@_WB_: then you are going to love this layout: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Sinclair_ZX_Spectrum.jpg
Unofficial Keyboard Layouts
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Grench
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Really - with the different color coding associated with the keys, it's pretty easy to find what you're after if you know which color set or position you're looking for it in. The human brain is remarkably capable that way.
About the updated first post:
love the slash as a separate key. Tab is also very welcome. I adhere to _wb_'s post: compose mode is better.
As for the freed up keys, bring paragraph symbol back , and stick the yuan (W), rupee ® and ¤ (O) currency in there... also maybe ruble and peso. My guess is that each country liked their symbol there. I use the euro, and the dollar to program. I have no love for the pound, but english ppl do. Sure, you can meta+equals, then L to get a pound, but a single key is faster.
This is only to get more ppl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_symbol
Or maybe math simbols would be übercool... a pi symbol, sigma, ....
@Saber: what about FN+shift being shiftlock... please update the asciiart layout.
Also, the audio on the back... I'd put the power charger there (missing?) and the audio back to the front, as the SOC will be about where it is now, because that is the coolest part of the pandora when held with 2 hands, and you need the audio as far as possible from that noise generator (actually, the screen is the noisy one).
Nothing on the sides, keep it like that, my hands are there.
tl;dr: headphone jack to front and altGR somewhere for more custom layouts.
love the slash as a separate key. Tab is also very welcome. I adhere to _wb_'s post: compose mode is better.
As for the freed up keys, bring paragraph symbol back , and stick the yuan (W), rupee ® and ¤ (O) currency in there... also maybe ruble and peso. My guess is that each country liked their symbol there. I use the euro, and the dollar to program. I have no love for the pound, but english ppl do. Sure, you can meta+equals, then L to get a pound, but a single key is faster.
This is only to get more ppl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_symbol
Or maybe math simbols would be übercool... a pi symbol, sigma, ....
@Saber: what about FN+shift being shiftlock... please update the asciiart layout.
Also, the audio on the back... I'd put the power charger there (missing?) and the audio back to the front, as the SOC will be about where it is now, because that is the coolest part of the pandora when held with 2 hands, and you need the audio as far as possible from that noise generator (actually, the screen is the noisy one).
Nothing on the sides, keep it like that, my hands are there.
tl;dr: headphone jack to front and altGR somewhere for more custom layouts.
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Caine
Hardcore Member
Since I have been away from the boards for a while, I had no idea if the hardware layout was final or not. I asked, consensus seemed to be it was not. Regardless, I just enjoy the exercise. Keyboard layouts for the Pandora 1 have been ignored as well and the horrible backspace/del combination was born out of it. If Ed wants inspiration then this is where he can come have a look.
Thank you. I have a bit mixed feelings on it. I never use any of those international keys and compose functionality is more than enough for me if I need it (e.g. "e). If labels are to be printed then color coding is a must. From what I saw so far, the site I used for the image doesn't allow multiple colors on keys.
This is also a good alternative if it can be made to fit.
Added color coding (previous post also updated):
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Saber
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I'd rather not leave them blank or become repetitive or redundant with the labeling. Have to put something on those keys that can be useful to someone. If you have some specific(accented or not) characters, I'd be interested in hearing about them.
As for to the right of P, L, and M, I think the Pyra handheld will share a similar orientation(Enter on right, Spacebar, Fn on lower right) as the Pandora. Not much in the way of choice when you have only one key left to the rightside of the letter P. Of course, users can still reassign keys however possible and to their liking, chiefly the row between Tab and /.
I guess we'll find out in the coming months. The agony of not knowing. :rolleyes:
Obviously we still have Compose mode if we need it, but again I had to find something to put on those keys. Section sign, Pilcrow, ß, ±, µ, even « and it's sibling and a few others "auditioned" for a spot on the layout stage, along with Pause, Break, Brightness controls, and Print Screen. In the end though I decided the most practical way was the ideal one and thus I went with a smattering of the non-english found on the International Keyboard layout from the wiki. Sorry.
As for the rest, in my fantastical design power is through the micro USB port in the back and the audio plug locale was only a minor guesstimation. Undeniably, I wouldn't mind if it and the volume wheel made it back to the front. I further admit though I did design the layout to have the possiblity for Volume controls as primary where Brightness is(brightness becomes a Fn + Vol affair), and Wifi and Bluetooth mosey on to the center two buttons above Start(USB Host and TV Out are then accessed by Fn + Wifi and Fn + BT).
Also, Fbnil, thanks so much for catching my omission of the Caps Lock key in the first post.
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Null
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levi
Still fresh, damnit!
Regarding the pound (currency) symbol, as a Britisher, I can't say I can remember the last time I used it on my keyboard. I guess people who write more documents might argue, but as a coder and someone who's well used to 7-bit email transports, I tend to use the abbreviation 'GBP' more often than the symbol. I probably wouldn't use the dollar symbol if not for BASH variables.
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Saber
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Personally, I rarely use the F1-F12 keys. I wouldn't miss them if they vamoosed, but others need them or want them, like the Yen. That's how we roll. -_-
DAP
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Both the space bar and the enter key need to be split in two, or the dvorak keymap can not be implemented.Updated the first page layout. Enjoy.
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Let's stick to ASCII characters and do those well. If you start adding international symbols, you're always favoring one language over the other. As a Belgian, I know what I'm talking about. It's a bad idea.
bzar
A Commando
Instead of dedicated "international" symbol keys, we could just have one extra modifier key. I wouldn't mind making "Ä" by pressing "shift-extra-a", but on pandora doing "shift-enter Fn-whateverthequotecharacterwas shift-a" is really tiresome when ircing . I wouldn't mind making an xmodmap myself for that, but the modifier should explicitly be thought of as user-mappable (with maybe some defaults) so no software would assume stuff from the characters it produces. Any keys put under it in the default mapping should not include stuff you can normally produce on an english qwerty keyboard.
. I wouldn't mind making an xmodmap myself for that, but the modifier should explicitly be thought of as user-mappable (with maybe some defaults) so no software would assume stuff from the characters it produces. Any keys put under it in the default mapping should not include stuff you can normally produce on an english qwerty keyboard.
That is a good idea.
Also, if we have ALT or CTRL available in an easy to reach place and also as a shoulder button, you could map one of them to be the compose key, so the compose key itself is only one keypress. We should also try to make common diacritics keys easily reachable, like ' for áéíóú, " for äëïöü, / for ø, ` for àèì`òù, ~ for ñ, - for āēīōū, ^ for âêîôû, "," for çş, = for € ¥ ₤, and so on.
The most international keyboard you can make in my opinion, is just a regular full QWERTY keyboard, with [ and ] to the right of P, ; and ' to the right of L, and , . / to the right of M. That way there are enough keys (in the right positions) to map a.o. standard Arabic, European, Russian, Turkish, and DVORAK layouts.
But just label the keys like a normal QWERTY keyboard, please. That is what people who use non-QWERTY layouts on a QWERTY keyboard are used to anyway. If you add a bunch of extra labels for some arbitrary selection of international symbols, you're just complicating matters and making it a confusing mess for someone who tries to adjust things to his own preference on a range of devices.
And please, the only currency symbol we need is $ - not because the dollar is more important than the euro or whatever, but just because it happens to be an ASCII character that is often used in programming languages. We don't need labeled keys for €, ¥, ₤, ¤, or whatever else is used somewhere in the world (according to Wikipedia: [SIZE=125%]₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ ₠ $ ₫ ৳ ₯ € ƒ ₣ ₲ ₴ ₭ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₱ ₰ £ ₹ ₨ ₪ ₸ ₮ ₩ ¥ ៛[/SIZE] ). People can use the compose key if the occasionally need a symbol, or map it to a key if they often need it. I only use those currency symbols myself in forum threads like this one
Also, if we have ALT or CTRL available in an easy to reach place and also as a shoulder button, you could map one of them to be the compose key, so the compose key itself is only one keypress. We should also try to make common diacritics keys easily reachable, like ' for áéíóú, " for äëïöü, / for ø, ` for àèì`òù, ~ for ñ, - for āēīōū, ^ for âêîôû, "," for çş, = for € ¥ ₤, and so on.
The most international keyboard you can make in my opinion, is just a regular full QWERTY keyboard, with [ and ] to the right of P, ; and ' to the right of L, and , . / to the right of M. That way there are enough keys (in the right positions) to map a.o. standard Arabic, European, Russian, Turkish, and DVORAK layouts.
But just label the keys like a normal QWERTY keyboard, please. That is what people who use non-QWERTY layouts on a QWERTY keyboard are used to anyway. If you add a bunch of extra labels for some arbitrary selection of international symbols, you're just complicating matters and making it a confusing mess for someone who tries to adjust things to his own preference on a range of devices.
And please, the only currency symbol we need is $ - not because the dollar is more important than the euro or whatever, but just because it happens to be an ASCII character that is often used in programming languages. We don't need labeled keys for €, ¥, ₤, ¤, or whatever else is used somewhere in the world (according to Wikipedia: [SIZE=125%]₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ ₠ $ ₫ ৳ ₯ € ƒ ₣ ₲ ₴ ₭ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₱ ₰ £ ₹ ₨ ₪ ₸ ₮ ₩ ¥ ៛[/SIZE] ). People can use the compose key if the occasionally need a symbol, or map it to a key if they often need it. I only use those currency symbols myself in forum threads like this one
I do agree with the "don't put on a sh*tload of labels" thing, and also with the "Go easy on the currency symbols". I'd just like to point out that the compose method it not so useful when your language isn't conceptually using composed characters. That is, in some languages the accented letters are just that - In french, the è is "e grave" (if my memory serves me right). In other languages, notably my own and other nordic languages, the "accented" letters really are entities of their own. The letter ä is not "a trema" or anything like that, it is the letter ä, with its own sound and own meaning and own position in the alphabet. Nobody speaking swedish thinks of ä or å as being some kind of variants or versions of a (and we are royally confused when we try to sort data in Excel and all the Ågren and Änglund gets mixed up with the Anderssons, until we remember to change the collation language). So trying to make the swedish (or other nordic) letters through compose is conceptually quite tricky.
With that said, I'm fairly pleased with my current solution (xmodmapping them over ¥€£) and would be very pleased with B-Zars solution up above (being from Finland, he has the same thing in his language). No labels needed, but a good gesture space for xmodmapping, please.
With that said, I'm fairly pleased with my current solution (xmodmapping them over ¥€£) and would be very pleased with B-Zars solution up above (being from Finland, he has the same thing in his language). No labels needed, but a good gesture space for xmodmapping, please.
Saber
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Both the space bar and the enter key need to be split in two, or the dvorak keymap can not be implemented.Updated the first page layout. Enjoy.
How did you get the Pandora keyboard to work then?
I'm sure Persians will shake their fists toward the heavens at Farsi being excluded in the layout. Sarcasm aside, what ASCII characters should we put in place of those I have already? Specific examples please.
Instead of dedicated "international" symbol keys, we could just have one extra modifier key. I wouldn't mind making "Ä" by pressing "shift-extra-a", but on pandora doing "shift-enter Fn-whateverthequotecharacterwas shift-a" is really tiresome when ircing
There will always be Compose mode for the user. A dedicated key is nice but Shift-Enter is hardly difficult to do. Like I asked _wb_, do you have any specific characters that are universal you'd like on the layout? Keep them in the realm of needed once a month by users and not once a year.
I'm sure some would cry foul if we don't have at least the Euro on the layout, and not every Pandorian or potential Pyrate is a programmer by the way. Shockingly, I don't need a $ sign either, but some do. You may not like it, but this keyboard is abnormal to begin with. Look at where Fn and Space are, and Escape is not so up front as I'm used to. Sure it's a keyboard combo's reach, but apparently that's not the point. I'm being excluded now and have been with the Pandora. I mean, just look where my beloved ? is. Why should forward slash get preferential treatment. I am not a programmer. Doesn't seem fair treatment. Craziness in spades. /sarcasmThat is a good idea.
Also, if we have ALT or CTRL available in an easy to reach place and also as a shoulder button, you could map one of them to be the compose key, so the compose key itself is only one keypress. We should also try to make common diacritics keys easily reachable, like ' for áéíóú, " for äëïöü, / for ø, ` for àèì`òù, ~ for ñ, - for āēīōū, ^ for âêîôû, "," for çş, = for € ¥ ₤, and so on.
The most international keyboard you can make in my opinion, is just a regular full QWERTY keyboard, with [ and ] to the right of P, ; and ' to the right of L, and , . / to the right of M. That way there are enough keys (in the right positions) to map a.o. standard Arabic, European, Russian, Turkish, and DVORAK layouts.
But just label the keys like a normal QWERTY keyboard, please. That is what people who use non-QWERTY layouts on a QWERTY keyboard are used to anyway. If you add a bunch of extra labels for some arbitrary selection of international symbols, you're just complicating matters and making it a confusing mess for someone who tries to adjust things to his own preference on a range of devices.
And please, the only currency symbol we need is $ - not because the dollar is more important than the euro or whatever, but just because it happens to be an ASCII character that is often used in programming languages. We don't need labeled keys for €, ¥, ₤, ¤, or whatever else is used somewhere in the world...
People can use the compose key if the occasionally need a symbol, or map it to a key if they often need it. I only use those currency symbols myself in forum threads like this one
As you suggested, I don't see why diacritics should be on the keys. We don't have an AltGr, but we do have Compose as we're all aware of. Adding a diacritic row means no one can use those keys without hassling with Altgr or Compose modes. Favor all by including none. I'll say it again though, what should be on the row under Fn between Tab and /? I'm reading here volumes about lack of fairness and equality, but nothing concrete being offered as a solution other than my own unconfused layout which works as it is without dreaming up buttons.
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The main problem is that people are discussing different things, and then mistakes arguments in one part of the thread to be about another part. There are at least two main strains of this thread:
* What number of keys ought the keyboard to have, and in what configuration. That is, keytops.
* What characters are important enough to be printed on the keytops, and in what positions and colours.
These are two very different things, and when these are confused, as for instance when Slaeshjag remarked that he wanted keys between P and Enter (keytops) and got criticized for wanting to print strange swedish characters there (which he said nothing about), things get confused. And when people get confused they raise their voices, and everything gets progressively worse. Relax, breathe and read again is, I think, a good advice for many
* What number of keys ought the keyboard to have, and in what configuration. That is, keytops.
* What characters are important enough to be printed on the keytops, and in what positions and colours.
These are two very different things, and when these are confused, as for instance when Slaeshjag remarked that he wanted keys between P and Enter (keytops) and got criticized for wanting to print strange swedish characters there (which he said nothing about), things get confused. And when people get confused they raise their voices, and everything gets progressively worse. Relax, breathe and read again is, I think, a good advice for many
This is typical for such a confusion. B-zar isn't asking for specific diacritics or characters, he is asking for good access to modifier keys so that we can offset the smaller number of keytops. Different thing, irrelevant followup question.
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You don't need $ just for programming, it's also used in LaTeX, spreadsheets, shell variables, regular expressions, and so on.
We need the keys ' " ` , . - = ~ / anyway, all I was saying is that they should be put in relatively good positions because they're also used in compose combinations.
Shift-enter is not an ideal key for compose if you use compose a lot. It's better to have a single key.
Here's a proposal. It requires 4 rows of 13, 14, or 15 keys:
` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = [DEL] [bACKSPACE]
[TAB] Q W E R T Y U I O P [ ] \
[sHIFT] A S D F G H J K L ; ' [ENTER]
[CTRL] [ALT] Z X C V B N M , . / [sPACE] [Fn]
Shifted keys just like on a normal keyboard:
~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + [DEL] [bACKSPACE]
[TAB] Q W E R T Y U I O P { } |
[sHIFT] A S D F G H J K L : " [ENTER]
[CTRL] [ALT] Z X C V B N M < > ? [sPACE] [Fn]
Some Fn keys:
[ESC] F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 [iNSERT]
[CAPS LOCK]
and maybe some for things like wifi toggle, brightness etc. The rest of them can be mapped by the user, e.g. if you want a key for € then you could map Fn+E to that; other may want Fn+E to be Ë or É or È or whatever.
There are enough keys to remap this to any layout you want, e.g. if you want dedicated keys for Å, Ä and Ö.
This is just a standard QWERTY keyboard, reduced to 4 rows instead of 6. With a slightly wider device and/or slightly smaller or less spaced out keys, it should be possible.
We need the keys ' " ` , . - = ~ / anyway, all I was saying is that they should be put in relatively good positions because they're also used in compose combinations.
Shift-enter is not an ideal key for compose if you use compose a lot. It's better to have a single key.
Here's a proposal. It requires 4 rows of 13, 14, or 15 keys:
` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = [DEL] [bACKSPACE]
[TAB] Q W E R T Y U I O P [ ] \
[sHIFT] A S D F G H J K L ; ' [ENTER]
[CTRL] [ALT] Z X C V B N M , . / [sPACE] [Fn]
Shifted keys just like on a normal keyboard:
~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + [DEL] [bACKSPACE]
[TAB] Q W E R T Y U I O P { } |
[sHIFT] A S D F G H J K L : " [ENTER]
[CTRL] [ALT] Z X C V B N M < > ? [sPACE] [Fn]
Some Fn keys:
[ESC] F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 [iNSERT]
[CAPS LOCK]
and maybe some for things like wifi toggle, brightness etc. The rest of them can be mapped by the user, e.g. if you want a key for € then you could map Fn+E to that; other may want Fn+E to be Ë or É or È or whatever.
There are enough keys to remap this to any layout you want, e.g. if you want dedicated keys for Å, Ä and Ö.
This is just a standard QWERTY keyboard, reduced to 4 rows instead of 6. With a slightly wider device and/or slightly smaller or less spaced out keys, it should be possible.
