Pro1 X Qwerty Layout (Not Shifted)

[matf-kabouik 414]

27 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

I would suggest the bottom row as something like this:

• YellowArrow , Ctrl, Fx, Alt, ??? , Space, YellowArrow, ???, Left, Down, Right

not quite sure what to put on the ??? keys

 

...Actually this would be quite close the Lenovo laptops keyboard: Fn, Ctrl, Win, Alt, Spaaaaace, AltGr, PrtSc, Ctrl

Please keep the bottom left key as Left Ctrl. It's standard, most users use left modifiers more often than right modifiers, and Ctrl+Shift is a pretty common key combination. Since it is electrically wired to the Right Ctrl, this also means that the key to the right of the space bar should be Ctrl too. Other than that, I would be happy with:

Ctrl, ???, Fx, Alt, \|, Space, Ctrl, ???, Left, Down, Right

Where `???` could be a neutral symbol to make both Fn and AltGr users happy.

I would not use a distinctive color for Shift and shifted symbols (second-level chars) with the new layout, because it is now much closer to a standard keyboard, no need for extra hints.

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[Slion 1,201]

4 minutes ago, matf said:

Please keep the bottom left key as Left Ctrl

Indeed we should, only ThinkPads are controversially swapping Fn and Ctrl on the left side 🤣

Edited October 28, 2020 by Slion

[EskeRahn 5,460]

1 hour ago, matf said:

Ctrl, ???, Fx, Alt, \|, Space, Ctrl, ???, Left, Down, Right

Where `???` could be a neutral symbol to make both Fn and AltGr users happy.

But that is exactly what we already got (except the Sym), so maybe it isn't that bad after all.... 😉

[EskeRahn 5,460]

1 hour ago, matf said:

Ctrl+Shift is a pretty common key combination

Just out of curiosity, except with the arrows for marking (and Visual Studio short-cuts), where do you encounter this combination? I don't think that I ever used it for other than marking on a phone, And I bet some trickery could be done having ⬈+Shift+Arrows act as Ctrl+Shift+Arrows.

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

28 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Just out of curiosity, except with the arrows for marking (and Visual Studio short-cuts), where do you encounter this combination? I don't think that I ever used it for other than marking on a phone, And I bet some trickery could be done having ⬈+Shift+Arrows act as Ctrl+Shift+Arrows.

Well it isn't common, since it wasn't possible for quite a while now. But there are people mapping Ctrl + C and Ctrl + c differently in vim.

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

2 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

We could use a 'neutral' label like the yellow arrow symbol, and then it could be used as Fn or AltGr depending on the layout.

Indeed, this is not a bad solution. But we now actually have alt as a fn key. The problem is, there are buttons which do different things depending of the use of alt_gr or the fn key. This is of course purely a cosmetic problem. But what we would need (or at least I) is two alt Gr's and 1 fn key.

[matf-kabouik 414]

48 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

But that is exactly what we already got (except the Sym), so maybe it isn't that bad after all.... 😉

Ah, I don't disagree, I wouldn't change much on the current keyboard, especially if we take into account the electrical wiring constraint! But there are things that could be improved.

40 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Just out of curiosity, except with the arrows for marking (and Visual Studio short-cuts), where do you encounter this combination? I don't think that I ever used it for other than marking on a phone, And I bet some trickery could be done having ⬈+Shift+Arrows act as Ctrl+Shift+Arrows.

On mobile OSes, there probably aren't many use cases other than text selection and arrows, but the Pro¹x aims at being a Linux phone, and Liangchen himself mentioned Mobian and pmOS as alternative OSes. Add to that desktop distributions running in chroot and LXC in SFOS, or Android (I think there are ways to run desktop distributions too, albeit with more limitations). In those, just the terminal gives plenty of reasons to combine Ctrl and Shift (copy/paste for instance). Tiling WMs too. And basically any desktop application with support for keyboard shortcuts is likely to have some Ctrl+Shift somewhere.

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[EskeRahn 5,460]

6 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

But what we would need (or at least I) is two alt Gr's and 1 fn key.

Easily done:

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

2 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Easily done:

yeah that would work. Except of course for the fact that the Ctrl key is at the wrong place. and FN and the left YA should be switched. I know this is purely subjective, but I am right, trust me on this 😄

[matf-kabouik 414]

Abandoning the right Ctrl is both criminal and impossible with the current hardware. It's probably the most used right modifier when thumb typing, due to A, X, C, V, R, Q, D, F, S, Z all being on the left. I also would die of brain seizure if the bottom left key was not Ctrl, which means it has to be replicated on the right instead of YA, but then we lose Right AltGr again.

Also, moving '~ to the right is going to be very awkward if the goal is to make the keyboard resemble more full-size keyboards, I don't see why it should be to the right while \| is moved to the left. It's not possible anyway because this 8th key on the bottom row is wired to the 2nd, so we would have `~ twice. That is why others before have suggested moving \| to the current Sym key, it's the best non-paired key available at the bottom (there's Fx and Alt too, but putting characters in the middle of modifiers would be weird).

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[EskeRahn 5,460]

22 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

yeah that would work. Except of course for the fact that the Ctrl key is at the wrong place. and FN and the left YA should be switched. I know this is purely subjective, but I am right, trust me on this 😄

The problem is the wiring, The very left key and the key to the right of space is wired as one...

[EskeRahn 5,460]

20 minutes ago, matf said:

because this 8th key on the bottom row is wired to the 2nd,

Nope they are individual. 🙂
The only keys wired as one are the two Shifts, and the two (currently) doing Ctrl

[matf-kabouik 414]

Okay, that's useful information, thanks. They both are associated to the same keycode (108) in xev, but that may be set at kernel level instead of hardware limitation.

I would still keep all three modifiers paired (Ctrl, Shift, ???) and would prefer other keys to be placed differently as described in above posts.

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[EskeRahn 5,460]

34 minutes ago, matf said:

Also, moving '~ to the right is going to be very awkward if the goal is to make the keyboard resemble more full-size keyboards,

...On the other hand \| would be on the right key positioned just left of Z for the UK. And also what I get in windows selecting US layout on a physical keyboard with a key left of Z... Windows moves the key three right of P to left of the Z, (as we for odd reasons got the upright not the horizontal Enter)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY

[matf-kabouik 414]

You're referring to ISO keyboards, but those vary greatly between countries, probably too much to be good candidates for a generic international qwerty on our device. US-intl is more or less designed for ANSI, and the rest of the layout resembles more the ANSI layout (with <> to the right for instance and on first level), except for this extra key to the left of Z. With only one key left to Z, I therefore believe it would be best to keep `~ on that side.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/KB_United_States-NoAltGr.svg/420px-KB_United_States-NoAltGr.svg.png

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[Slion 1,201]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

Nope they are individual. 🙂
The only keys wired as one are the two Shifts, and the two (currently) doing Ctrl

Thanks for the reminder. I'll update my layout proposals on the AZERTY threads to take this into account.

[Craig 1,435]

I knew the two ctrl's and two shift's were wired together when I started, and somehow in that late-night revision ignored that.  So that makes it impossible, and I have reverted that change and gone back to the the original but swapped slant arrow and ctrl keys from current (updated first post). (edit: and swapped them back, now first post has both versions)

The main purpose of this is to get /? printed as a dedicated key and off the P/L so standard layouts work.   Whether slant arrow is printed as AltGr (like intl pc keyboards) or Sym (like android) it's actual function should be Right_Alt, because that is the key that works as the modifier for layouts. 

Mainly directed at Slion: Having it on both sides is important to international users. More important than an additional key like Menu or Fn.   This does not reduce the number of modifiers that Pro¹ has available now, because already both slant-arrows are treated the same in firmware.   I realize you want another one, and I thought I addressed that concern earlier, I wouldn't mind either, but I think the needs of International users outweigh the possible convenience of yet another modifier - remember, we still have ctrl alt right_alt/slantarrow and Fx in addition to shift.  And this ohter idea adds another control key mapped separately!  Finally actually 64 independent keys instead of 63!

 

 

I don't think it can get any better than this with the existing hardware constraints (key positions fixed, existing ctrl and shift keys hardwired together). 

This will accomplish the following:

1. Adds Dedicated Slash/Question Mark Key (in the right place)
2. Eliminates need for weird slant arrow and allows use of default Android & Linux keyboard layouts.
3. Adds 3rd level modifier key to other side of keyboard for use with international layouts.
4. Adds additional potential modifier by making Control Keys independent

EDIT: Drawback realized.... cannot Shift+Ctrl easily...  Plus most prefer Alt where it was instea dof moved next to space bar, looks better and more functional when grouped with other modifiers and backslash/pipe by spacebar.  So this version didn't make it to post #1 summary, but a slightly modified version is presented as the additional possible alterntive.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Craig

[Craig 1,435]

22 hours ago, SCΛRECROW said:

I wonder if we could get retrofit kits for the original Pro1, it would be great.

If my suggestion becomes reality and what you said is possible, I'll be first in line for that one... even set an alarm for a 10 minute early bird window 😉    The missing slash and nonstandard layouthackworkaroundbs has been my biggest complaint with Pro¹ since day zero; lineage/sailfish/finqwerty/fxqwerty/etc have done work to make it usable, but it's still not as ideal as this, and this would work automatically with any OS without each OS having to do their own workarounds... I haven't tried Ubuntu touch yet but I'm sure its just like sailfishos and dosbox and ubuntu chroot and everything else that has no access to slash/questionmark and having to change default keymaps just to get right_alt on sym/slantarrows because no layout in the world works with fxtec's abritraty default key assignment for those buttons without hacks/modifications/work.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Craig

[Craig 1,435]

After further discussion and consideration, there is a downside to that latest proposal, no convenient ctrl-shift-c ctrl-shift-v which are important for linux terminals.  To me not worth the tradeoff just to get a dedicated right control and alt next to spacebar, even tho I realize it eliminates a potential modifier and I'd thought/hoped I'd come up with a solution without downsides, but unfortunately no, there's always tradeoffs.

So I'm back to thinking just the three changes I originally proposed are the best way to go.  But I do see why some might prefer the additional changes suggested earlier too...   But I think more people will want to use ctrl-shift easily than people who want to altgr-shift easily combined with people who want an additional modifier/dedicated right control key.

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Craig

[EskeRahn 5,460]

36 minutes ago, Craig said:

But I think more people will want to use ctrl-shift easily than people who want to altgr-shift easily combined with people who want an additional modifier/dedicated right control key.

Hmm that might hold in the US, but hardly in the rest of the world in need of national characters.

Here in Denmark we don't need it (dead key accenting works just fine for rare accents), but all those with languages with frequent accented letters might feel differently.

[Craig 1,435]

45 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Hmm that might hold in the US, but hardly in the rest of the world in need of national characters.

Here in Denmark we don't need it (dead key accenting works just fine for rare accents), but all those with languages with frequent accented letters might feel differently.

Agree and understand.  That's why I've still left details about it in first post and still not 100% convinced.  But I was actually swayed to change by a European telling me they rarely need to capitilize those letters so having easy access to altgr+shift not very important, whereas everyone in the world uisng linux terminal will want easy access to ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v. 

So my proposal was based on suggesting the thing that benefits *everyone* as opposed to the thing that only benefits some people sometimes, but hurts everyone.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Craig

[matf-kabouik 414]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

Hmm that might hold in the US, but hardly in the rest of the world in need of national characters.

Here in Denmark we don't need it (dead key accenting works just fine for rare accents), but all those with languages with frequent accented letters might feel differently.

Actually those third-level characters are not often upper case, and in that case they can still be typed with caps lock on Linux. Compose keys work too (here is ẞ typed with a compose key on Pro¹), and dead keys for diacritics of course. But, most of all, there is now a nordic keyboard with all those special characters mapped where they should be.

Of course, a fraction of users will use qwerty us-intl instead of their native layout, just like I use it instead of azerty, but in that case there's a decision to use qwerty instead of something specifically designed for the other language, and probably motivations other than just the special characters. Could be for coding or other techie reasons, using multiple languages and all, but again upper case special characters are rare, caps-lockable, and compose-key-able. Dropping Ctrl+Shift causes important issues for terminal use and tiling WMs, but also any software with keybinds, which would be a huge trade-off for a phone now clearly aiming at being a Linux phone. Moving left Ctrl would make it unconventional and I see more drawbacks than benefits for Linux use and international users.

The latest suggestion by Craig is the same I proposed, with same key positioning, just some variation in double labels. In my opinion this is the best balance, close to standard yet usable with thumbs in all languages, with common Linux key combinaitons, and Android. Also, Alt on full keyboards is between Super and Space. We have two keys between Super and Space here, so we have to choose where to put Alt and \|. I think it makes sense to keep modifiers clustered together to the left (easier fat thumb combination and more feng-shui visually), therefore Alt right to Super, and \| left to space bar.

Craig played with double engraving on Discord, and posted this here. I believe it's a good solution to make all users happy, perhaps even more than a neutral symbol. This way, users who need duplicated Alt_R have AltGr on both sides, users who don't care about it have Fn on both sides, and use who want both can see the label they want on each side. Since both keys are independent, they can be made different in firmware by default, and then kept different or given the same function in software if need be.

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[matf-kabouik 414]

Could this double engraving work for everyone?

Let me explain. Considering the bottom label is always the main one on keyboards, these swapped double labels make it look like default is Fn on left key, and AltGr is default on right key. But with some flexibility thanks to the top double label. Those keys can produce distinct keycodes since they are not wired, therefore it is doable. Changing this in firmware or software is possible, while keeping the same labels that work in all situations.

Depending on OS or user needs, firmware or software (respectively) can be adjusted by porters or users (respectively again) to make them be the same modifier, either Fn or AltGr depending on needs. I don't think any user would be shocked that their unconventional replicated Fn or unconventional left AltGr is written in a smaller font on the extra label.

Also, blue Super for consistency with the Pro1x casing.

[Edit] Possible ambiguity: people thinking Shift + Left Fn key = AltGr, or that Shift + right AltGr key = Fn. But would that really be a significant issue? Distinctive color for top labels of each of those two keys could sort this out, but not sure there's a need for that.

Edited October 29, 2020 by matf

[Craig 1,435]

I've cleaned up the first post a bit with my thoughts, and keep thinking about this again, because i really want them to get this right this time.  I found another way to accomplish the same thing, that does get an additional modifier (I put the symbol for the menu key, as thats one of the standard 102 keys we dont have that is normally positioned on bottom row, albiet normally on the right....).   But tradeoffs - it sacrifices dedicated Del key, and suggests it as a super function for backspace which I dont know if this could really work in firmware either, so probably not the best idea.  But still better than the way it is now and still accomplishes the same four things, plus gets another modifier, without sacrificing Ctrl+Shift.

 

Would love to hear some more arguments as to why the proposal in the first post might not be ideal....  and if anyone thinks the alternative suggestion at the bottom of the first post or this idea here is overall (all things considered) better than the first one...

Edited October 29, 2020 by Craig

[Slion 1,201]

34 minutes ago, Craig said:

it sacrifices dedicated Del key

I thought of that one too and I quite like it.

37 minutes ago, Craig said:

menu key

That one is rather useless it does not even feature anymore in modern keyboards, say for the past 5 years or so.