Design the QWERTZ layout

[TeZtdevice 297]

I like version 2.

Thx for reply, Waxberry !

[Benni 183]

@Waxberry I'm with @EskeRahn on the layout, as pressing two modifiers for an upper case umlaut would break the typing experience.

(I think that I don't really have an issue with moving other symbols to the left)

[TeZtdevice 297]

I like version 2.

 

Thx for reply, Waxberry !

 

I changed my favourite to version 1 :-)

And another +1 for version 1 (said my girlfriend)

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

I would be in for an all black keyboard! (only half a joke would love it). But as far as a preprinted layout goes:

Two Modifiers for a capital umlaut are normal for a Swiss layout, that is not the big problem here.

 

But to put keys to the left side which are normally on the right, will give everybody a hard time getting used to it (I mean have you ever changed your keyboard layout? It takes an awful amount of time to get back to your old tipping speed. And you can believe me an all black keyboard does not help)

 

I think it is a stupid idea to be creative here. There are a lot of "better" layouts out in the world (dvorak and so on).

But nearly nobody uses it since the advantage is minimal compared to the amount of time needed to learn it.

So the time has shown that this "better" layouts do not sell all to well.

[OliverTypes 152]

I second the notion that umlauts behind modifiers are not a good idea. Not only because of (rare) capitalized umlauts requiring a triple-press but because it makes each and every (common) regular umlaut a nuisance.

 

A possible workaround could be to substitute the function-key with a long-press, so long-press "a" for "ä" etc. like we see on virtual keyboards. That would be a slightly less fluent than dedicated keys but requires no additional acrobatics.

 

I also second the idea of making QWERTZ available for pre-order ;)

 

Thank you very much for keeping us updated :) I have a few QWERTZ-fans among my friends and keep sharing your posts to whet their appetite.

[Jacob_S 128]

I just created an account only to say my opinion to this topic. I've been using smartphones with hardware keyboards with QWERTZ-layout for a long time now. What slowed me down most while typing has always been to not have the umlauts directly accessible. So I strongly support dedicated buttons for them.

FN+(a/o/u) would still be okay, long press simply takes too much time.

[Marv 0]

Joined a moment ago to voice my concern before the layout becomes again something that makes me NOT to want to buy it. As others have voiced similar concerns, I think it is of utmost importance that the layouts stay as close as possible to ISO/ANSI/DIN layouts.

 

The original keyboard mod changed the physical layout early on by strangely eliminating a full column on the right and instead making the left keys (Tab, Shift, Caps Lock) twice as wide for no good reason. That was a horrible design decision that played a big role for me not to back the IGG campaign. Back then I thought, if they make such an inexplicably bad decision, what other bad decisions might follow?

 

The current QWERTY layout shows the same mistakes, creating some proprietary layout by inserting a column of keys left to the letters and deleting them on the right.

That error needs to be fixed at least in the QWERTZ version(s). Primary characters MUST match those on regular keyboards. Being in Germany, I of course want those special characters directly accessible as well.

 

Also, I don’t see why anyone would want to type with one hand on this, so putting letters closer to the right thumb makes no sense, IMHO. I highly doubt there would be more than 5% of potential owners who would type with one thumb. It should be designed for best usage with both hands/thumbs instead of helping with finger acrobatics. Single-thumb-typing doesn’t make much sense on a horizontal slider.

 

Proprietary, non-standard layouts are often a point of criticism on other products. Having a full “regular” keyboard layout however can be a great selling point and might be a darling with reviewers as well.

 

As for other non-German-QWERTZ layouts ; I wouldn’t have a problem with additional colored letters on each key to (partially) match their country layouts.

I actually would also like to have more special characters being printed in a different color on the keys, where it would be possible.

 

To put things in perspective, here is my keyboard phone history: Palm Treo 650, Pre, Veer, Pre 3 and of course the Motorola Droid 4. Never got a Blackberry Priv/KeyOne because I knew I would miss the additional keys from the D4.

 

 

[Marv 0]

Joined a moment ago to voice my concern before the layout becomes again something that makes me NOT to want to buy it. As others have voiced similar concerns, I think it is of utmost importance that the layouts stay as close as possible to ISO/ANSI/DIN layouts.

 

The original keyboard mod changed the physical layout early on by strangely eliminating a full column on the right and instead making the left keys (Tab, Shift, Caps Lock) twice as wide for no good reason. That was a horrible design decision that played a big role for me not to back the IGG campaign. Back then I thought, if they make such an inexplicably bad decision, what other bad decisions might follow?

 

The current QWERTY layout shows the same mistakes, creating some proprietary layout by inserting a column of keys left to the letters and deleting them on the right.

That error needs to be fixed at least in the QWERTZ version(s). Primary characters MUST match those on regular keyboards. Being in Germany, I of course want those special characters directly accessible as well.

 

Also, I don’t see why anyone would want to type with one hand on this, so putting letters closer to the right thumb makes no sense, IMHO. I highly doubt there would be more than 5% of potential owners who would type with one thumb. It should be designed for best usage with both hands/thumbs instead of helping with finger acrobatics. Single-thumb-typing doesn’t make much sense on a horizontal slider.

 

Proprietary, non-standard layouts are often a point of criticism on other products. Having a full “regular” keyboard layout however can be a great selling point and will be a darling with reviewers as well.

 

As for other non-German-QWERTZ layouts ; I wouldn’t have a problem with additional colored letters on each key to (partially) match ther country layouts.

I actually would also like to have more special characters being printed in a different color on the keys, where it would be possible.

 

To put things in perspective , here is my keyboard phone history: Palm Treo 650, Pre, Veer, Pre 3 and of course the Motorola Droid 4. Never got a Blackberry Priv/KeyOne because I knew I would miss the additional keys from the Droid 4.

 

 

[dreamflasher 120]

Please do not do the second layout. Umlauts behind FN keys is annoying. I am strongly in favor of the first layout. Anyone who prefers the second layout simply can get the qwerty layout, it's just two buttons switched.

[dreamflasher 120]

My favourite is still qwertz + greek ;) link

[EskeRahn 5,460]

My favourite is still qwertz + greek ;) link

 

I would not mind that one either, but guess that the audience for that is rather limited. I mean we can have the functionality, but do we need the print?

[elvissteinjr 359]

Seconding EskeRahn's notion on that greek thing. It's getting rather cluttered there design-wise.

So while it's very temping to have this symbols to type up some shenanigans directly from the keyboard (°ω°), I don't really see myself using greek characters on a regular basis anywhere (goes for all my devices). I'm not everyone, though.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

Seconding EskeRahn’s notion on that greek thing. It’s getting rather cluttered there design-wise.

 

So while it’s very temping to have this symbols to type up some shenanigans directly from the keyboard (°ω°), I don’t really see myself using greek characters on a regular basis anywhere (goes for all my devices). I’m not everyone, though.

 

Well hopefully we will have them as well as many other symbols available from the keyboard, without them being printed. All the modifier keys, gives a huge number of possible combinations, in theory (seeing the right and left modifiers as eight separate) so 2⁸ x 58 gives almost 15000... But even 'only' five not seeing right and left different gives 2⁵ x 58 or 1856, and that should be more than almost any of us would ever need....

[Marv 0]

Joined just to voice my concern before the layout becomes again something that makes me NOT to want to buy it. As others have voiced similar concerns, I think it is of utmost importance that the layouts stay as close as possible to ISO/ANSI/DIN layouts.

The original keyboard mod changed the physical layout early on by strangely eliminating a full column on the right and instead making the left keys (Tab, Shift, Caps Lock) twice as wide for no good reason. That was a horrible design decision that played a big role for me not to back the IGG campaign. Back then I thought, if they make such an inexplicably bad decision, what other bad decisions might follow?

The current QWERTY layout shows the same mistakes, creating some proprietary layout by inserting a column of keys left to the letters and deleting them on the right.

That error needs to be fixed at least in the QWERTZ version(s). Primary characters MUST match those on regular keyboards. Being in Germany, I of course want those special characters directly accessible as well.

Also, I don’t see why anyone would want to type with one hand on this, so putting letters closer to the right thumb makes no sense, IMHO. I highly doubt there would be more than 5% of potential owners who would type with one thumb. It should be designed for best usage with both hands/thumbs instead of helping with finger acrobatics. Single-thumb-typing doesn’t make much sense on a horizontal slider.

Proprietary, non-standard layouts are often a point of criticism on other products. Having a full “regular” keyboard layout however can be a great selling point and will be a darling with reviewers as well.

As for other non-German-QWERTZ layouts ; I wouldn’t have a problem with additional colored letters on each key to (partially) match the other country layouts.

I actually would also like to have more special characters being printed in a different color on the keys, where it would be possible.

To put things in perspective , here is my keyboard phone history: Palm Treo 650, Pre, Veer, Pre 3 and of course the Motorola Droid 4. Never got a Blackberry Priv/KeyOne because I knew I would miss the additional keys from the Droid 4.

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

Press&Hold a key actually works pretty good for Umlauts and other special symbol. But only If (and it is a big hard if) the time you have to hold it is configurable. I had a really hard time switching to android (from maemo) back than, because it wasn't configurable back than. It slowed typing down a lot.

 

So if you go for Press&Hold for anything, it is a must for me to have it configurable.

But would prefer modifier anyway, since it is independent from the OS!

[Wolpi 2]

I would also clearly prefer version 1 with seperate äöü keys. I really like this layout and think it's perfect for a slider phone. When will it be available for preorder?

[fxtec-preorder-47xx 39]

I'm from Germany and I am german native speaker. But I do not like the QWERTZ layout. Even on a notebook or desktop keyboard.

 

It is because I really enjoy using the curly and square brackets etc... on those keys that are otherwise used up by ü,ä,ö umlauts. It's so much better when doing shell scripting, programming and other technical stuff.

 

For the umlauts I prefer the dead key layout. That is - unfortunately - not very common. It means, when you type a " (double quote) nothing appears at first (hence 'dead key'), but when you type an a, u or o afterwards you'll get your umlaut. If you instead type a space afterwards, you'll get the double quote itself.

This is common for accents, like typing an accent (apostrope) first, and then an a you'll get à.

 

This is the best way for a cosmopolitan staying in touch with your friends all over the world. Just scrap those umlaut keys!!

 

Servus.

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

I’m from Germany and I am german native speaker. But I do not like the QWERTZ layout. Even on a notebook or desktop keyboard.

 

It is because I really enjoy using the curly and square brackets etc… on those keys that are otherwise used up by ü,ä,ö umlauts. It’s so much better when doing shell scripting, programming and other technical stuff.

 

For the umlauts I prefer the dead key layout. That is – unfortunately – not very common. It means, when you type a " (double quote) nothing appears at first (hence ‘dead key’), but when you type an a, u or o afterwards you’ll get your umlaut. If you instead type a space afterwards, you’ll get the double quote itself.

 

This is common for accents, like typing an accent (apostrope) first, and then an a you’ll get à.

 

This is the best way for a cosmopolitan staying in touch with your friends all over the world. Just scrap those umlaut keys!!

 

Servus.

 

I absolutely hate that. That is the windows way, it means you have to press double-quote twice to get a double-quote. I am Swiss and use the US-International Layout with a modifier key. So 'Alt-Gr' + specific key gives you what you want, that is waaaay faster.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

I absolutely hate that. That is the windows way, it means you have to press double-quote twice to get a double-quote. I am Swiss and use the US-International Layout with a modifier key. So ‘Alt-Gr’ + specific key gives you what you want, that is waaaay faster.

 

Personally I on a PC use a Danish physical layout keyboard. But at the least 95% of the time I use it as US, as this is the most efficient for brackets, braces, carats etc needed in coding. The only exception being mail, docs and the like, when written in Danish.

 

But on a relatively small device like this, I expect that I (relatively) seldom would need the special keys. I mean sure I sometimes write 'odd stuff' in mail&sms, but honestly on my phones&phablets, the keyboard is primarily used for regular texts, so here the national letters are far far more important.

And I would be very surprised if the same did not go for the majority of the potential users of the German layout.

 

But I love the ability to get to all those special symbols from time to time. Typically if a friend needs help with some math problem.

 

Personally a non-shifted QWERTZ would be a better physical layout for my usage than the shifted QWERTY, as it is reasonably close to the normal Danish (as well as Swedish and Norwegian) layout, as described in earlier comments.

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

doktor.oswaldo wrote:

I absolutely hate that. That is the windows way, it means you have to press double-quote twice to get a double-quote. I am Swiss and use the US-International Layout with a modifier key. So ‘Alt-Gr’ + specific key gives you what you want, that is waaaay faster.

Personally I on a PC use a Danish physical layout keyboard. But at the least 95% of the time I use it as US, as this is the most efficient for brackets, braces, carats etc needed in coding. The only exception being mail, docs and the like, when written in Danish.

 

But on a relatively small device like this, I expect that I (relatively) seldom would need the special keys. I mean sure I sometimes write ‘odd stuff’ in mail&sms, but honestly on my phones&phablets, the keyboard is primarily used for regular texts, so here the national letters are far far more important.

 

And I would be very surprised if the same did not go for the majority of the potential users of the German layout.

 

But I love the ability to get to all those special symbols from time to time. Typically if a friend needs help with some math problem.

 

Personally a non-shifted QWERTZ would be a better physical layout for my usage than the shifted QWERTY, as it is reasonably close to the normal Danish (as well as Swedish and Norwegian) layout, as described in earlier comments.

 

Do not get me wrong, absolutely understand that. I recommend to keep the layout as default as possible.

But this post was about somebody wanting the US-Layout but with the possibility to type special chars. Then I prefer the US-International layout way way before dead keys.

 

I am not sure what I want QWERTZ or QWERTY. Since I too use my phone mostly for texts in my native language.

So I do completely agree with you, just don't want to have dead keys at all prices. It is horrible to have to type double-quote two times. Always get in rage if I have to write on a windows-system ;-)

[EskeRahn 5,460]

Do not get me wrong, absolutely understand that. I recommend to keep the layout as default as possible.

 

But this post was about somebody wanting the US-Layout but with the possibility to type special chars. Then I prefer the US-International layout way way before dead keys.

 

I am not sure what I want QWERTZ or QWERTY. Since I too use my phone mostly for texts in my native language.

 

So I do completely agree with you, just don’t want to have dead keys at all prices. It is horrible to have to type double-quote two times. Always get in rage if I have to write on a windows-system ;-)

Oh agree to a large extend. Though for Danish dead-keys or not is not a big deal as the only accented letter we use is é, and even that one is seldom. So in all practical usage it is limited to foreign names, and thus not a big deal for us how to get to them.

I see the three common German letters with umlaut and ß as national letters (like our æøå) rather than accented letters. And isn't it the same in German that (other) accents/diacritics are rarely used, so the way to get to them are less important?

(In standard Danish PC layout we have the dead-key approach on two keys on the right side, two steps right of "0" and "P")

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

doktor.oswaldo wrote:

Do not get me wrong, absolutely understand that. I recommend to keep the layout as default as possible.

 

But this post was about somebody wanting the US-Layout but with the possibility to type special chars. Then I prefer the US-International layout way way before dead keys.

 

I am not sure what I want QWERTZ or QWERTY. Since I too use my phone mostly for texts in my native language.

 

So I do completely agree with you, just don’t want to have dead keys at all prices. It is horrible to have to type double-quote two times. Always get in rage if I have to write on a windows-system ;-)

Oh agree to a large extend. Though for Danish dead-keys or not is not a big deal as the only accented letter we use is é, and even that one is seldom. So in all practical usage it is limited to foreign names, and thus not a big deal for us how to get to them.

 

I see the three common German letters with umlaut and ß as national letters (like our æøå) rather than accented letters. And isn’t it the same in German that (other) accents/diacritics are rarely used, so the way to get to them are less important?

 

(In standard Danish PC layout we have the dead-key approach on two keys on the right side, two steps right of “0” and “P”)

 

Yes that is correct. But the idea behind the US-Deadkey method is to not be dependent on language. So every possible accent is a dead key -> " ' ^ ` <- you have to press all of them twice to get the char tipped. and "a gives you an ä and 'a gives you an á and so on. This leads to a lot of dead keys which is especially horrible as a programmer. As far as I know this is the default way windows handles the US-International Input.

 

I prefer to have a special modifier (defaults to "Alt Gr" i think) which works exactly as a fn key but is standardized. "Alt Gr" + "Q" gives you an ä where "Alt Gr" + "Q" gives you Ä (Unfortunately "Alt Gr" + "a" is used by some useless French character ;-).

This may sound strange at the beginning, but it isn't really different from pressing "Shift + 3" for a "#" once you got used to it.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

Yes that is correct. But the idea behind the US-Deadkey method is to not be dependent on language. So every possible accent is a dead key -> ” ‘ ^ ` <- you have to press all of them twice to get the char tipped. and “a gives you an ä and ‘a gives you an á and so on. This leads to a lot of dead keys which is especially horrible as a programmer. As far as I know this is the default way windows handles the US-International Input.

 

I prefer to have a special modifier (defaults to “Alt Gr” i think) which works exactly as a fn key but is standardized. “Alt Gr” + “Q” gives you an ä where “Alt Gr” + “Q” gives you Ä (Unfortunately “Alt Gr” + “a” is used by some useless French character ;-).

This may sound strange at the beginning, but it isn’t really different from pressing “Shift + 3” for a “#” once you got used to it.

 

Oh I agree with you, I just pointed out that for - I believe - many languages using Latin letters, the use of letters outside A-Z is primarily limited to a few national letters, that deserves dedicate one-stroke keys (like ÄÖÜẞ in German or ÆØÅ in Danish/Norwegian). But sure for languages heavily using accents/diacritics, that is not a possible approach, and here I too would prefer a modifier key over dead keys. But if a language uses many different accents/diacritics they will soon run out of modifier keys, so here the dead key could be a better approach....

[Kabbone 36]

Probably I would opt for version 2 or stick to QWERTY. You always have to remember you won't type with 10-fingers on a smartphone keyboard, so the Ux should be better to make some changes to ISO layout. As waxberry mentioned, if you have to stretch the thumb to get to "J" or "U" for example it would also be a pain in the ass for typing.

[Waxberry 638]

Thank you for all the suggestions - based on the feedback:

 

- Additional German Characters Ä Ö Ü shall have separate keys and have upper/lower case as standard letters (Sorry that might seem obvious to native speakers)

- ẞ and Euro sign can be places as combo / secondary key

- Although I fully agree with @Kabbone, but the majority users seem to prefer a standard layout. Initially we plan to clear the keys next to P, L, M to give the keys into Ä Ö Ü. And place those symbols on top of standard characters. However, this seems to shift the letters into RHS.

 

So we will go for the "standard layout" i.e the Option 1 from above. Once the new layout has been made we will share the image in here. In such case, your left thumb will need to cover all the letter keys left to YHB (inclusive) I hope that won't cause a problem. :)