Pro1 X Qwerty Layout (Not Shifted)

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

2 hours ago, Slion said:

I know what you are saying but to me it's a waste of a perfectly good modifier. Alt Gr on the right side can also be accessed with the left thumb for those few keys which are too far to the rights.

Moreover we are trying to align the Pro1 keyboard with regular compact keyboards and pretty much all of them have an Fn key to access media and device specific functionalities.

Well, this may be an option for you, but it is an absolute no go for every person using us-international. In my case ä is quite common,  try pressing alt-gr + q without a right modifier...
 

[Slion 1,201]

19 minutes ago, matf said:

I believe I would be pretty happy with that. Possibly with a different color for Shift and second-layer chars (yellow, if we keep it close to the current keyboards), but keeping those white would work too since this layout is now pretty close to desktop keyboards, so there's no need for extra hints on key combinations everyone is already expecting.

Depending on how Fx is mapped, perhaps there would be ways to use it as Super on OSes that have a use for it. I do not know.

Would just swap left AltGr with Fn 😁

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

1 minute ago, Slion said:

Would just swap left AltGr with Fn 😁

That is exactly what finqwerty does now.

[Slion 1,201]

1 minute ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

Well, this may be an option for you, but it is an absolute no go for every person using us-international. In my case ä is quite common,  try pressing alt-gr + q without a right modifier...

You got me wrong. AltGr should be just one key on the right side where it belongs.

[Slion 1,201]

Just now, Doktor Oswaldo said:

That is exactly what finqwerty does now.

Yes and that is correct 😁

[matf-kabouik 414]

23 minutes ago, Slion said:

Would just swap left AltGr with Fn 😁

I don't think that's possible without hardware changes, since all duplicated modifiers (Shift, Ctrl, yellow arrow now labelled AltGr) are wired together if I understood correctly. Swapping Fx and AltGr would therefore mean that right AltGr becomes Fx too. I also edited my post to fix a similar issue: it's not possible to have AltGr immediately to the right of the space bar for the same reason, it has to be Ctrl, or else the left Ctrl would become AltGr too (meh).

Could you please update your quote so that the quoted image is not the old one? I'm adding it here too so people just reading this page don't get confused with a layout that cannot be made.

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

4 minutes ago, Slion said:

You got me wrong. AltGr should be just one key on the right side where it belongs.

No, Both AltGr are needed, just because FinQWERTY switches them with FN, still means that there are two Alt-Gr keys.
One FN is enough

[Slion 1,201]

27 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

One FN is enough

There is no Fn anymore if there is two AltGr. Just the Fx aka Win aka System aka Magnifying glass.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Slion

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

4 minutes ago, Slion said:

There is not Fn anymore if there is two AltGr. Just the Fx aka Win aka System aka Magnifying glass.

True that, but the missing keys could be made accessible with alt

[Slion 1,201]

14 minutes ago, matf said:

I don't think that's possible without hardware changes, since all duplicated modifiers (Shift, Ctrl, yellow arrow now labelled AltGr) are wired together if I understood correctly.

I thought it was just Ctrls and Shifts. Fn/Slant Arrows is just a software issue. TBH I'm not exactly sure 🙂

[matf-kabouik 414]

I'm not 100% sure either, but I never managed to distinguish them in OSes at least. They both report keycode 108 for me in Debian using `xev`, while `Alt` is keycode 64. It might be due to those two slant arrow keys being mapped the same way in kernel, but I believe it's hardware wiring.

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[EskeRahn 5,464]

I'm getting dizzy reading this *LOL* Maybe we should have the thread split in TWO. One for the ideal keyboard for a Pro2, and one for what can be done with the print only for The Pro1 & Pro1x. Most of this thread has ended on the former not the later
As they only seem to have changed the memory/storage chip I find it highly unlikely they would go with changing the electrical layout for the keyboard.

So I think the natural simple thing to do with the Pro1 hardware would be to change the two independent Fn arrows to Alt and AltGr, and make the current Alt (or Sym) the new Fn.
But we could also go in another direction and ask if we really need Ctrls on both sides? Perhaps a double-key like this would be better for a modifier like the AltGr for the international keyboard users?

On the combined modifier usage we could cheat like I suggested for Anssi where Ctrl+Fn doubles for Shift+Fn as it natively would be vary rare, and the Shift+Fn is impossible with one thumb.

[Slion 1,201]

6 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

True that, but the missing keys could be made accessible with alt

The opposite is true. US Int. layout can remap Fn to Alt Gr if needed. Yet I think labeling it Fn makes a lot more sense as it aligns with most compact keyboards out there and avoids having a duplicated label. So I guess what we are arguing about is just how to label that key 🙂

Would you rather have two Alt Gr key or one Fn and one Alt Gr printed on your keyboard?

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

1 minute ago, Slion said:

The opposite is true. US Int. layout can remap Fn to Alt Gr if needed. Yet I think labeling it Fn makes a lot more sense as it aligns with most compact keyboards out there and avoids having a duplicated label. So I guess what we are arguing about is just how to label that key 🙂

Would you rather have two Alt Gr key or one Fn and one Alt Gr printed on your keyboard?

In my case definitely two Alt Gr. Because it is in the end an Alt Gr key. Yeah it looks strange because we are not used to it. But that is only a matter of time. And labelling a key FN that you use as Alt Gr makes no sense to me.

[EskeRahn 5,464]

3 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

In my case definitely two Alt Gr. Because it is in the end an Alt Gr key. Yeah it looks strange because we are not used to it. But that is only a matter of time. And labelling a key FN that you use as Alt Gr makes no sense to me.

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.

[matf-kabouik 414]

7 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

In my case definitely two Alt Gr. Because it is in the end an Alt Gr key. Yeah it looks strange because we are not used to it. But that is only a matter of time. And labelling a key FN that you use as Alt Gr makes no sense to me.

I agree with @Doktor Oswaldo, but I'm a us-intl user so I'm not 100% neutral. No one is.

I don't see the point in having duplicated Fn keys, since all functions seem to be on the right of the keyboard or used only occasionally, not for typing (F1-12, provided those can be triggered with Fn on Android; not sure). Removing one AltGr would mean having two Fn keys, given that those are electrically wired, and this doesn't make more sense than two AltGr visually, but on top of that is not really fulfilling a need like duplicated AltGr do.

The Fx key could be used as Fn in my opinion, since it has close to no use otherwise. Or, if it can be mapped to Super and therefore get more uses, then maybe functions should be moved to Alt indeed, or just binded to Super+arrows for PgUp/PgDn/Home/End.

Using a neutral symbol instead of AltGr or Fn as suggested by @EskeRahn would totally work for me too.

Edited October 28, 2020 by matf

[Slion 1,201]

1 minute 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.

@EskeRahn the diplomat 🤣

[EskeRahn 5,464]

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

[EskeRahn 5,464]

3 minutes ago, Slion said:

@EskeRahn the diplomat 🤣

Now THAT would be a first 🤣

[Slion 1,201]

6 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

In my case definitely two Alt Gr. Because it is in the end an Alt Gr key. Yeah it looks strange because we are not used to it. But that is only a matter of time. And labelling a key FN that you use as Alt Gr makes no sense to me.

That would be serving the specific interested of the QWERTY US Int. layout to the detriment of the basic QWERTY US layout. Then again if implemented properly no functionality should be lost either way. 

[Slion 1,201]

5 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

YellowArrow

We ought to get rid of that term. Yellow labels should be used for Shift if we want to keep printed yellow labels.

[EskeRahn 5,464]

5 minutes ago, Slion said:

We ought to get rid of that term. Yellow labels should be used for Shift if we want to keep printed yellow labels.

The term is horrible, but we do need something that are distinctive from Shift to allow symbols on letter-keys. And International users might even need it combined with shift. (That would require some faking of another combo to do with one thumb)

[EskeRahn 5,464]

OH just realized that swapping the YellowArrow to the current Ctrl, would make Sh+YA super easy!!
A win-win here!!!

[Slion 1,201]

10 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

The term is horrible, but we do need something that are distinctive from Shift allow symbols on letter-keys.

The main purpose of that thread is to come up with a layout that does not need symbols on letter keys. Instead we used Sym as the missing key.
Also Yellow Arrow is in fact Fn aka Function which is wildly used on any compact keyboard to access device specific functionalities include common symbols from missing keys.

See my suggested layout linked below or @Craig on the first post:

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Slion

[EskeRahn 5,464]

23 minutes ago, Slion said:

The main purpose of that thread is to come up with a layout that does not need symbols on letter keys. Instead we used Sym as the missing key.
Also Yellow Arrow is in fact Fn aka Function which is wildly used on any compact keyboard to access device specific functionalities include common symbols from missing keys.

Yes I know the ⬈ is currently USED as Fn. But nothing requires this to be the case for all layouts.... That was my point. We might use it differently in different layouts, based on the same print

(&#11016 gives the ⬈  )