[Research] Seeking ISO Users from Across the Globe

[NoPunIn10Did]

Legend Preferences for ISO Typists



The ISO layout, with its larger Enter key and its short left shift, has posed a number of puzzling questions to keycap designers and vendors.  ISO users are a large enough portion of the community that they ought not be neglected, but ISO layouts themselves are so varied that it's difficult to provide much more than a minimum of physical support to ISO users.

This survey intends to gather a deeper understanding of ISO layout users' legend preferences.  A potential goal, if possible, will be to use this data to come up with a priority list of keys for a sort of "Frankenstein ISO" approach that yields partial (but still ostensibly useful) legend compatibility with a wider range of ISO layouts than what is currently provided with the default US layout.

FAQ

Why do you need me to sign in?
That's solely to allow Google to filter out repeat responses.  I neither receive nor collect any identification from the form.

I don't see the normal option for my keyboard in your choices?
Note that most of these questions are structured to specifically look at what you, as an ISO user, would use in lieu of the default US keys.  If your layout already uses the default US option for the keys in the question, simply answer "Would not use" for all of the options.

My layout's key is missing.
Unfortunately I couldn't cover everything.  If any of the options shown seem acceptable to you as potential substitutes, mark them accordingly.  If not, mark everything as "Would not use."

UGH, WHY DON'T YOU JUST DO FULL UK LAYOUT?
That may be the best answer here.  I'm not sure.  The trouble I've so far run into is that while the UK mechanical keyboard community is indeed very active on social media, they may actually be overrepresented relative to their actual buying habits.  I absolutely do want UK users' responses, and I have nothing against the UK.  It's just that when you can isolate demand for ISO in general versus the UK alpha legends specifically, the trend doesn't look so hot for the Brits.  For example, for my current keycap GB, the base kit includes UK ISO by default, and I have a separate NorDe child kit.  I also have distinct UK and EU proxies.  But right now, that NorDe child kit is outselling base kits in the UK by a factor of 3:1 or 4:1.  Similar trends were seen in KAT Napoleonic.

The UK is one of the least expensive ISO layouts, but it's also one of the least representative of the larger ISO-using community.  It's a difficult puzzle to solve.

[salgiza]

I just started filling in the form, but I think the questions where you are asking which key we would prefer are missing the first option.

I mean: in some of them, I’m fine with some of the offered options, but I’m also fine (or I would prefer) the first one, but there is no way to let you know that...

Edit: I wrote the previous text in a rush and I hadn’t noticed that you actually mention that you are intentionally leaving the default option out. But I still think that it would be better to add them. Otherwise, I either have to lie and say that I don’t like any other option (which is not true), or check one and leave the impression that I prefer it to the default one.

I really like the idea, by the way (I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m criticising it), I just think that you might get to wrong conclusions if you leave the first key out of the questionnaire.

[suicidal_orange]

I think the reason you get low numbers for the UK kit is because UK is offered in way more GBs so buyers get more choice and buy less per GB.  A good NorDe? kit is offered less often so when it is available more users will buy that set.  ISO-UK user here but not in the market for caps so assuming my response is not wanted.

[NoPunIn10Did]

I just started filling in the form, but I think the questions where you are asking which key we would prefer are missing the first option.

I mean: in some of them, I’m fine with some of the offered options, but I’m also fine (or I would prefer) the first one, but there is no way to let you know that...

Edit: I wrote the previous text in a rush and I hadn’t noticed that you actually mention that you are intentionally leaving the default option out. But I still think that it would be better to add them. Otherwise, I either have to lie and say that I don’t like any other option (which is not true), or check one and leave the impression that I prefer it to the default one.

I really like the idea, by the way (I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m criticising it), I just think that you might get to wrong conclusions if you leave the first key out of the questionnaire.

If I left the default key in, my worry is that people wouldn't think about what they would use instead of that key, if a substitute were offered.  If the answer is really, "I would just use the default key," I'm hoping they answer "Would not use" to everything.

It's a question of "if both the default and this other key were available, would you use the other one?"

[NoPunIn10Did]

I think the reason you get low numbers for the UK kit is because UK is offered in way more GBs so buyers get more choice and buy less per GB.  A good NorDe? kit is offered less often so when it is available more users will buy that set.  ISO-UK user here but not in the market for caps so assuming my response is not wanted.

That's certainly possible.  I need to look back at overall KAT sales figures, where NorDe support is almost always offered, to see if I can distinguish UK buyers and other groups of ISO buyers.  The tricky part is always price: when UK kits tend to be the cheap ISO option, and NorDe kits are the expensive option, that's going to bias the sale.

[salgiza]

If I left the default key in, my worry is that people wouldn't think about what they would use instead of that key, if a substitute were offered.  If the answer is really, "I would just use the default key," I'm hoping they answer "Would not use" to everything.

It's a question of "if both the default and this other key were available, would you use the other one?"

I see your point. But my worry is that, when trying to define the “Frankenstein ISO kit” (I like that name ), not voting for the US keycap, there is no way to know whether the base keycap would be acceptable or not, if reducing the number of keycaps was needed to minimise costs.

I mean: in one case, I’d prefer one of the other options (Valuable) but I’m fine with using the base US keycap (Acceptable). On other, however, there is a keycap that I would prefer (valuable), there is another that would be ok (Acceptable), but the base key would never be an option.

Or, expressed in a different way: sometimes none of the options are essential, but having at least one of them is, and I’m not sure how to make that known with the current options… 

[NoPunIn10Did]

I guess you could say that I’m making the assumption that the US key will always be an available option, regardless of whatever comes out of this Frankenstein project.

[seville57]

The problem with ISO/Nordic is that you have the Dansih and Norwegian "Ö" and "Ä" letters on the same keycaps as the Swedish. It is much cheaper for manufacturs. Many Swedes hate this and they just want a ISO/Swedish layout not the ISO/Nordic layout.


 The ISO/Nordic "Ö" And "Ä" problem.




More problems with the ISO/Nordic layout is allso - No good lookin keycaps sets and the big fat ugly ISO Enter, I really hate it.


I stopped usin ISO/Nordic keyboards years ago and never gonna do it again.

Sorry for my bad English and the bad picture  but I'm only a Swede.

[Surefoot]

(ISO UK user here, out of necessity from my job)
ISO UK has also easy mappings for full international support in most languages, and is close enough to ISO national layouts in a good percentage of the cases.
Why is it under represented - many reasons, first this forum is mostly US centric and english language, that's the first barrier of entry (which dismisses a lot of French people for example) then there's the non-existent support in many kits that will just make most newcomers turn away immediately. This "egg or chicken" problem is the second barrier. Third barrier is of course the various ISO national layouts which may be difficult, and expensive to support - we pay already way too much for bits of plastic, and again newcomers to the hobby will have to overcome the price sticker shock.
I know quite a few people who would be able to afford custom mech keyboards without any issue (financially speaking) - but first question they always ask is "can i have my national keyboard layout, the same I and my wife use at work and everywhere" and most of the time the answer is "no" and they just are not interested to pay that much for a decorative object.

[salgiza]

Why is it under represented - many reasons, first this forum is mostly US centric and english language, that's the first barrier of entry (which dismisses a lot of French people for example) then there's the non-existent support in many kits that will just make most newcomers turn away immediately. This "egg or chicken" problem is the second barrier. Third barrier is of course the various ISO national layouts which may be difficult, and expensive to support - we pay already way too much for bits of plastic, and again newcomers to the hobby will have to overcome the price sticker shock.

Yeah, that's a good summary. I've found several Spanish forums where people were constantly asking where to find Spanish keycaps (and I know of at least a popular Spanish YouTuber that has lots of videos regarding mechanical keyboards). But... a lot of the people in these forums will never fill in an IC request here, or even know about the GB available with ES keycaps, due to the language barrier. And even then, for those that don't have a language problem, interest is quickly lost as soon as you notice that there are no Spanish keycaps available. I mean, I only know of two ICs with Spanish keycaps currently running. This means that, if I'm lucky, maybe by June 2022 I will get my first GB keycaps (yay!).

There are about 629 million people that use an Spanish (LA) layout, and 47 million people that use the Spanish (ES) layout. If we add Italians, Portuguese and Brazilians to the mix (for the sometimes seen South kit), that's a bit more that 950 million people. Yet, you look at the sales numbers of some kits that included this set...

I must also add that, all the webshops that sell keycaps are also part of the reason why people quickly loose interest. For example, I dare any of you to visit https://mykeyboard.eu , https://kbdfans.com, or https://candykeys.com , and quickly find how many keycaps are available to buy (either in stock or in GB) that include ES (or FR, or UK) keycaps. CandyKeys at least thought about giving an option to filter by layout... but it doesn't work.

It is hard enough to get Spanish keycaps. But how can someone even find them, if the only way to discover that a GB includes my layout is to click on every single one of them to see if I'm lucky? I swear, if https://keycapsets.com or any of these pages added an option to quickly filter by layout, I bet that sales of international sets would grow by a lot.

[glibber]

I'm an ISO-DE user. I can't fill out your form since I don't have a google account (and don't want one), but I'll still try to provide some feedback and list some things that have occured to me that might make an ISO set more "streamlined". All of these are just based on my personal opionion and taste though of course.

• I could live without "third symbols" on caps entirely. E.g. "< >" would be fine instead of "< > |", "2 "" instead of "2 " ^2", "+ *" instead of "+ * ~" etc etc. This might make it possible to omit some keys or support more layouts.
• On a similar note, I don't need the extra symbols on alphas either. E.g. "Q @", "E €" or "M µ" are pretty unnecessary imo, they rather disturb the overall look. You could save a few keys there as well.
• An AltGr labeling might also be more of a "nice to have" that could be omitted to save cost. I personally wouldn't have much of a problem using a cap that just says Alt instead.

Again, that's just me though. Others might strongly disagree.
In general I gotta say that ISO-DE support is one of the major factors in a buying decision for me. I need to be able to type glorious words like Ölüberschussländer.

[necsarY]

I'm an ISO-DE user. I can't fill out your form since I don't have a google account (and don't want one), but I'll still try to provide some feedback and list some things that have occured to me that might make an ISO set more "streamlined". All of these are just based on my personal opionion and taste though of course.

• I could live without "third symbols" on caps entirely. E.g. "< >" would be fine instead of "< > |", "2 "" instead of "2 " ^2", "+ *" instead of "+ * ~" etc etc. This might make it possible to omit some keys or support more layouts.
• On a similar note, I don't need the extra symbols on alphas either. E.g. "Q @", "E €" or "M µ" are pretty unnecessary imo, they rather disturb the overall look. You could save a few keys there as well.
• An AltGr labeling might also be more of a "nice to have" that could be omitted to save cost. I personally wouldn't have much of a problem using a cap that just says Alt instead.

Again, that's just me though. Others might strongly disagree.
In general I gotta say that ISO-DE support is one of the major factors in a buying decision for me. I need to be able to type glorious words like Ölüberschussländer.

as another ISO-DE user i completely agree with this statement!
Having the keys for the äöp aswell as keys for ,.- in the usual place is way more important than third symbols or etc.

[NoPunIn10Did]

I'm an ISO-DE user. I can't fill out your form since I don't have a google account (and don't want one), but I'll still try to provide some feedback and list some things that have occured to me that might make an ISO set more "streamlined". All of these are just based on my personal opionion and taste though of course.

• I could live without "third symbols" on caps entirely. E.g. "< >" would be fine instead of "< > |", "2 "" instead of "2 " ^2", "+ *" instead of "+ * ~" etc etc. This might make it possible to omit some keys or support more layouts.
• On a similar note, I don't need the extra symbols on alphas either. E.g. "Q @", "E €" or "M µ" are pretty unnecessary imo, they rather disturb the overall look. You could save a few keys there as well.
• An AltGr labeling might also be more of a "nice to have" that could be omitted to save cost. I personally wouldn't have much of a problem using a cap that just says Alt instead.

Again, that's just me though. Others might strongly disagree.
In general I gotta say that ISO-DE support is one of the major factors in a buying decision for me. I need to be able to type glorious words like Ölüberschussländer.

This is all good feedback for structuring NorDe kits.  I've been advising people who are considering NorDe to look at making their kits far more affordable by removing the tertiary legends (so as not to have three versions of the <> key, for instance).

However, that's not quite what the survey is about.  I'm mostly interested in whether a sort of partial layout support would be seen as useful or valuable to ISO DE users, and if so, which parts of the ISO DE layout they find most important.  Likewise for all the many other ISO layouts.

If most DE users would have it all correct or not at all, then my idea may be a fool's errand.  But if some legends that are somewhat incorrect are still seen as acceptable substitutes, at least when compared with the default US keys, then there might be a possibility of expanding compatibility for the most desired keys from ISO layouts.

The other project I'm working on, using the information I get from this, is to come up with new layouts (to be implemented in Windows and elsewhere) that hybridize the US layout with the most high-priority keys from the respective ISO layouts. 

For instance, the Spanish-speaking community has told me that its highest priority is getting Ñ on the board, even if the rest of the layout doesn't match.  So I currently have a draft of a layout that would work in either the ISO or ANSI form factor to make that happen with a minimum of new keys.  I'm working on something similar for German, but I'm not sure I can get it quite as minimal.

[glibber]

Hm I'm not sure if I can offer you any more potential to slim down a DE set than what I said previously. Ü,Ö,Ä,ß and swapping Y and Z are pretty much essential I'd say, having a numrow that is only partially labelled correctly would be terribly confusing, and ,.-#+ and such are probably necessary too - otherwise you don't really have an ISO kit but rather something more "freestyle" (which might be what you mean with a "Frankenstein" approach).

But as I said, if you don't add @,€ and µ, you already save three caps that can be taken from the standard ANSI kit. Another few with AltGr potentially. And without tertiary legends, you suddenly get many keys that are the same across several ISO kits that would have been different previously. E.g. the "+ *" key would be the same for Spanish and German, but would haven been different with a tertiary legend, so there might be some saving potential there.

I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for, but that's as partial as I'd go for a DE set. If you're talking about layouts as in keyboard sizes, you can of course try to offer targeted sets for 65/60/40% layouts, but I would assume that this would only make it harder to reach MOQ while only slimming the kit down by very few keys.
I mean you could of course try to do something like you mentioned for Spanish, and e.g. only change the alphas. I doubt that this would be very successful though, personally I'd find that odd to use, and would prefer something that is consistently labelled correctly, e.g. standard ANSI or ISO-UK.
If you're looking for something that also works on an ANSI layout, keep in mind that German has four additional letters (Ä,Ö,Ü,ß). The extra keys you get with ISO really help with that. I don't think either of them is more common or should be prioritized either. In that case it might be more practical to use a regular ANSI layout and put them on an Alt+Shift layer.

Once again, just my two cents, I don't think such a halfway solution would be for me. I might be overly stubborn with this.

[Surefoot]

For instance, the Spanish-speaking community has told me that its highest priority is getting Ñ on the board, even if the rest of the layout doesn't match.

Just a quick comment about this - while we do not really care about tertiary legends, we do pay a big extra to get the ISO intl support and that usually brings a keyset above or around $200, at least for GMK. Paying that much for keycaps, that becomes a high end luxury product (mind you paying above $50 for a keyboard is already a shock for many people). Not having the correct legends (e.g. 2@ instead of 2") is not acceptable at that price point, at least for keys that are used regularly - one exception i can think of is the `¬ key for ISO UK where the ¬ is kinda useless for most.

[salgiza]

For instance, the Spanish-speaking community has told me that its highest priority is getting Ñ on the board, even if the rest of the layout doesn't match.

Just a quick comment about this - while we do not really care about tertiary legends, we do pay a big extra to get the ISO intl support and that usually brings a keyset above or around $200, at least for GMK. Paying that much for keycaps, that becomes a high end luxury product (mind you paying above $50 for a keyboard is already a shock for many people). Not having the correct legends (e.g. 2@ instead of 2") is not acceptable at that price point, at least for keys that are used regularly - one exception i can think of is the `¬ key for ISO UK where the ¬ is kinda useless for most.

Yeah, 100% agree on that. As glibber, I don’t care about third symbols as well, and I guess that, for those that don’t speak Catalan or write in French, the “Ç” key is useless but, if I’m paying $200 for keycaps, I’d rather pay $220 and have the correct ones, than pay $190 and have incorrect ones. The annoying thing about these different layouts is that, actually, they could be much more similar (e.g. there is no actual purpose for parenthesis being on different numbers in different layouts). And why are Spanish ES/LA layouts so different?? Or the fact that ºª has their own key in Spanish (instead of being alt + o/a, which would be more logical) is something inherited from typewriters and a time when these characters were more widely used.

I already voted but, to try to give you a bit more insight into what I (a Spanish user) would accept in a Spanish ES keyboard (others can comment to see if this is just my opinion or they agree):

• Loosing third (alt) letters is fine. As a developer I’ll miss not seeing []{} in my keyboard, but I can live with that.
• That includes loosing the €, } symbols, in keys that don’t have a secondary (shift) label.
• I wouldn’t mind loosing the ºª keycap and using the ±§ (GB/PT) one instead. I would win two symbols that I have no idea how to type in a Spanish keyboard, and I don’t mind mapping ªº to alt+a/o (for those rare times when I might use them).

Other than that... mmm.. I’m not sure. The problem with most symbols is that I either use them so often that it would annoy me to no end to see them in different keycaps, or I don’t use them frequently, and it would confuse me to see them in different keycaps.

The irony here is that, for.. reasons, for a long time I used a UK keyboard mapped to a Spanish layout, and I was quite used to keycaps not matching the actual characters. But I guess that I’ve gotten lazy with the years... 

[glibber]

Definitely agree with both of you. At that price point the savings you might get aren't a very good trade off for an inaccurately labelled set.

The underlying problem are the ISO norms for sure. This would be much easier if they unified the numrows and the ,.+ etc keys, so only the alphas had to be changed according to a certain language.

[Findecanor]

The ErgoDox is not ortholinear like the Planck or Preonic.
Ortholinear means that there are straight lines orthogonal to each-other.

The correct term is "columnar".

[NoPunIn10Did]

The ErgoDox is not ortholinear like the Planck or Preonic.
Ortholinear means that there are straight lines orthogonal to each-other.

The correct term is "columnar".

Yes, I’m aware of that. I was hoping not too many people would split that hair, but because of how Google collects the answers it’s easier for me to leave as-is.