And I have to say it's infuriating to read things such as:
"ISO is a non standard layout and most of the world use ANSI"
"Those niche kits won't ever come back."
Allow ME, then, to pound on this for a minute...
Most of the world uses ISO Enter keyboards, not ANSI. Whoever states the inverse is just flat out wrong. Step away from mechanical keyboards for a minute, and go look what
regular keyboards used by non-enthusiasts look like, and you'll be hard-pressed to find ANSI keyboards on countries where the standard (as dictated by the language) is ISO... and now look up the countries that use ISO and the ones using ISO (and then sum up their respective populations).
So, yeah, it may be the case
now that mech-enthusiasts use more ANSI than ISO, but that is definitely not the case when looking outside our own niche. And if this niche wants to grow, it can't do so by alienating the rest of the universe.
So why no support for ISO in the first place? I think it's just myopia.
Now, allow me to make an argument that I haven't seen issued so far (and which kinda surprises me that is the case). NO ONE will bat an eye at the amount of repetition in the nav-cluster keys. I'll put up
GMK Nines as an example because this one is actually modest in this regard - it has:
- 1 Insert key (R1)
- 2 Delete keys (R1, R2)
- 1 Home key (R1)
- 2 Page Up keys (R1 and R2)
- 3 Page Down keys (R1, R2, R3)
- 3 End keys (R1, R2, R4)
You guys may name other kits that have even more copies of those six keys (five, actually - I've yet to see a kit with more than one Home key).
If anyone asks, everyone will agree that this is necessary to support as many physical layouts as possible (fullsize/TKL, 75%/65%, 60%, 1800, etc.).
Same goes for the Shift keys, where it's pretty much the standard, for the same reason, to have
four keys just for the right Shift (2.75U, 2.25U, 1.75U and 2.00U, besides the 2.25U ANSI left Shift key).
Yet... adding a 1.25U Shift key and a second Enter key (ISO) seems to be tantamount to sacrilege for some. I'll reiterate: it's myopia.
The discussion always goes over how much of an international support should there be and gets futher complicated by NORDE, NORDEUK, lack of sales, some stroppy git claiming for support for something called "LAPTES", etcetera.
I think, if you ask me, that the compromise solution should be simple enough. Support US ISO in the base kit. How?
1) The base kit should be US ANSI, as it has always been, with all the repetition of nav keys and Shift and accented Esc and Enter keys and whatnot, albeit...
2) The base kit should also contain EXACTLY FOUR more keys: ISO left Shift (1.25U), ISO Enter, R3 \| key, R4 \| key.
3) An "accent" ISO Enter may or may not be added.
4) An R4 <> key may or may not be added, to evoke the terminal keyboards of old.
That's it. A simple enough compromise, that adds full support for 50% of ALL physical layouts out there in the world (TKL ANSI / TKL ISO, 60% ANSI / 60% ISO, etcetera). With as little as four keys.
Internationalization kits should be then added if feasible, with ONLY the necessary 1U alphas, plus one, two or three AltGr keys (as deemed necessary). I won't get into whether splitting NORDEUK into two or not is necessary, or adding LAPTES or BEFRIT, as that is another issue best talked about separately.
IMNAAHO. YMMV.
EDIT: typo.