Keyboard layout Stickers

[Akun 10]

Hi,

Would it be possible for fxtec to create keyboard layout stickers ? Like the one you can find for laptops to transform a Qwerty Keyboard into Azerty ?

Looks pretty easy to produce, you can find plenty on ebay or amazon for laptops.

Thx

 

[EskeRahn 5,460]

Nice idea. And at the least in principle it should be possible to scrape off the black on the relevant keys, so backlight could work too, if the labels had the letters transparent, and the black main part intransparent. Could be a nice and fairly inexpensive alternative to dedicated prints.

On the preproduction unit the underscore was very short, and I scraped a bit to extend it, and though it could have been done with more accuracy it works.

[Craig 1,435]

Photon Q used stickers by default, I didn't even realize until Cornholio pointed it out, they are very well done and very well adhered.     It would certainly help with custom keyboard maps, for example finqwerty-us-intl on on qwertz  cuz otherwise hard to remember where the non-letter keys are mapped to.   It might also allow us to print 3rd level characters from us-intl on the keys to remember those symbols too.  

The problem I see is even if we get perfectly made stickers, putting them on straight on every single key will be a challenge and time consuming!  That and the backlight issue already mentioned.

 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Craig

[EskeRahn 5,460]

18 minutes ago, Craig said:

The problem I see is even if we get perfectly made stickers, putting them on straight on every single key will be a challenge and time consuming!  That and the backlight issue already mentioned.

Well I guess the best thing would be a transparent ark with mild adhesive on the print size (think like a large piece of writing tape) with some guide-marks, so all labels can be applied in one go, and in parallel. And then most likely one by one should be pressed firm in place by the heat of a finger.

As the keys are not flat-topped, labels are not easy, but perhaps some suitable flexible material, that gets shapeable by the heat of a finger, can do the trick.

[okayphoneme 28]

I would definitely be interested in this if the stickers are high quality. I like the idea of scraping off the black so the backlight shines through.

[Craig 1,435]

Maybe there is a chemical process that works better than scraping.  Like remove the keyboard and soak it in (something) then they just wipe off with a towel...

[VaZso 1,998]

10 minutes ago, Craig said:

Maybe there is a chemical process that works better than scraping.  Like remove the keyboard and soak it in (something) then they just wipe off with a towel...

That case it would be better if F(x)tec may have a transparent version of the keyboard at these characters if we kindly ask them. 🙂
...maybe...

[SchattengestaIt 559]

38 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Well I guess the best thing would be a transparent ark with mild adhesive on the print size (think like a large piece of writing tape) with some guide-marks, so all labels can be applied in one go, and in parallel. And then most likely one by one should be pressed firm in place by the heat of a finger.

As the keys are not flat-topped, labels are not easy, but perhaps some suitable flexible material, that gets shapeable by the heat of a finger, can do the trick.

Those things exist for cars and guide marks aren't even needed. It's the stickers with two covers, one of them being transparent to align them.

But I wonder if it isn't enough to just change a handful of keys? Or are we trying to shift a non-shifted keyboard?

[EskeRahn 5,460]

18 minutes ago, SchattengestaIt said:

Those things exist for cars and guide marks aren't even needed. It's the stickers with two covers, one of them being transparent to align them.

But I wonder if it isn't enough to just change a handful of keys? Or are we trying to shift a non-shifted keyboard?

Well even if we only want to shift a few, we would still like them aligned, so the sheet make sense.

But It could also be making a standard qwerty on a shifted one, and that would change a lot of keys - though it perhaps would more sense in starting that from  qwertZ, where most are correct from the begining.

[VaZso 1,998]

41 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

though it perhaps would more sense in starting that from  qwertZ, where most are correct from the begining.

I agree.
I really like having an unshifted keyboard.
I would be much more happier if it were unshifted QWERTY but unshifted QWERTZ seems to became a really good compromise.

Basically, I use unshifted QWERTY layout on this while I can reach every special characters I need by pressing fn (the yellow arrow button).

[jlavi 112]

I have ordered QWERTZ model and will need to cover 5 keys to achieve Finnish layout: Y, Z, ẞ, Ü, and +. I could try black laptop key stickers for Finnish layout and then trim them to fit Pro1 keys.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

8 hours ago, jlavi said:

I have ordered QWERTZ model and will need to cover 5 keys to achieve Finnish layout: Y, Z, ẞ, Ü, and +. I could try black laptop key stickers for Finnish layout and then trim them to fit Pro1 keys.

Note that the keys are not flat, so it must be some elastic foil to get a good fit.

And the labels for a laptop would most likely need to be cropped into the letters to fit on the key. So I would hunt for something for some smaller devices.

[david 929]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

Note that the keys are not flat, so it must be some elastic foil to get a good fit.

And the labels for a laptop would most likely need to be cropped into the letters to fit on the key. So I would hunt for something for some smaller devices.

Seems like they would fit to me.  He just has to wait for the Pro2 to come out.  The nice thing about this design is that you can still have hardware keys for dialing the phone when the screen is closed, not to mention math operations.

Edited January 22, 2020 by david