General Keyboard Design/ Layout questions


mclien

Very Active Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2012
Messages
523
Location
Hannover
I'm not reading the forum on daily basis, so please excuse any "not read" stuff from me.

What I'm wondering about layout is the following:

Basicly the function of the keys is software. So will there be an easy way to customize the layout? (as I know the "good old xmodmap" is obsolete by now?)

Hardware site is "just" the question, what is printed on the keys, right?

One idea would be a totally blank keyboard, which is waste with a backlit keyboard of course. (could have some fancy outlines and neutral marks on several keys). But I think that would all be not a good idea at all.

Nontheless it led me to antoher idea. What about a blank keymat, that could be laser-engraved?

For that i lag an information: how ist the mat designed physically?

I know there is the silicone mat with the resin caps on top. The silicone is transparaent, the keycaps are partly transparent.

If the the caps consist of resin layers (transparent beneth, black on top), it's thinkable to have a blank keymat delivered and "just" remove the black surface using laserengraving to get any custon symbol you like.

(its also thinkable to have several layers: transparent; blue-transparent; black and than engrave it to different depth to either remove only the black layer to have a blue color and remove the blue and black layer to get white symbols).

Yes it's only theoretical and won't work nicely with RGB backlite, but I'm willing to run some tests with our lasercutter...

Sooo just shit-storm me if I got something completly wrong.
 
xmodmap is deprecated in favour of xkb tools in various forms.

Its not all easy, consider

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/16945-name-of-the-extra-modifier-fnmetasym/page-5#entry381951 

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/16945-name-of-the-extra-modifier-fnmetasym/page-3#entry381574/URL]

So there are some hacks there. Since you have to add a hop for the alt and AltGr that are on the shoulders to distinguish them.

How to get meta and AltGr on the same key i dont know how. And it opens up more problems than i care to explain, nor is it actually a good idea.

Less posibilites, less standard, more messy. Works for less people. Is the summary. And its easier to type F-keys since you can do it with shoulderpress.

Ive made an extensive pro con post but i cant find it.

A blank keymap would work.

There is laquer on the top layer i think, so laser-engraving wouldnt be the same.

Colours are expensive, and ugly.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm not reading the forum on daily basis, so please excuse any "not read" stuff from me.

What I'm wondering about layout is the following:

Basicly the function of the keys is software. So will there be an easy way to customize the layout? (as I know the "good old xmodmap" is obsolete by now?)

Hardware site is "just" the question, what is printed on the keys, right?

One idea would be a totally blank keyboard, which is waste with a backlit keyboard of course. (could have some fancy outlines and neutral marks on several keys). But I think that would all be not a good idea at all.

Nontheless it led me to antoher idea. What about a blank keymat, that could be laser-engraved?

For that i lag an information: how ist the mat designed physically?

I know there is the silicone mat with the resin caps on top. The silicone is transparaent, the keycaps are partly transparent.

If the the caps consist of resin layers (transparent beneth, black on top), it's thinkable to have a blank keymat delivered and "just" remove the black surface using laserengraving to get any custon symbol you like.

(its also thinkable to have several layers: transparent; blue-transparent; black and than engrave it to different depth to either remove only the black layer to have a blue color and remove the blue and black layer to get white symbols).

Yes it's only theoretical and won't work nicely with RGB backlite, but I'm willing to run some tests with our lasercutter...

Sooo just shit-storm me if I got something completly wrong.
Theoretically you are right but I think it would be way too expensive to make user-customized keymat labels, and it would also have the disadvantage that if there is no standard reference keyboard layout, then as an application/game developer it is hard to come up with a good set of (default) keybindings.

But yes, I think there should be an easy way to customize the layout in terms of software. In terms of hardware, customizing the labels will always be hard and expensive, so that is why I prefer keymat labels without language-specific labels (like ÄÖÜß), but with enough 'free' keys (keys without auxiliary labels) to map those language-specific labels in logical places (e.g. [modifier]+AOUS for German).

In my opinion, the physical keymat labels should be informative enough (no blank keymat please!), yet empty enough to allow anyone to customize things without having to live with 'incorrect' labels. Dead diacritics can be useful and they give a good balance between efficiency and generality.

The default keyboard layout in software should of course match the physical keymat, but it could also include a larger default mapping that covers e.g. German and French in some mnemonically easy to remember way, e.g. like this: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/05a892f5993946c4ca7f2287bf5135d1-- German umlauts on the vowels, French graves on the nearest letter to the left, acute to the right; I even threw in some extras for Iberian and Scandinavian languages, but it's all unlabeled so if you don't need it, it doesn't add clutter, and if you want to change the default, you can do so without having incorrect labels.
 
You can plan ahead and make the reference something that easy to implement changes to.  If you keep functionality not ever needed in games away from the game buttons game-developers wont have to be concerned with deciding which buttons can be used.

I will be a lot more effective with a blank keymat and a sensible functional layout than with a printed layout that uses paradgimns im not familiar with, or that wont work. Thats just a question about the treshold of entry. Ok for advanced people, not for new ones.

To deal with all germannic scandinavian languages, i can type all of them, and i know enough swedish, finnish, fareoan, danish, norwegian bokmål, norwegian nynorsk and icelandic to tell you that layout doesnt work for those people. Its also not how germans type german, and its not how french people type french.

A de-tour through the woods where there is or isnt a trail is not the same thing as a road you know.

Logical placement of äüö has nothing to do with modifier+a button for germans. These are dedicated buttons, with pre-specified positions. Because they are letters. Of the alphabet.

 

The problem you run into by making it more of an issue to switch language than it has to be, is two-fold.

 

First its not an issue of just changing a little part of the keyboard, nor the whole thing. But changing it in non-obvious ways means more work than necessary on the software side. Recursive remapping to name one issue.

 

If you do go for a solution of modifier+aous you either uglify the visual layout for everyone else, or you are facing a non-obvious functionality for Germans. 

 

Furthermore, you are replacing something that can be fully incorporated, typing german, with something that is less efficient, a made up modifier-german. At the cost of using up those keys for other purposes.  Which, if thats your way of typing languages, means you grind to a halt very quick.

 

Additionally, since doing just that is already a thing with expected regional behavior, if you only have one third level modifier, it means that it does something different than what AltGr is expected to do when used in conjunction with AOUS.

 

For germans thats  æø↓ſ.  Meaning they cant type Norwegian, or arrows.

 

For Norwegians its ªœ↓ß.   1/4 score there, still cant type arrows.

 

The reasons F-keys on shoulders isnt a good idea even though its easier to use F-keys that way is this:

 

There are 4 shoulders. Ctrl Alt Shift AltGr, no F-keys   or  Ctrl Alt Shift Meta  F-keys

 

Lets investigate the latter. Since there is no dedicated third level modifier, you cant both put third level symbols and F-keys on the numberkeys. You could, but that would mean you couldnt type third level symbols with shoulders.

 

So then you need somewhere else for the symbols that you could have put, and for everyone but the americans, belong on third level numberrow.

 

Bare in mind we have less keys than a real keyboard, so we are already pressed for space. If you also have a reduced layout (A-Z only) then things are really dire.

 

Meaning you have to put the potential third-level symbols on the letterkeys. Clutter is the result.

 

And, you mess up the convention of typing thirdlevelmodfier, aka AltGr, with those keys. Meaning its less functional.

 

It doesnt stop there. If on the other hand you opted for standard functionality on the shoulders, with a hack to make them work as the same alt and AltGr of the keyboard. You now have a much more unencumbered equivalent of the key that tries to be double between F-keys and symbols.  Only now the only thing you cant use it for, is the same keys you have F-keys on. If you chose to have F-keys that is.

 

No clutter, no ugliness. Because F-keys can never be a fully continuous line on numbers only, since we have two few of them.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The backlit is ment in "the symbols glow", right? Which means the resin caps must be partly transparent.

To clarify my idea: I ment a keyboard made of transparent resin-caps, which are covert with black lacquer (or colored resin) as a do-your-layout-yourself keyboard/-keymat. than you put this "blank keymat" into the lasercutter of yours (or your hackspaces) and engrave your personal layout into it by removing the black layer on top of the caps.

I know this will change the look of the keys and the haptic feeling and perhaps raise dirt issues, but could perhaps be an option I'd like to have...

Software site. To get it clear for me: xmodmap is unusable. But I still think ther should be an easy way to change the layout or is there already one? (or -as I understand it by now- there is no easy path to get a simple way to change the layout software site?

Because IF we could find a way to easily change the software AND the physical part of the keyboard, it's "perfect".
 
That all depends what the layout is. Fortunately all other layouts are fixed, so it can be summed up as this:

Sweeping things under the rug is a disregard for how typing works. Changing conventions is a disregard for how keyboards work.

We can bring issues of default layout working for the most people, and changing it in software to a minimum.

ED has said that at least 500 people need to be interested in alternative layouts for it to be economically viable. Once you have produced one, i imagine its easy to produce more.

He has on some images shown a little piece of a keymat, would be interesting if that little piece could be exchanged so that you can regionalize what makes the are to the right of P and L different for each layout.

It is the piece that fits in this position. But we know not a whole lot about things, because ED is busy with other things. If we could agree on what i started this post with, I imagine he'd be a lot more interested in what we have to offer.
 
Back
Top