The layout paradox

[In Stereo!]

Back in the days when home computing sprung out in the mainstream, the deal with localised layouts was that it were fairly hard to get, and plastified stickers with the custom characters were the big thing. After that, all the big keyboards manufacturers slowly began to ship the localised layouts and today the situation is completly reversed.

I, for one, refuse to use my own local layout (i.e. Slovene), cause it is ****ing horrid. It looks like it has been put together by some drunk retarded monkeys; the standard character on the right of 'P' and 'L' are replaced with letters, tipical for the language, and they are moved randomly throughout the keyboard, so you must really do some actobatics to get tem typed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Bosnian.2C_Croatian.2C_Serbian_.28Latin.29_and_Slovene



The main problem being with the localised layouts is that I'm not really able to get a ****ing Cherry G80 with US layout. Well technically it would be possible to get some form the local Cherry distributor, but I'd have to order at least 45 of them, that they would be willing to order some "custom" keyboards especially for me. :s Currently I'm typing on a Cherry G81-1844LAAUS, which is still a pretty rare piece of keyboard, here in Slovenia. I Actually found it as part of a broken POS system and was stored here for at least a decade or so for spare parts. Dismounted the card reader and soldered a new PS/2 cable. But yeah.. it is still a FTSC keyboard. :<


More of a rant, really.

[Mnemonix]

I, for one, refuse to use my own local layout (i.e. Slovene), cause it is ****ing horrid. It looks like it has been put together by some drunk retarded monkeys; the standard character on the right of 'P' and 'L' are replaced with letters, tipical for the language, and they are moved randomly throughout the keyboard, so you must really do some actobatics to get tem typed.

Looks even worse than the German layout, IMHO.
If you don't care about the labels and are OK with the ISO layout, you could simply re-map to a US key map. I did this for some time with a German Model M. Screw the umlauts.

The main problem being with the localised layouts is that I'm not really able to get a ****ing Cherry G80 with US layout.

I bit the bullet and bought three IBM Minis and two IBM M4-1 off from US EBay over time, with $30-$50 shipping for each... Just import the one you want.
I think it was worth it because the ANSI layout with its long Enter key is simply better for touch typing (less stretching of the right pinky). It would have been next to impossible to buy any of these keyboards in Germany anyway, even with a German layout.

[In Stereo!]

Currently I'm hoping of getting some cheap G80 with US layout off the german Ebay.

The things that really bother me with these European layouts is actually the position of the backslash and the ****ed up left shift. Don't really care about the labels, really.

[Rajagra]

The things that really bother me with these European layouts is actually the position of the backslash and the ****ed up left shift.

A common complaint. But I have to wonder, wouldn't remapping the extra key to act as another shift go 95% of the way to fixing that dislike? I know the annoyance factor would remain, but it would work effectively.

Edit> Ah you mean the Enter key issue too. You could remap an extra Enter too, but you can't do that trick with both areas without ending up one key short.

[ak_nala]

A common complaint. But I have to wonder, wouldn't remapping the extra key to act as another shift go 95% of the way to fixing that dislike? I know the annoyance factor would remain, but it would work effectively.

Edit> Ah you mean the Enter key issue too. You could remap an extra Enter too, but you can't do that trick with both areas without ending up one key short.

Also a problem is that an alpha key remapped to Shift could run into rollover issues on many boards. On non-NKRO boards, Shift and other modifiers are usually given special treatment when designing a matrix and the controller's firmware, are they not?

[bsvP585hUO2Y6]

ak nala wrote on 5983 September 1993:

> Also a problem is that an alpha key remapped to Shift could run into
> rollover issues on many boards. On non-NKRO boards, Shift and other
> modifiers are usually given special treatment when designing a matrix
> and the controller's firmware, are they not?

On the diodeless matrixes I've seen so far, each pair of modifiers was
wired to a private row/column.  Remapping shift to a non-modifier key on
such a board will worsen rollover performance.

[In Stereo!]

Well that is not a real problem (regarding modding), couse the "<>" key that occupies half of the standard shift, is an extra key, and can be striken out when using the US layout. The actual problem is the different division of the enter and backslash keys. And annoyance is present in almost every European layout.

I was maybe hoping that someone could tell me if converting a this big enter into a small enter with backslash, is easily doable or not (with a Cherry G80 in mind, of course).

[keyb_gr]

I was maybe hoping that someone could tell me if converting a this big enter into a small enter with backslash, is easily doable or not (with a Cherry G80 in mind, of course).

Nope. Actually some manufacturers like to use the layout with the big inverted-L shaped Enter and short Backspace as it can use the exact same PCB / membrane layout as a ANSI (US) layout board. Can't do that with a regular ISO layout so easily - even though IBM pulled it off in the Model M by including extra contact points.

Had a look at your native layout. Aw crap. That looks like it would be extremely hard to tweak. With German layout, it was quite easy to add a number of 3rd-level (AltGr) mappings to get {}[]\/ into more convenient places, as there aren't too many to begin with. There was enough room for a few more deadkeys as well. If you plan to get a board from Germany anyway, maybe you could try giving my German (extended) layout a shot (assuming you have some kind of 32-bit Windows of 2000 upwards)? Here's my layouts page.