Odd keyboard layout / remapping options?

[tliebeck 1]

I would very much like to buy a Pro1, but am turned off by the keyboard layout.

• Typing / and ? appears to only be possible with the "Alternate Shift" key (yellow arrow facing up/right).  Is it possible to remap the right hand "Alternate Shift" key to behave as a conventional /? key?  
• The shifted-symbols on the number keys and symbol keys are marked in yellow....are these accessible via the standard shift key or do I have to use that "Alternate Shift" key?    I would very much prefer to not have to use an alternate shift key at all, there's really no reason for it.
• Will remapping keys be straightforward to do in LineageOS?  I don't mind editing a text configuration file as root like I did on my Droid4.  
• Is there any chance there will be a conventional keyboard layout offered? 

I'd love to see a version of this phone with a conventional keyboard layout, as shown in the attached pic, the  "preferred layout" version.  There's plenty of space to do it with same key sizes, and actually would be possible to get rid of several keys (e.g. the "Alternate Shift").  You'd lose the more centered letter keys by doing this, but the QWERTZ layout does fine without it, and perhaps it'd even be possible to shift the entirety of the keyboard to the right.

[netman 1,424]

2 minutes ago, tliebeck said:

• The shifted-symbols on the number keys and symbol keys are marked in yellow....are these accessible via the standard shift key or do I have to use that "Alternate Shift" key?    I would very much prefer to not have to use an alternate shift key at all, there's really no reason for it.

If you install FinQwerty you get layouts (including standard US) that allow all these with normal shift key also (it's not really an app, but more like a set of layout that comes as an app because android has a weird API to allow non-rooted userlevel apps to add keyboard layouts, very unobtrusive and nice way to go about stuff).

5 minutes ago, tliebeck said:

• Will remapping keys be straightforward to do in LineageOS?  I don't mind editing a text configuration file as root like I did on my Droid4.  

I found it relatively straightforward on stock, for Lineage it should be the same but the location of the keyboard layout may be different. I had to run (as root):

mount -o remount,rw /

To get write access to /system, and then it was down to editing /system/usr/keychars/Vendor_181d_Product_5018_Version_0001.kcm which as I told is probably different file on lineage. You could take the layouts from Finqwerty as a starting point to make your own (because they are nice), since they're in the same format. Small challenge was that Android doesn't have vi or nano installed so instead of using an editor I used something like:

adb shell "su -c 'cat /system/usr/keychars/Vendor_181d_Product_5018_Version_0001.kcm'" > layout.txt

To get the file on PC and then to get it back something in the lines of:

cat layout.txt | adb shell "su -c 'cat > /system/usr/keychars/Vendor_181d_Product_5018_Version_0001.kcm'"

And then rebooted to have it take effect (could probably just change the layout to something else and then back, but I haven't tried that). Forgive me if i got one of these commands wrong as I'm just going by memory, but it's certainly possible.