Comparison matrix for keyboard layout proposals


Why isnt it then shift+FN+altGr?

If i do "setxkbmap -layout us -variant altgr-intl"   shift+altGr+1 is still ¡
Because the US International AltGr keyboard layout does not have any symbols on shift+AltGr+5.

Let's try this again. This time I will use the R key on this layout since the 4 key has a shift+AltGr+4 action. http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/2a0d638adab6a5b607c27fc6d3af6f14

Note, this is with the right Alt turned to AltGr by a driver that calls for it.

Unmodified R = 'r'

Shift+R = 'R'

AltGr+R = '®'

Shift+AltGr+R = nothing. There is no shift+AltGr symbol on the US International layout for R.

Fn+R = '4'

Fn+Shift+R = '$'

Fn+AltGr+R = '¤'

Fn+Shift+AltGr+R = '£'

The number row is on the Fn layer, but works just like the number row on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International

Does that help?
 
Why isnt it then shift+FN+altGr?

If i do "setxkbmap -layout us -variant altgr-intl"   shift+altGr+1 is still ¡
You post edited to add the 2nd line.

See these for reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International

http://www.forlang.wsu.edu/help/keyboards1.asp

Using the US International layout, this should be how it works:

Shift+AltGr+1 SHOULD be a superscript 1 = ¹

AltGr+1 SHOULD be ¡

What do you get from your driver for AltGr+1 then?

Again, EVERY implementation of AltGr mappings results in different symbols on different assignments.
 
 
Just like taking away AltGr and presenting someone with a key called "meta" fails, it also is ill-fitting to expect all people who need it to be able to use shoulders.


Just want to keyboard, no instructions for how to turn on a MIG-jet please.
"Just want to keyboard" on an primarily English key limited device with provisions for German, French and Spanish.
But you want to do it in Norwegian with, "no instructions for how to turn on a MIG-jet please."


THAT is a fantasy.
It is a fantasy if you require the locale-specific keys to be primary dedicated keys in their normal positions, even if you take an approach like comradekingu which keeps P+1, L+2 available for remapping, because basically only the Scandinavian languages can do with just the 3 extra letters at P+1, L+2.

German also needs ß at 0+1, French have dedicated éèçà keys at 2790 and a dedicated circumflex key (the dedicated ù is less important I would say), Spanish keyboards have a dedicated ñ and ¡¿ key and also dedicated acute/diaeresis key; in Spain they also have dedicated Ç and grave/circumflex keys (for a total of 5 extra dedicated keys) which are not just there because Portugal and France are neighboring countries, but also because of Catalan and Occitan. And so on.

But it is not a fantasy if you can live with the locale-specific dedicated keys as Meta/Fn/Sym keys, in addition to dead diacritics.

My most recent proposal ("_wb_ intl 2") achieves exactly this.

The dedicated German keys ü ä ö ß are all there (at ◆YUHB).

The dedicated French keys é è ç à are all there (at ◆SDCV).

The dedicated Spanish keys ñ ¿¡ are all there (at ◆NQ).

The dedicated Portuguese key ç is there (at ◆C).

The dedicated Swedish/Finnish keys å ö ä are all there (at ◆THY).

The dedicated Danish/Norwegian keys å æ ø are all there (at ◆TFG).

The Euro sign € is there (at ◆E).

The British pound sign £ is there (at ◆R).

It supports all the important diacritics:

  • acute ´ as a mashable combo at ◆'                          to get e.g. áéíúó      (é is already available precomposed)
  • umlaut ¨ as a mashable combo at ◆"  (Shift+◆')      to get e.g. äëïöü      (äöü are already available precomposed)
  • grave ` as a mashable combo at ◆A                        to get e.g. àèìòù      (àè are already available precomposed)
  • tilde ~ as a maybe-mashable combo at Shift+◆A     to get e.g. ñãõ         (ñ is already available precomposed)
  • cedilla/ogonek/comma ¸ at ◆,                                   to get e.g. çşąęįųşţ  (ç is already available precomposed)
  • caron/háček/breve at ◆<                                          to get e.g. čšž ěăğ
  • underdot/overdot/ring at ◆.                                      to get e.g. ċėżıåů      (å is already available precomposed)
  • circumflex ^ at ◆>                                                     to get e.g. âêîôû
This implies that a.o. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Irish, Slovakian, Turkish, Estonian, Czech, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian and Romanian are fully covered; Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian and Maltese are mostly covered but would still need some minor adjustments, i.e. remappings to get Ł, ū, macron, őű and ħ respectively.

Out of the 24 official languages of the European Union, only Greek and Bulgarian are not supported, and that's because they don't use a Latin-based alphabet.

More important languages in terms of number of speakers, number of native speakers, and "sales potential" have been given priority over less important languages by including more of their language-specific letters on the keymat.

So in my opinion, this is a very nice proposal. For the major languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) and also for the Scandinavian languages and Dutch, you have all the letters that are a dedicated key on your regional keyboard available as either a primary key or as a labeled ◆ key -- if you're using the shoulder buttons, it's only one thumb press per letter. I think that's about as good as it gets in terms of international/multilingual support.

Link to the comparison table for convenience:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14mVNNzLhmhyA4sCIAPSoDv404xtctfLSiEMTtTlEzfw/edit?usp=sharing
 
But it is not a fantasy if you can live with the locale-specific dedicated keys as Meta/Fn/Sym keys, in addition to dead diacritics
I believe that is the point: where most are coming up with layouts that relegate non-English specific keys to meta level and diacritics, comradekingu seems intent on forcing as many of these extra keys to be "where they're supposed to be" and the design is suffering for it, but because they're "where they're supposed to be" it must obviously be right and everyone else is necessarily wrong.
 
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I'd say that's the main feature of his layout. No shame in not wanting to let go of a primary motivation for a layout. I know I won't ditch full keyboard compatibility nor user-mappable software modifier from mine :)

Of course people may disagree, but that doesn't mean anyone's wrong. Preferences are preferences. Opinions are opinions. Facts are facts. Seeing, accepting and appreciating the difference between these especially in one's own text is, in my opinion, the first step out of pointless circular arguments that lead nowhere.

Lots of opinions and preferences have been presented as facts, which helps no one.

EDIT: disclaimer: the last two paragraphs were inspired by, but not a direct reply to WizardStan's post :)
 
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for some reason, _wb_ intl 2 is coming up with a link to one of my layouts.  I was wondering why my first vote was going to it ;) .
 
for some reason, _wb_ intl 2 is coming up with a link to one of my layouts.  I was wondering why my first vote was going to it ;) .
Fixed :)

You may want to verify the "code combos" score, maybe I was a bit too generous there.

I'm also slightly cheating w.r.t. the property "Meta+vowels/SCN free for e.g. Ä€îÖÜßçñ", since not all of the vowels are actually free, but in this type of layout with lots of built-in international support, I don't really see the point of keeping them free for remapping -- nearly nobody would need to remap stuff.

Other than that I have no other explanation for your first vote going to my proposal other than that my proposal is just a good proposal :)
 
Comradekingu and Eight Bit, you have some weird negative weights in the big table in the 'international support' section:

  • Comradekingu gives a huge negative weight (-35) to proposals having labeled dead diacritics. I wonder what the reasoning behind that is. Maybe you personally don't need them, but why such a huge negative weight? Do they bother you that much? Because you know, you already deduce points for those dead diacritics because they're "extra labels" (with another huge weight of -40) and they contribute to the total number of labels (-9.5) and the average number of labels (-8.8). So in terms of "clutter" they already cause quite a lot of negative points; do you really need to punish proposals with dead diacritics on top of that? Languages like French or Portuguese really need dead diacritics, perhaps Norwegian does not, but if you don't care, give it a weight of 0, not a huge negative weight.
  • Eight Bit: you give negative weights to the properties "German (ÄÖÜß) in 1 thumb press", "Spanish support (ñ ¿¡ ´ ü labeled)", "Portuguese support (ç à ′ ˆ ã õ labeled)", "Scandinavian support (ÅÆØÄÖ labeled)", "French dedicated keys (àèéç) in 1 thumb press", "French letters labeled (àèéç)". I can understand a weight of zero for these properties (e.g. if you think those languages do not matter), but I cannot understand a negative weight. How does extra convenience for other people make life worse for you?
As a result of these weird weights, my "international" proposals actually score extremely poor in terms of international support, according to comradekingu and Eight Bit, which is rather weird if you ask me.
 
Wb: If what makes it international is the name "international" that doesn't really set it apart from multi-regionalized.

Same as considering a set of criteria that don't take into account alternative views, as a scale by which to gauge a keyboard by is

begging the question.

Earlier I have explained why the negative weights are in place, and if you want to put up all the negative aspects, ill diversify it.

Or put up something about all the positive things that arent included.

If it has nothing to do with how I or someone else uses a keyboard, its not far fetched to suggest someone would pass up buying the

device over it. A lot of things are variations over that theme.

Lets forget internationalization for a bit, that is only a way to sell to more english people. Those in need of typing other languages

in a sub-par way.

With printed "ÅÆØÄÖ" and similar, at best you have found a way for non-norwegians, non-sweedes, non-danes, non-germans, and non-spanish people for typing those languages.

Those are the languages I have knowledge of, and you arent answering the question of how to type for any one particular group of

"international" people.

But it is not a fantasy if you can live with the locale-specific dedicated keys as Meta/Fn/Sym keys, in addition to dead diacritics
I believe that is the point: where most are coming up with layouts that relegate non-English specific keys to meta level and diacritics, comradekingu seems intent on forcing as many of these extra keys to be "where they're supposed to be" and the design is suffering for it, but because they're "where they're supposed to be" it must obviously be right and everyone else is necessarily wrong.
 Specifically D11 and D12, and C10 and C11 from ISO/IEC 9995-2 are buttons that its essential to have if you want to have something that functions like a typewriter/keyboard.

Because non-english languages have letters here, they need the buttons to be available for them to use as per their regional layouts, as linked to above.

They are only "extra" if what you have in mind as the basis of your argument is a reduced english layout, for how international users are concerned, that isn't a full keyboard.
 
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But it is not a fantasy if you can live with the locale-specific dedicated keys as Meta/Fn/Sym keys, in addition to dead diacritics
I believe that is the point: where most are coming up with layouts that relegate non-English specific keys to meta level and diacritics, comradekingu seems intent on forcing as many of these extra keys to be "where they're supposed to be" and the design is suffering for it, but because they're "where they're supposed to be" it must obviously be right and everyone else is necessarily wrong.
 Specifically D11 and D12, and C10 and C11 from ISO/IEC 9995-2 are buttons that its essential to have if you want to have something that functions like a typewriter/keyboard.

Because non-english languages have letters here, they need the buttons to be available for them to use as per their regional layouts, as linked to above.

They are only "extra" if what you have in mind as the basis of your argument is a reduced english layout, for how international users are concerned, that isn't a full keyboard.
By your argument, ED must go back to the drawing board on the hardware design of both the motherboard (key pads are there) and case design because there are inadequate keys for your required language support AND the keys that are required for the keyboard to function.

I think it's safe to say that isn't going to happen.
 
I can only bring rational substantiated arguments to the table, if you dont read them there is very little point in re-iterating.

Edit: While the premise of your argument is wrong, i think the spacebar, on its own and in relation to the rest of the keyboard,

should and can be a single-wide key.

It is possible to have the same level of language support with a noncentered space that is two keys wide. It just makes the keyboard

less efficient. Which is the main motive behind doing things the way I have laid it out.

If you cant have a keyboard that is efficient, you have lost something for all people before you even begin to ask if they can use it

to type their language.
 
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But it is not a fantasy if you can live with the locale-specific dedicated keys as Meta/Fn/Sym keys, in addition to dead diacritics
I believe that is the point: where most are coming up with layouts that relegate non-English specific keys to meta level and diacritics, comradekingu seems intent on forcing as many of these extra keys to be "where they're supposed to be" and the design is suffering for it, but because they're "where they're supposed to be" it must obviously be right and everyone else is necessarily wrong.
 
Specifically D11 and D12, and C10 and C11 from ISO/IEC 9995-2 are buttons that its essential to have if you want to have something that functions like a typewriter/keyboard.


Because non-english languages have letters here, they need the buttons to be available for them to use as per their regional layouts, as linked to above.


They are only "extra" if what you have in mind as the basis of your argument is a reduced english layout, for how international users are concerned, that isn't a full keyboard.
You keep ignoring my argument that it's essentially only Scandinavian languages that work with only D11, (D12), C10 and C11. For German you also need E11, for French you also need E02, E07, E09 and E10 as letter keys, Portuguese keyboards have their essential extra keys at C10, C12 and D12, Spanish keyboards use E11, E12, D11, C10, C11, C12, and so on.

So while I understand your concept of "let other languages use muscle memory and use unlabeled keys at the correct position", it just does not work for most languages, because we just don't have enough keys for that. P+2, L+2 is not enough for a 'full keyboard'. For a full keyboard, we would need 0+2, P+3, L+2 and M+3. That is not possible.
 
Im not ignoring the argument. English works better, as a bonus you get German and Spanish, and all the scandinavian languages.

For things that arent language-specific, it would be no more german with respect to the other choices made if there was a + on p+3.
The inherent logic of that argument is lost already at the
point of going for a US shiftnumberrow, or a custom altGrnumberrow.

The reason why the shift is where it is, is because of efficiency, it is more efficient to not have to jump over a key to get to it.

The things I care about, in order:

0. Easy and welcoming 1. Efficiency, 2. English, 3. other languages, with german having precedence.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/7e81eec1ad02e9be1ff546537db1d32bis how i have been able to handle those things in practice.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To deal with the space issue.  Lets look away from all the arguments presented for having singlespace, and deal with why non-centered doublespace enjoys popularity.

From the vote:

Here are the people who have designed layouts that think singlespace is better:
_wb_, comradekingu, Grench, rygD, Saber,ible

Here are the people who have designed layouts that think doublewide non-centered is better:
FBnil

I might be forgetting someone that voted, but there is a heavy overweight on the side of singlespace on behalf of the people who most probably know the most about the issue.

On a subjective note i'd like to say doublewide non-centered space is a crux. It may appear to be good, but only according to unbeknownst logic, when you look at the arguments, you understand the issue.

There have been no resounding arguments presented for having a doublewide non-centered space, so i consider it to be the junk-logic that it is.
 
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Im not ignoring the argument. English works better, as a bonus you get German and Spanish, and all the scandinavian languages.
How exactly would you type German on your layout? How would you type the letter ß?

How would you type Spanish questions or exclamations? How would you type the symbols ¿¡ ?

When typing German, Spanish or Scandinavian languages in your layout, how do you type capital letters using only the keyboard? And how do you write editorial remarks [like this] or something like HTML code for a web site in your favorite language?

Your layout only really works for English and the Scandinavian languages, and only if you're willing to sacrifice the keyboard shift and use the shoulder shift only.

Also, the philosophy of your layout assumes that people are already sufficiently familiar with the keyboard layout of the particular language in order to know where to find the extra keys just based on the position of the key -- that might seem like a trivial assumption, but in these times where standard physical keyboards are no longer typically the first text input method, it may quickly become an incorrect assumption.
 
Comradekingu and Eight Bit, you have some weird negative weights in the big table in the 'international support' section:

  • Comradekingu gives a huge negative weight (-35) to proposals having labeled dead diacritics. I wonder what the reasoning behind that is. Maybe you personally don't need them, but why such a huge negative weight? Do they bother you that much? Because you know, you already deduce points for those dead diacritics because they're "extra labels" (with another huge weight of -40) and they contribute to the total number of labels (-9.5) and the average number of labels (-8.8). So in terms of "clutter" they already cause quite a lot of negative points; do you really need to punish proposals with dead diacritics on top of that? Languages like French or Portuguese really need dead diacritics, perhaps Norwegian does not, but if you don't care, give it a weight of 0, not a huge negative weight.

Earlier I have explained why the negative weights are in place, and if you want to put up all the negative aspects, ill diversify it.
Could you point me to that explanation, or repeat it? I'm not asking about all your negative weights in general, just this specific one about labels for dead diacritics.
 
Eight Bit: you give negative weights to the properties "German (ÄÖÜß) in 1 thumb press", "Spanish support (ñ ¿¡ ´ ü labeled)", "Portuguese support (ç à ′ ˆ ã õ labeled)", "Scandinavian support (ÅÆØÄÖ labeled)", "French dedicated keys (àèéç) in 1 thumb press", "French letters labeled (àèéç)". I can understand a weight of zero for these properties (e.g. if you think those languages do not matter), but I cannot understand a negative weight. How does extra convenience for other people make life worse for you?
I'm changing my weight scores all the time, just experimenting with what it does tbh.

I gave negative scores to those properties because I prefer not to have all those letters on the keyboard when there's dead diacritics to make the same letters with. If I didn't care about them being there I would have given it 0 points. 

Sorry, nothing personal towards you or your international lay-out, just my personal preference not to have all those extra keys on there. :-/
 
So I looked at the "wb intl" layouts. 1 and 2. My initial thoughts is that there are ◌'s on the keyboard, with a subsequent "why.jpeg"?.

Same reason ED dislikes that, I think it looks foreign.

They work in the US intl way. Now I never knew about the US intl way, and have since learnt about it, that's a hurdle
to overcome that alone warrants not printing ◌'s. Because not a lot of people know about it (is what i think)

More importantly with US dead diactrics they are R_alt or ctrl+alt, not meta. I would, knowing what i do know, expect ( to work too,
but it doesnt. So its is a halfway functional concept for me. The things that are covered I imagine could be made to fit on the meta+letters
which is preferable to the cumbersome nature of dead-key diacritics.

I see that is done, but it makes all users see a visual chaos. Optimizing things for half the audience, english people never had to see any of it.

So at the benefit of what each of the regions arent fully satisfied with, its ruining the visual nature not only for them, but also for the most important group.

Its a good system for when you dont have ^, and we dont. So it could be used. However scandinavian things like ø and å i would like to see dropped in favour of more useful things ↓← or something else.

Yes people speak those languages, but they are the scandinavians themselves. Not so much the others. If we combine it with a full layout, we dont need that, because those are then covered enough to warrant removing it IMO.

On a personal level, i deal with organized clutter quite badly. Instead of a 'downfall of the commons'/all regional letters visual by default for me I'm asking myself if i would instead want a clean A-Z only, where it is for case of argument impossible to type anything else. It is about that bad for me.

From a nerd point of view I think it may fail and it may work. For novices im convinced it has a huge detrimental effect on sales to clutter for all, as opposed to limiting to having only a suited target of english-speaking people to sell to.
 

Im not ignoring the argument. English works better, as a bonus you get German and Spanish, and all the scandinavian languages.
 
How exactly would you type German on your layout? How would you type the letter ß?
How would you type Spanish questions or exclamations? How would you type the symbols ¿¡ ?
 
When typing German, Spanish or Scandinavian languages in your layout, how do you type capital letters using only the keyboard? And how do you write editorial remarks [like this] or something like HTML code for a web site in your favorite language?
 
 
Your layout only really works for English and the Scandinavian languages, and only if you're willing to sacrifice the keyboard shift and use the shoulder shift only.
1 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and move shift. (some efficiency is lost)
2 Type ä ö ü in not-nomral positions and keep shift where it is.
3 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ^ (keyboardshift is lost)
4 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ß (keyboarshift is lost)
 
If you need ß i would suggest have the default layout have it at AltGr+s. Germans have ſ here which i dont think is imporant. If that turns out not to be the case, it can be implemented somewhere else.
 
Spanish only has ñ ḉ  ^ so there is always a key left over for keyboardshift
 
shift+AltGr+1  for ¡
shift+AltGr+0 for ¿
 
Switching the primary and shift+ (and also AltGr+ and shift+altGr+ in the case of ^) for any of these buttons you can reinstate what was on them by pressing FN+  and FN+shift+
 
For germans [ ] and { } is already a chorded sequence. <> is similar to US/UK, but on the whole, everything is one level worse and non-standard.
 
Optionally, AltGr+ letters can be reconfigured, if the default doesnt already provide the option. Or a FN+letter hack can be employed. It wont be printed until you can get a sufficient userbase to agree that it makes sense for them, which is democratic, and a way to avoid downfall of the commons.
 
I have no problem agreeing that ridding the visual layout of ÆØÅ is good, so long as i dont have to see öäü etc. And since i think predominantly people will prefer to type the way they are used to, we will have to see from the people who use it what they think about alternative options.
 
Since the default or primary shipping layout is fully functional for english, I think that is ok as a working-base to figure out regional layouts from then on. And i think having that in mind makes for less extensive hacks. What i have described above is the minimum i can achieve for "getting it right" according to myself and the feedback ive been able to accumulate.
I think that p+2 and l+2 is a lot stronger argument for making a dedicated keymat than printed chorded regional letters are.

Also, the philosophy of your layout assumes that people are already sufficiently familiar with the keyboard layout of the particular language in order
to know where to find the extra keys just based on the position of the key -- that might seem like a trivial assumption, but in these times where standard physical keyboards are no longer typically the first text input method, it may quickly become an incorrect assumption.
Typewriters have worked the same way keyboards now do, dating back to the 1800s, its not going anywhere. Its the exact same on virtual keyboards that enjoy
the attention of a real userbase. And i think the pyra is for people who enjoy the tactility/feel, legacy/memory, and functionality of a real keyboard.

If virtual keyboards become anything, its not going to be a lesser variant of what they already are.
 
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So I looked at the "wb intl" layouts. 1 and 2. My initial thoughts is that there are ◌'s on the keyboard, with a subsequent "why.jpeg"?.


Same reason ED dislikes that, I think it looks foreign.


They work in the US intl way. Now I never knew about the US intl way, and have since learnt about it, that's a hurdle


to overcome that alone warrants not printing ◌'s. Because not a lot of people know about it (is what i think)

Dead diacritics are a standard feature in nearly all keyboard layouts, not just US-International.


Just to give you some examples:


Belgian keyboards have dead acute, grave, circumflex, tilde and diaeresis


Canadian French keyboards have dead circumflex, dead acute, dead grave, dead cedilla and dead diaeresis.


Czech keyboards have almost all of them: dead ring, dead caron, dead circumflex, dead breve, dead ogonek, dead grave, dead overdot, dead acute, dead double-acute and dead umlaut.


Danish and Norwegian keyboards have dead acute and grave at 0+2 and dead umlaut and circumflex at P+2 (even though for those languages you don't really need them)


Dutch (NL) keyboards have dead tilde, dead cedilla, dead acute, grave, circumflex, umlaut


Estonian keyboards have dead acute, grave, tilde, caron


French keyboards have dead circumflex and diaeresis


Finnish multilingual keyboards have no less than 19 dead diacritics


German keyboards have dead acute, grave and circumflex


Irish keyboards have dead acute and grave


Italian keyboards don't have dead diacritics, but they do have keys for àèìòù so a dead grave would be pretty useful for them.


Portuguese keyboards have dead acute, grave, circumflex, tilde and diaeresis


Spanish keyboards have at least dead acute and diaeresis


Swedish keyboards have dead acute, grave, circumflex, tilde and diaeresis


Swiss keyboards have dead acute, grave, circumflex, tilde and diaeresis


Turkish keyboards have dead acute, grave, circumflex, tilde and diaeresis


So the concept of dead diacritics is really not that exotic. It's basically the standard way to do diacritics for almost everyone.


The symbol ◌ is a standard symbol to denote diacritics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotted_circle


We could use a different symbol if you know a better one (perhaps a grey filled circle would work well), or some other way to indicate that the symbol is actually a dead diacritic and not a regular symbol; a different color perhaps. Or just use the diacritic itself, but in my opinion that is a bit confusing, especially for ` ~ ^.


The "clever trick" I use in my proposal is to have the dead diacritics at the same keys as the similar-looking punctuation symbols:

' for ´

" for ¨

◌< for ˇ

◌> for ˆ

, for ¸

. for .

By doing that, I don't need to have 6 extra diacritics labels, but just three well-placed ◌ symbols.

1 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and move shift. (some efficiency is lost)
2 Type ä ö ü in not-nomral positions and keep shift where it is.


3 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ^ (keyboardshift is lost)


4 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ß (keyboarshift is lost)


If you need ß i would suggest have the default layout have it at AltGr+s. Germans have ſ here which i dont think is imporant. If that turns out not to be the case, it can be implemented somewhere else.
Which of those 4 options actually completely corresponds to how a real German keyboard works?
 
1 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and move shift. (some efficiency is lost)

2 Type ä ö ü in not-nomral positions and keep shift where it is.

3 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ^ (keyboardshift is lost)

4 Type ä ö ü in normal positions and also ß (keyboarshift is lost)
The Pyra is a key constrained keyboard in a portable device.

It took some looking, but I was able to find a handheld keyboard in a size similar to the Pyra's that would theoretically meet your requirements for key layouts.

http://www.amazon.com/iPazzPort-Wireless-Keyboard-Backlight-810-16R/dp/B006OW1J1M

Note that it has 6 rows with 13 keys per row for the top 5 and 12 for the bottom. Several keys are still relegated to the Fn layer. It still has 77 keys in the keyboard area.

The Pyra has 4 rows of 11, 12, 11 and 11 keys. We add on 4 shoulders and 10 game pad buttons to bring it up to a total of 59 buttons in the keyboard area.

Your Norwegian keyboard is 'ultra wide' and simply will not fit on the Pyra without doing away with keys that are essential to the actual operation of a computer keyboard. There simply isn't room for it. Your attempts to double-duty on the space bar and leaving off the two needed Fn keys still do not get enough keys to make it functional. It was a neat experiment, but it's time to move on.
 
Its not norwegian, its not ultra-wide. It is not even for the purpose of a keyboard fully wide, so it cant be ultra. Your argument stems from A-Z only being the default. Which it is decidedly not. You will find the community wants a behavior that is more similar to a typewriter/real keyboard. Look at the vote. Even if you employ the bias of A-Z being "centered", "left-aligned" is favored.

... will not fit on the Pyra without doing away with keys that are essential to the actual operation of a computer keyboard. There simply isn't enough room for it.
Substantiate that claim please. Its hard to guess what your arguments are.

A space-bar in terms of computers, is a stabilized key, wide enough to be used by the two thumbs on a 10finger layout. There is no provision for a space-bar in the sense that you make it out to be.

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Wb: I wish i understood why it is important if or if not it "fully corresponds with german keyboards" or what you had in mind. It is offered on a best-effort basis. And ill let people paying for a

keymat decide in that matter.

If the base-layout doesnt allow for the keys to be in the same place, it is strange to offer a re-aligned default. And it means potential flaws in software where you would for reasons unknown

ask for scancode A, when that would result in B if the layout was aligned so that it fits.

Edit: On norwegian keyboard if I press     AltGr+key to the left of backspace+e     i get   é    I hope that is what you are talking about.

Since a button called AltGr that does this, is not viable due to space-constraints, i dont see whats wrong with ctrl+alt, yes its worse, but worse than what?

◌< for ˇ

◌> for ˆ  really messes with my brain. Try it on someone else to get a control-group. If you dont instruct or teach i dont see any way for that to work. For a great many people it will be a "waaat"

Having a dedicated key called "diactrics" i dont really like, because even though i know how to produce é, i didnt know what diactrics were. Accents i know, that is a familiar term.

I assume that wb-intl diactrics have to be learnt. In a similar fashion i think its better to learn people the US international way, even if it has the alternative way of invoking it.

Accepting the strange nature that is US international is much easier because that is just the way it is, in a sense. How do you feel about it?
 
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