Keyboard print layouts and functionality

[Suomalainen 0]

I give my vote to maki.jouni's layout, but I understand that F(x)tec needs to think about money so EskeRahn's suggestion would also be acceptable. When I used a Motorola DROID 4, I painted Ä and Ö with my gf's nail polish and it's still on the keys, never flaked off unlike some other white paints I tried.

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

Why not just use US-International? This would require an Alt-Gr key but would allow all this languages.

I use it at the pc for äöü.

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

Here with a image:

 

[Slion 1,201]

I sure hope the initial qwerty will support international characters one way or another. It looks like they have plenty enough modifiers keys.

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

Yeah me too, even thought about preordering, but without a support for international chars the keyboard is useless for me

[EskeRahn 5,471]

Well doktor.oswaldo the "US-International" is fine for those that primarily write in English, and needs to occasionally write foreign name or titles in many languages, But if you use e.g. one of the Scandinavian languages the national characters are almost as commonly used as E in English, so to have them at odd places with double strokes would really be an acquired taste....

 

But SURE the US-international could be a good thing to print on an international version (The accent key of the international could go to the vacant one left of the Z). And be the default software layout.

And then offer national layouts with the 2+2+3 keys right of A-Z remapped as software. I could easily live with that for Danish.

[Suomalainen 0]

doktor.oswaldo, as EskeRahn stated above; if you had the character E behind an Alt key in your keyboard, how'd you find typing then?

 

I'll translate that simple sentence to Finnish to show how frequently we use the umlaut characters:

doktor.oswaldo, kuten EskeRahn sanoi yläpuolella, jos sinulla olisi näppäin E Alt-näppäimen takana näppäimistössäsi, niin minkälaiselta kirjoittaminen tuntuisi tällöin?

[achat.marken 0]

I want an AZERTY version too.

[blubbeh 1]

QWERTY will be fine for me personally as long as there's a hassle free way to add some characters behind modifiers. Read: Add, not switch to an existing layout.

The layout shown off currently is actually rather low on symbols and has a lot of space for sensible international character placements. In fact, I'm surprised there's neither a € or a £ to be found for a UK based company's device.

 

After spending a lot of patience waiting on the mod that never came to be (I understand how it happend, but time is time), I certainly won't wait for alternative layouts this time.

[yaka 0]

Only registered to say: I would like a Hungarian layout (basically a QWERTZ with the possibility to get áéíóöőúüű characters with the help of the arrow button, just like Noka E7 does).

[YampA 0]

What's about Russian layout? Like this one on Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro.

I understand that it's not feasible to manufacture too many different layouts in the first batch.

Will it be possible to create and edit key mapping? I mean setting symbols that correspond to key press, key with Shift, key with Ctrl, key with Ctrl and Shift.

Will a list of available symbols (for example, with diacritics) appear on screen after long key press?

Will it be possible to switch between languages with buttons (Space, Ctrl + Shift or others)?

[nidajeny 0]

Signed up with the hopes of different layouts(Swedish) at release. If not I have to concider cancel/park my order or go with what they have.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

YampA, I have not heard any confirmation nor denial of the possibility for user-editing the key maps.

 

But I certainly will push all I can for us to get that possibility. :-)

 

To me it does not need to be with a fancy user friendly UI to do it. Practically any reasonably described format will do for me (but I'm a nerd).

As long as there is a way where we can share the layouts, so the less tech savvy users can benefit from what the nerd makes, AND they can easily reset it to default, if the layout they apply proves useless to them. The layout files should be pure passive keymaps, so there will be no risk of any idiot distributing malicious files.

[JjyKs 0]

Editing keymaps is a must for me. Used Blackberry Priv and Keyone, and living with Ö/Ä behind shift was ok, and didn't really even think about it after a while.

 

Preordered but need to be sure that I can bind Ö/Ä behind some easy to use combo before I will finish the payment.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

JjyKs, the BB keyboard software have a couple of clever tricks up it sleeves that makes it a bliss to use more than one language. I even have it using English AND Danish at the same time, and it auto detects what language I'm typing, and adjusts the spell-checking and word suggestions, so we often do not even need to request the national letters.

 

If the techniques are not bound by patents I certainly hope the Pro¹ will be 'inspired'.

[YampA 0]

EskeRahn, it would be great if layouts are editable with an application. On my Xperia Pro it was necessary to make changes in two XML files in /system/usr/keyboard-config/ (with root, of course). One maps keys to symbols (two keys were swapped in stock layout), another defines alternative symbols that appear on long key press.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

YampA, As I said I will do my best to push for that, and hopefully it can be done without rooting needed, without violating any google-rules (I haven't got a clue on what rules there are)

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

Well I know it sounds strange to type "Umlauts" with the US-International.

And believe me, while maybe not as common as in Finish, Umlauts are also used a lot in German and they are at nearly as common in Swiss-German than in Finish!

 

And yes I use the US-International Keyboard for Swiss-German, German and English. Why? Because it is way more comfortable to use vim as it was intended. It may sound strange, and at the beginning it is strange, but after a while it is quite easy to type that.

I mean every capital letter you type also requires yo to press two buttons together, it is not different than that.

 

That said of course this may not be the perfect solution for you, BUT it allows to use the keyboard with a lot of languages. With specialized layouts you will need a lot of layouts...

[Mumiyden 0]

+1 for Cyrillic layout.

IMPORTANT!!! Different languages - different colors!

That was great fault of Nokia e7 to have English and Russian letters both in white colour.

[Siani_8 105]

One change that would be awesome on this keyboard is an alt key on both sides.

 

That way if there is a series of numbers or characters to type, you could just hold the right side alt for left side numbers/characters and hold left side alt for right side numbers and characters.

 

I type a lot on a BlackBerry Priv keyboard currently and it gets a little wacky sometimes having to hit two buttons for every number that is on the left side of the keyboard with the alt whereas all the numbers/characters on the right side flow better cause I can alt with left thumb and select with the right.

 

Anyway this looks pretty much like a homerun with all the features I've wanted in a slider for a long time and nobody ever seems to tick off all the marks. I am looking forward to purchasing. Hopefully battery life holds and we see nicer case selections by launch.

[Siani_8 105]

Edit to last post: Is that a voice command button on both sides? If it is perhaps the one on the right could be an Alt key or at least have the option for end user to map the keys for personalization and I could just do that.

[antti.pappila 0]

+1 EskeRahn layout and vote for model with Nordic/Finnish keyboard with ä, ö and å

 

* Also long press a and o providing ä and ö would be good enough for me to pre-order first model (BUT I'd also buy Nordic model soonest it comes available)

* Sailfish support would be great but I'd be ok to wait for that

[maki.jouni 0]

 

For me this current keyboard layout is deal breaker. I spend a moment for another Finnish/Nordic layout, there could be Lenovo kind of different color for Æ and Ø for Noway and Denmark on keys with Ö and Ä. I edited layout only thinking Finnish layout.

 

At this moment I'am Cosmo Communicator backer (from early December already). One thing what is better on Cosmo is size of keys, but for Finnish layout, Cosmo is missing one row of keys, wich exist on Pro1. On Pro1 Ä and Ö has own key, when on Cosmo, they are implemented on same key. Also ', *, ~, - and _. have own key, wich is highly important for me when thinking about writing technical emails on the go.

 

Hopefully Pro1 will get Nordic keyboard layout at some point. And also I can join for you guys who are already preordered Pro1. At this point I spread the word from both devices for my friends and colleagues. That way both of these devices get more awareness and more probable backer/buyers/user might know these devices.

[spam71 55]

IMHO, since the phone is going to be rootable, keyboard layout is not a problem at all. If one has root access, he can easily change every single key mapping in *.kl/*.kcm files. I did it on every rootable QWERTY Android device I had. Unfortunately it cannot be done on those f*c*ing BlackBerries, I own now.

[MichalTUR 1]

spam71 that's a price of Save android by BlackBerry. But I'm sad because of that too. In my BlackBerry Priv keyboard layout is in german qwertz and I can't change the key map :/