app Custom Keyboard Layouts for F(x)tec Pro1

[Slion 1,200]

@brunoais I like that keyboard layout designer tool. Though it looks like you basically have to edit the raw data to get anything done right?

Your design example has more keys than the Pro1.

[Slion 1,200]

5 minutes ago, Slion said:

Your design example has more keys than the Pro1.

Actually I got confused cause you offset the keys somehow.
I have to say that I intend for Fx Qwerty layouts to remain user friendly by being WYSIWYG so I doubt I'll invest time to implement yours as it is.

[Slion 1,200]

Fx Qwerty v0.1.1 layout.

EDIT: This is now outdated, check out Fx Qwerty home page for up to date versions.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Slion

[EskeRahn 5,427]

2 hours ago, Slion said:

Fx Qwerty v0.1.1 layout.

Interesting, though not something suitable for me.

[Slion 1,200]

1 minute ago, EskeRahn said:

Interesting, though not something suitable for me.

Need a Scandinavian variant of that? Feel free to design your own and I'll see how I can integrate it. Typically you would mostly need to change the alt layer for supporting other group of languages. 

I've tooled myself so that it's relatively easy for me to produce local variants while keeping the common functionality untouched.

[Hook 2,945]

I really love the work you are doing here, but for me, the big issue that keeps me with FinQwerty is the intuitive functioning of the shift keys to get the symbols over the number keys, even at the cost of displacing the "/" and the "?".  By the way, where is "?" on your layout-- I'm assuming it's still on th eL key, but just was accidentally left off your print.

What I'd really love is for shift to work and "/?" to be moved to the right yellow arrow key, but not sure that is doable or I think FinQwerty would have.

Most of your red layer I don't really care much about, but does your software allow those things like "agenda" to be defined as to which app they launch? I don't ise many Googl apps and would hope they aren't tied to specific choices.

Again, great work!

[Slion 1,200]

1 hour ago, Hook said:

FinQwerty is the intuitive functioning of the shift keys to get the symbols over the number keys

I implemented that for you already. Just use one of the variants that says "Shift as Fn".

1 hour ago, Hook said:

By the way, where is "?" on your layout

Good catch, just fixed it. See updated link on the home page.

1 hour ago, Hook said:

What I'd really love is for shift to work and "/?" to be moved to the right yellow arrow key, but not sure that is doable or I think FinQwerty would have.

Not doable as both yellow arrow keys (aka Fn) are hardwired. Also I want to keep it WYSIWYG.

1 hour ago, Hook said:

Most of your red layer I don't really care much about

Then you may as well stick with FinQwerty.

1 hour ago, Hook said:

but does your software allow those things like "agenda" to be defined as to which app they launch? I don't ise many Googl apps and would hope they aren't tied to specific choices.

It launches the default apps as you defined them in your settings. So it will launch whatever app you are using as your default Agenda for instance. Not necessarily Google Calendar, which hardly supports landscape btw.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Slion

[Slion 1,200]

Just published v0.2.0 featuring this layout.
Feedback and bug reports are most welcome on this thread.

[EskeRahn 5,427]

 

2 hours ago, Slion said:

Need a Scandinavian variant of that? Feel free to design your own and I'll see how I can integrate it. Typically you would mostly need to change the alt layer for supporting other group of languages. 

I've tooled myself so that it's relatively easy for me to produce local variants while keeping the common functionality untouched.

Well though I find the idea of your extensions interesting, none of them are some I missed, so no reason for my sake to make a non-shifted Danish variant.

1 hour ago, Slion said:

both yellow arrow keys (aka Fn) are hardwired

Not quite. Only the two Shifts and the two Ctrl are hardwired in parallel, the two YellowArrow keys are electrically separated.

 

On the talk about shift versus yellow arrows, I have a hard time to understand why anyone would have any problems with them doing the same on all character keys but the letter keys. Why would anyone expect say Sh+2 to return "2" ? or Sh+[ to send "[" ?

[Slion 1,200]

9 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

Well though I find the idea of your extensions interesting, none of them are some I missed, so no reason for my sake to make a non-shifted Danish variant.

Fair enough. In case you did not notice, Fx Qwerty now comes with Shift as Fn variants too.

9 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

Not quite. Only the two Shifts and the two Ctrl are hardwired in parallel, the two YellowArrow keys are electrically separated.

Good to know, it would be great then if we could have them use a different scancode so as to separately customise them.

9 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

I have a hard time to understand why anyone would have any problems with them doing the same on all character keys but the letter keys.

When I tried FinQwerty I started to use Shift for everything but then I got beaten every time by the question mark 🙂
I'll consider providing different characters through shift than through Fn as duplicates are not strictly needed. That's why I kept variants which do not use Shift as Fn, they could offer more characters at some point, superscripts and such.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Slion

[Slion 1,200]

On 2/18/2020 at 8:00 PM, wilhelmfitzpatrick said:

Would it be possible to remap a key (the FxTec key perhaps) as a SEARCH key that would work with the existing Android global shortcuts mechanism?

So thanks to @Craig post there, we solved that mystery. The modifier used by Android for those shortcuts is called Meta.
I could indeed provide layouts remapping the Fx key as Meta thus enabling that built-in feature.
However I doubt I would be using it myself. Some of those shortcuts don't make much sense compare to the ones I defined, obviously :), like Meta+L to launch Calendar.

There are only two features available in Meta and not currently offered by FxQwerty:

• Meta+Space which can only switch between two input methods. If you have more you will have to do it via touch menu anyway.
• Meta+S to launch SMS app which could easily be done using Key Mapper too.

I guess I just won't bother with that for now, unless we got tenth of people asking for it 🙂

[EskeRahn 5,427]

3 hours ago, Slion said:

So thanks to @Craig post there, we solved that mystery. The modifier used by Android for those shortcuts is called Meta.
I could indeed provide layouts remapping the Fx key as Meta thus enabling that built-in feature.
However I doubt I would be using it myself. Some of those shortcuts don't make much sense compare to the ones I defined, obviously :), like Meta+L to launch Calendar.

There are only two features available in Meta and not currently offered by FxQwerty:

• Meta+Space which can only switch between two input methods. If you have more you will have to do it via touch menu anyway.
• Meta+S to launch SMS app which could easily be done using Key Mapper too.

I guess I just won't bother with that for now, unless we got tenth of people asking for it 🙂

It would be interesting to dig into the what Meta and Fn are 'designed' to be used for.

As we got TWO independent YellowArrows and one LogoF, they almost cries for being mapped as Left and Right Meta, respectively Fn.

Unless there is a very good reason to do it the other way round...

 

[Craig 1,435]

18 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

It would be interesting to dig into the what Meta and Fn are 'designed' to be used for.

As we got TWO independent YellowArrows and one LogoF, they almost cries for being mapped as Left and Right Meta, respectively Fn.

Unless there is a very good reason to do it the other way round...

 

That's what I suggested, for exactly that reason.  Make the Fx key function and the left and right slant arrows left and right meta.   Plus with bookmarks on meta that have to be held simulteaneously, its nice to have meta on both sides.

I think I understand why tdm didnt want to implement it that way in Lineage, although I don't fully understand and don't think I agree, and I think its more about qwertz than qwerty.    He seems to want the slant arrow to double as shift, except for letters.  And in that case, it's nice to have it on both sides.   But not really needed since we have shift on both sides already.  But for the 3rd level stuff, qwerty only has slash and question mark that need another modifier (if trying to do wysiwyg).  qwertz appearantly has lots more, but I think they're mainly (all?) on the right side anyway, arent they?  So in that case no reason not to use Fx key, and let people use shift the same as every other keyboard in the world for 2nd level.

 

Edited February 25, 2020 by Craig

[EskeRahn 5,427]

1 hour ago, Craig said:

That's what I suggested, for exactly that reason.  Make the Fx key function and the left and right slant arrows left and right meta.   Plus with bookmarks on meta that have to be held simulteaneously, its nice to have meta on both sides.

I think I understand why tdm didnt want to implement it that way in Lineage, although I don't fully understand and don't think I agree, and I think its more about qwertz than qwerty.    He seems to want the slant arrow to double as shift, except for letters.  And in that case, it's nice to have it on both sides.   But not really needed since we have shift on both sides already.  But for the 3rd level stuff, qwerty only has slash and question mark that need another modifier (if trying to do wysiwyg).  qwertz appearantly has lots more, but I think they're mainly (all?) on the right side anyway, arent they?  So in that case no reason not to use Fx key, and let people use shift the same as every other keyboard in the world for 2nd level.

 

I think I want a 'compromise'-version, if possible. Let the yellow arrow Keys send Meta BUT combined the keys with yellow print send the printed.

So YellowArrow+P still sends "/" resp. "}" for qwertY resp. qwertZ. That is ALSO change Fn+P to Meta+P. Sure that will remove two possible short-cuts for qwertY (P&L) and some more on qwertZ.

Just brain-storming here: Would it be possible to have a LONG press of Yellow+Letter be the shortcuts and a normal press whatever printed?

[Craig 1,435]

I don't think that's easy, from what I understood when chatting with mccreary.  Meta+letter is reserved by the OS for bookmarks.   So couldnt be used with P&L to get /? unless a program was written that generated the appropriate keycode and the bookmark called the program.   And for qwertz that'd be even more programs.  But its doable.

And yeah even if that longpress stuff were possible, that'd be hard to try to use, modifier keys shouldn't matter how long they're held to affect what they do, can't imagine that'd be usable.

I still think its a good idea tho to remap as you said.  But the Fx key (as function) would have to be used as the modifier for the 3rd level printed characters, but since they're all on the right, that's not an issue anyway.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Craig

[EskeRahn 5,427]

12 minutes ago, Craig said:

I don't think that's easy, from what I understood when chatting with mccreary.  Meta+letter is reserved by the OS for bookmarks.   So couldnt be used with P&L to get /? unless a program was written that generated the appropriate keycode and the bookmark called the program.   And for qwertz that'd be even more programs.  But its doable.

And yeah even if that longpress stuff were possible, that'd be hard to try to use, modifier keys shouldn't matter how long they're held to affect what they do, can't imagine that'd be usable.

I still think its a good idea tho to remap as you said.  But the Fx key (as function) would have to be used as the modifier for the 3rd level printed characters, but since they're all on the right, that's not an issue anyway.

I disagree that it would be a good idea to waste two modifiers for Shortcuts. These are MUCH less important as fast than what is printed on the keys IMHO.

Shortcuts are single-shot stuff, to launch a program, special chars should be fluent in entering a text-stream, say entering question mark or entering "3/4",

So it would be completely tolerable to move one hand to do say Meta+A for a shortcut.

[Craig 1,435]

2 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

I disagree that it would be a good idea to waste two modifiers for Shortcuts. These are MUCH less important as fast than what is printed on the keys IMHO.

Shortcuts are single-shot stuff, to launch a program, special chars should be fluent in entering a text-stream, say entering question mark or entering "3/4",

So it would be completely tolerable to move one hand to do say Meta+A for a shortcut.

My understanding is meta cannot be used as a modifier in kcm files - only shift, function, and both alts (right and left).  Only shift & Alt are sticky tho.  If I understand right.  [Please tdm/mccreary/etc correct me if I'm wrong]

Although its a technicality, to be clear you can also switch between open apps with bookmarks, not just launch them.

3/4 isn't printed on our keyboards is it?  I need to get me a pic of qwertz layout handy.  Regardless, I thought all the third level characters are on the right side of keyboard, which means left side thumb for modifier anyway, so doesn't matter if its left slant arrow or Fx key for those printed 3rd level characters.

But for layouts like US-International, ¾ is 3rd level of 8, so also goes with a modifier on the left side.   However, with layouts like us-intl, there's 3rd level on every single key, so in that case, it's nice to have modifier on both sides (even tho on PC keyboard its only right alt that works) for convenience, but not quite as necessary with sticky right-alt.  That's why sailfishOS made both slant arrows right alt (and sym is slash/questionmark).    As soon as it's possible (tdm says coming soon) I'll be making my right slant arrow into slash/questionmark, which doesn't match the print, but is the best location imo for it and an unneeded waste of key.

 

 

Edited February 26, 2020 by Craig

[EskeRahn 5,427]

15 minutes ago, Craig said:

My understanding is meta cannot be used as a modifier in kcm files - only shift, function, and both alts (right and left).  Only shift & Alt are sticky tho.  If I understand right.  [Please tdm/mccreary/etc correct me if I'm wrong]

Although its a technicality, to be clear you can also switch between open apps with bookmarks, not just launch them.

3/4 isn't printed on our keyboards is it?  I need to get me a pic of qwertz layout handy.  Regardless, I thought all the third level characters are on the right side of keyboard, which means left side thumb for modifier anyway, so doesn't matter if its left slant arrow or Fx key for those printed 3rd level characters.

But for layouts like US-International, ¾ is 3rd level of 8, so also goes with a modifier on the left side.   However, with layouts like us-intl, there's 3rd level on every single key, so in that case, it's nice to have modifier on both sides (even tho on PC keyboard its only right alt that works) for convenience, but not quite as necessary with sticky right-alt.  That's why sailfishOS made both slant arrows right alt (and sym is slash/questionmark).    As soon as it's possible (tdm says coming soon) I'll be making my right slant arrow into slash/questionmark, which doesn't match the print, but is the best location imo for it and an unneeded waste of key.

 

 

Yes and if meta can NOT be used as a modifier, mapping it to the Logo is fine, it would be a bad idea to waste two keys for it.

We already got Alt+Tab and Alt+Sh+Tabfor task switching.

The example was supposed to be "3","/"."4" or maybe I should have used "3","7","/"."4","1" to avoid misinterpretations.....

And indeed modifiers are much more important to be fast than short-cuts as explained.

[Craig 1,435]

I went back and forth with it myself, as I learned the limitations & functions of each special key.  The main reason I think arrows should be meta is cuz there are left and right meta keycodes, and I think it limits customization if the kernel puts the same keycode for two different keys when it doesn't have to.  But if tdm comes up with another way to remap the right one that works, I'll be happy enough, even if it limits stuff in other ways.    But I totally see the advantage of having it as a modifier that can be used in layout files and understand why sfos and you would want it that way and for them to be the same key.

26 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

The example was supposed to be "3","/"."4" or maybe I should have used "3","7","/"."4","1" to avoid misinterpretations

Yeah, well that confuses me even more, not even sure what you might mean now.  I get numbers without any modifiers at all, magically enough, and I certainly wouldn't use a layout that didnt have numbers on the first level.  This is cuz I exclusively type English, with the occasional foreign word that needs an accent and occasionally want a symbol like superscript or fraction or currency.   But with longpress accents and symbol keyboard I get most of those, so no longer need to use us-intl.   So don't need a 3rd level modifier key.    But if you're mapping national letters into the number row as first level or something, and moving your numbers to third level, that's another reason to want to use slant arrows for 3rd level modifier key in layout, so a reason you wouldn't want them as meta. 

Edited February 26, 2020 by Craig

[EskeRahn 5,427]

6 hours ago, Craig said:

eah, well that confuses me even more,

Three chars

3
/
4

not ONE char

¾

[Slion 1,200]

7 hours ago, Craig said:

My understanding is meta cannot be used as a modifier in kcm files

That should work.

6 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

Yes and if meta can NOT be used as a modifier

 In theory it could. However it is cluttered by that Bookmarks feature. So in practise it's not usable without getting rid of said Bookmarks feature. What's most annoying with meta on android is that hitting it alone or with a key that's not a valid Bookmark shortcut triggers Google Assist. On top of that, removing the Bookmarks feature from Android is possibly breaking users trying to use it with an external keyboard that's implementing it.

Therefore IMHO Meta and Bookmarks are better be left alone. It looks like a derelict poorly implemented feature.

 

[Craig 1,435]

1 minute ago, Slion said:

What's most annoying with meta on android is that hitting it alone or with a key that's not a valid Bookmark shortcut triggers Google

I just tried, I don't get google assistant with meta alone or with a non bookmark 😞  

[Slion 1,200]

In Fx Qwerty I have the following modifier mappings:

• Yellow aka Fn aka Slant Arrow: KEYCODE_FUNCTION just like on stock.
• Red aka Fx aka FxTec: KEYCODE_ALT_RIGHT, remapped from stock.
• Blue aka Alt: KEYCODE_ALT_LEFT just like on stock.

However my favourite variant is swapping Fn with Alt so as to enable proper Alt+Tab now Fn+Tab from both sides of the keyboard.
Hope you guys are still following 🙂 

Edited February 26, 2020 by Slion

[Slion 1,200]

13 minutes ago, Craig said:

I just tried, I don't get google assistant with meta alone or with a non bookmark

I stand corrected. Hitting meta alone does launch Google Assist on stock anyway, unless maybe if you did not configure it? However hitting Meta with a key that's not used by Bookmarks does not launch Google Assist making Meta in those cases a usable modifier in KCM or Key Mapper shortcut.

[Slion 1,200]

12 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

It would be interesting to dig into the what Meta and Fn are 'designed' to be used for

At the core they are just generic modifiers for OEM to use as they see fit.
However Meta is notably used by Android Bookmarks.

• Fn on full size keyboard is typically used to access media, device features and default apps. See Logitech and Thinkpad keyboards.
• Fn on reduced sized keyboard is typically used to access characters that are otherwise directly available in a full size keyboard. See Nokia E7 and pretty much every qwerty smartphones.
• At least one of the Alt, often Alt Gr, is typically used to access non English characters, 3rd level ones.
• Shift access uppercase and 2de level characters.
• Ctrl is typically used for application specific shortcuts.
• Branded key, Windows/FxTec provides platform specific shortcuts.

I think the frustration with our Pro1 keyboard comes from the fact that it is just one key short of not needing Fn to access characters that are otherwise directly available on a full size keyboard. Thus just one key short of being able to use Shift to access not only uppercase but also 2de level characters as it's the case on full size keyboard.