the 1,000% is pulled out of the air, but as it goes, from looking at the top 10 download list, it actually has some basis. So at this stage I think it would be down to you to provide some evidence that PageUp/PageDown are in fact used more by the majority of people.

 

[_wb_]

@wb: nope, my suggestion wasn't that the keyboard isn't used, if you reread what I said, my suggestion was merely that the buttons should be labeled with their gaming letter ABXY larger than their textual PgUp/PgDown function (currently it is reversed). I suggested that the gaming functionality is used 1,000% more - the 1,000% is pulled out of the air, but as it goes, from looking at the top 10 download list, it actually has some basis. So at this stage I think it would be down to you to provide some evidence that PageUp/PageDown are in fact used more by the majority of people.

Regardless of how those buttons are (or will be) used the most (which is rather hard to investigate):

why would larger ABXY labels make them more suitable for gaming?

Are the symbols "A", "B", "X" and "Y" somehow intrinsically more "gaming-like" than the symbols "⇤", "⇥", "⇞" and "⇟" ?

Thought experiment: I'm making a platformer, and my game actions are "jump", "shoot", "drop mine" and "activate shield". What makes most sense, pictographically: "Press ⇞ to jump, ⇥ to shoot, ⇟to drop a mine, ⇤ to activate your shield.", or, I dunno, "Press Y to jump, B to shoot, X to drop a mine, A to activate your shield."

Thought experiment #2: I'm making an RPG, with lots of menus; the game actions are "confirm/continue/enter", "back/abort/leave", "menu/inventory" and "action" (do something here: pick up an item, drop an item, talk to someone etc). Which symbols would you rather put in the help screen / GUI hints? ⇤ Back,  ⇥ Confirm, ⇞Menu, ⇟Action kind of makes sense in my mind. With ABXY there's not really a natural mapping between symbol and meaning.

I consider the A B X Y labels mostly a backwards compatibility thing in case we manage to run Pandora PNDs out of the box. I would prefer it if new Pyra-specific games and ports would refer to the action buttons with unambiguous symbols ( ⇤ ⇥ ⇞ ⇟) instead of using A B X Y, which just confuses people: they are in different positions on every gaming device that has them (ABXY on Pandora, YABX on Nintendo, XBAY on X-Box, YCBZ+XA on Sega, etc), and not only that, but we also already have those exact same letters on the keyboard. For that reason, I think it's better to emphasize the unique symbol than to emphasize the backward-compatibility label.

If I would have to decide, I would use only the symbols ⇤ ⇥ ⇞ ⇟, because why should we specifically care about backwards compatibility with Pandora but not about compatibility with Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation etc? That feels rather arbitrary -- and judging from that top-10 list of popular downloads, it looks like even the Pandora is used more for non-Pandora games than for Pandora games -- in none of the emulators in that list, it is helpful to have the Pandora-order ABXY labels on those buttons, to the contrary.

Or else I would use new symbols for the game buttons, e.g. Π Ω Δ χ or ◼ ⬟ ▲ ✖, and then it would make sense to make those new symbols nice and big and the ⇤ ⇥ ⇞ ⇟labels less prominent -- ambiguity is avoided anyway with such symbols, though they still need the hint about the non-gaming use of the buttons.

 

[comradekingu]

I think ABXY being directions stopped making sense after it was just AB. I dont know if its X or Y axis, but the ship has sailed once there are competing standards.

The inscriptions were for the most part always printed on the controller-case with older consoles, if not there, its easy enough to produce more than one setup. PS-style would be popular among some, and that makes sense since it never changes.

Instead signifying buttons with (semi)directional markings make a lot of sense, since it guides you towards ⇟ being downwards cluster.  I tried to do that on my cluster idea somewhat with ^ upwards and rootsign downwards.

I think my names were better, but  uc   lc  rc dc   for   up cluster,  left cluster, right cluster and down cluster could probably work just as well.

In fighting games its easier to list combos as A ↓ X ←→Y or similar.  Stops being the case when its A ↓ X (which is really [ B) ] ←→Y (which is really X) or equivalent.

⇤ i would mistake for back and ⇥ for forwards. Not that i use pup/pdn/hom/end much

Its a question of deciding what the buttons should do. It seemed to work well enough on the pandora. On a regular keyboard home is top and end is bottom. Could they be on the two new buttons? Then left could be previous and right could be next.  Or?

home     pgup

prev                    next

end       pgdn

Personally i like the ABXY-cluster doubling as input for generic typing and laptop use, that makes it more professional, and more in tune with the whole idea for me.

Otherwise it becomes a laptop with joysticks that arent mouse input, or something of the sort. If my laptop had controls for RC-planes that would be a laptop i would be less inclined to buy.

If the ABXY(+2) are in the right place, it doesnt matter to people who only use them for games what they say as much, but i think to the great majority that doesnt, it will look less like a toy if they are unified colours, which maybe a dot of colour to signify each button.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

Wasn't there a separate vote on the naming of the action buttons... 

 

[_wb_]

Wasn't there a separate vote on the naming of the action buttons... 

Yes, many of them. This one got the most people who participated in the poll (92):

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15818-action-button-labels-poll/

 

[rygD]

Wasn't there a separate vote on the naming of the action buttons... 

Yes, many of them. This one got the most people who participated in the poll (92):

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15818-action-button-labels-poll/

That reminds me, blank gaming buttons might look nice.  I believe I saw some LEDs around them, does that mean the markings on those buttons will be backlit?

 

[levi]

I use PgUp/PgDn all of the time. How do you view/edit multi-page documents without it? Do you just keep pressing arrow keys (and have incredible patience)? Do you always use the mouse to drag the scrollbar down to where you want it to be, or to click on the scrollbar?


How do you navigate a long web page? I'm just wondering here -- I always use Home/End/PgUp/PgDn to quickly go where I want to, I wonder what other people do.


What do you use to go to the beginning/end of a line of text in an editor (or on the command line)? I use Home/End. I guess sometimes you can use Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, but in many applications those do different things.


When editing text, I use those keys all the time. E.g. sequences like this: Home, Shift+End (one line selected), Ctrl-X (cut), PgDn, PgDn, Up, Up, Up, Up, End (find the right spot), Enter, Ctrl-V (paste).


I also use these often on my Pandora: Ctrl+Home/End to go to the beginning/end of the document (in LibreOffice), Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn to switch between tabs (e.g. browser tabs or terminal tabs), Shift+PgUp/PgDn to view the scrollback of a terminal.

Yes, I use arrow keys repeatedly or held down a lot. I guess it comes from editing long documents on old limited keyboards (such as on the 8-bit machines) that didn't bother with pgup and down, nor home and end. To be honest, I find it quicker when scrolling through documents as I can see the context scrolling past as I go, whereas with pgup/down, I have to spend a moment figuring out where I am again after pressing it. As for home and end, I learned to use ctrl+a in the terminal before finding out that home worked the same, so I still use that. To be honest, I've not use a word processor for about ten years now, so most of my long documents are written in Vim, where I can use G to jump about the document just fine. I suppose recently I have edited long pages on the wiki, and for that use I tend to use the mouse.


I doubt I'm especially representative, but I guess I prove that you don't absolutely need those keys for anything but shell scrollback (and even then, you lose that if you use 'screen', instead having to ctrl+a, [ to see it using the arrow keys). And we did all survive using the Pandora keyboard where they're not labelled as such.

 

[_wb_]

Wasn't there a separate vote on the naming of the action buttons... 

Yes, many of them. This one got the most people who participated in the poll (92):

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15818-action-button-labels-poll/

That reminds me, blank gaming buttons might look nice.  I believe I saw some LEDs around them, does that mean the markings on those buttons will be backlit?

Yes, I think ED said at some point that they will be backlit. Backlit blank buttons are a bit of a waste though

 

[rygD]

Wasn't there a separate vote on the naming of the action buttons... 

Yes, many of them. This one got the most people who participated in the poll (92):

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15818-action-button-labels-poll/

That reminds me, blank gaming buttons might look nice.  I believe I saw some LEDs around them, does that mean the markings on those buttons will be backlit?

Yes, I think ED said at some point that they will be backlit. Backlit blank buttons are a bit of a waste though

That is why I was asking.  If they are backlit there should be something cool or useful.

 

[_wb_]

Slightly updated my proposal because of this: http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15275-unofficial-keyboard-layoutsseptember-11th-2014/page-37?p=355980#entry355980

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/47011389e63149a16837751f3526a238

I propose to use a "wonky chip" icon for the "Hardware" button. Tap it to toggle something you want to toggle easily (configurable).

Hold it and use it as a kind of modifier to toggle other things. We could call the modifier "Wonky".

Examples:

Wonky-U : toggle USB

Wonky-W : toggle Wifi

Wonky-G : toggle GPS

Wonky-B : toggle Bluetooth

Wonky-H : toggle HDMI

Wonky-D : toggle Data (3G), alias: Wonky-3

Wonky-T : toggle Turbo (say, controls max clockspeed and/or CPUfreq governor)

and maybe:

Wonky-R : soft reboot

Wonky-S : soft shutdown

Wonky-Shift-R : hard reboot

Wonky-Shift-S : hard shutdown

 

[Saber]

Wonky is a cute name for a hardware key modifier. Gene Wilder should be on the Pyra retail packaging with one golden ticket stashed inside each manufacturer's production run.