- Missing ￥ on ANSI pipe keys
[...]
The current implementation of hiragana sublegends (V2) is accurate aside from the lack of a ￥, assuming one is using a Japanese IME on an ANSI layout. All the punctuation is in the right place and all hiragana are accounted for.
Including the yen sign in ANSI-based Japanese keysets is not accurate and should not be done.
Adding a character as a (sub)legend to a key implies that said character can be produced by pressing that key together with a certain combination of modifiers and lock states on a given logical layout that the (sub)legends are meant to represent.
Usually, the yen sign (₯, U+00A5) isn't a character that can be typed on a standard Japanese keyboard layout by pressing any combination of keys and modifiers, in any lock state.
Instead, ₯ is traditionally just a graphical representation of the backslash (\, U+005C) on most Japanese systems. In other words, the actual character that's being typed is a backslash; it just gets displayed on the screen as a yen sign. (Yes, it still works like this even in the age of Unicode and emoji skin color modifiers and gender combination sequences.)
Not all systems do it like this, though, and some (e.g. macOS) give you the option of outputting an actual ₯ character, but I wouldn't call this the norm.
Here's a concrete example pertaining to this keyset:
Adding ₯ as a quaternary sublegend (top-right in GMK) to the
\|む key would imply that you are able to type a ₯ character by pressing this key together with Shift while in kana input mode. This is not the case; doing that will just produce む. In order to type ₯, you would have to change your logical layout, keyboard type, or sometimes even your system language, to Japanese; in which case the character would be produced by just pressing the key regularly (no Shift and no kana mode), like regular backslash. So the quaternary (top-right) position is incorrect either way.
For that reason, ₯ should not be included in ANSI-based Japanese keyset legends. For JIS-based keysets it's okay, since those are intended to be used with Japanese layouts on Japanese systems anyway.
By the way, all of this also applies to the won sign (₩) in Korean keysets, which works the same way.
- Missing small kana (ぁ、ぃ、ぅ、ぇ、ぉ、っ、ゃ、ゅ、ょ)
- Missing を
- Missing 「」on ANSI bracket keys
- Missing ー on ANSI underscore/dash key
- む on pipe key in Alphas Kit
- Top-left aligned text legends in some places, dead center in others: Please keep it all center left.
- Half-width/full-width modifier appearance: A double-line version will exist with GMK Beta, but as far as I know a single-line version does not (半/全). Wouldn't this be a good opportunity to introduce this legend? If you intend on making this a double-line modifier I suggest changing it to match its appearance on GMK Beta for clarity.
Your remaining remarks I agree with. I would like to add that the current sublegend on the R1
₯|へ JIS key is incorrect; it's supposed to be
₯|ー. Also, the quaternary sublegend on the
/?ろ key is supposed to be a
・ (U+30FB), but that might just be a rendering error.
The single-line
半/全 legend mold does exist; it was introduced in
GMK Mecha-01.
2Moons, feel free to use
these references to double-check if you got the
ANSI-based portion of the legends right. Also
these for cross referencing the legends you have with the standard JP layouts.
Edit:
Your カタカナ/ひらがな key looks a little imbalanced; either they could be brought to the centre, or the third ローマ字 legend that appears on some designs could be added.
In general I agree with your decision to go with text mods and standard 無変換/変換/英数/かな labels for the legends, as it is the more conservative, standard choice. However, have you considered offering icon mod alternatives for 無変換/変換, perhaps in the extensions kit? With other mods, people can swap them out for icon mods from other sets if they prefer, but with 無変換/変換 those mods are not generally offered by other sets, and there are no standard moulds currently available. And they are popular: Every keyboard pictured in your original post uses icon mods for those keys. Just a thought.
Youll probably want a 4.5U space bar for compatibility with existing Japanese keyboards. Im not sure whether GMK has the tooling to support this, though; thats one thing to bear in mind as I expect that the costs of developing such tooling would be much higher than new moulds. I dont really know, though, so just something to keep in the back of your mind as needing to confirm with GMK. Your other funny spacebar sizes may run into the same difficulty. They definitely have 3U support now, but Im not sure about 4U, for example.
+1 for these suggestions as well!
