-Among layouts that DO have full sublegend support, there is no clear consensus regarding what type of dialytika should be used on specific labels. When speaking to multiple greek speakers and layout users the consensus was "just showing that there is a dialytika option is more than enough." Even in the layout you linked in this response they use ALL THREE dialytika on one key rather than keeping the original :; legend. Compromises need to be made here imo. I also received absolutely no complaints about the dialytika-tonos on ePBT Kavala's kit, nor any complaints from the greek speakers I asked for feedback from.
A few points:
- As far as I'm aware, no standard Greek layout used on modern systems has the particular tonos + dialytika-tonos (΄΅) combination that's being used here, in that particular position (on the ;: key). Here are some screenshots I took of the standard implementations on Windows and Ubuntu (I don't have a Mac to check, but it should be the same as far as that key goes).
- Dialytika, while itself being somewhat uncommon, is still a more commonly used diacritic in Greek than dialytika-tonos. The latter is quite rare, occurring only on vowels ι, υ that are both stressed and pronounced separately from surrounding vowels (similar to how ¨ is used in French). As you yourself have said, Greek users don't consider it to be essential. Therefore, the regular dialytika symbol should take priority over dialytika-tonos.
- You'll notice that in the layout I linked in my previous post (which fully matches the standard Greek layout on Windows), the dialytika-tonos is located in the tertiary (AltGr) position on the ;: key. Since this set mixes US primary legends with GR sublegends, only the primary (base) and secondary (shifted) layers of the GR layout are represented — the tertiary layer is not. Therefore, the dialytika-tonos should not be shown on the ;: key, similar to how ², ³, £ etc. are not present in the numrow subs.
(Side note: This is the same reason why we don't include the ruble symbol ₽ as a sublegend on the 8* key in US/RU keysets, or the shekel ₪, euro and double vowel symbols on keys in US/HE keysets.)
It's for these reasons that I think that using
΄΅ instead of
΄¨ is very unfounded. If indeed the feedback you've gotten from Greek users is that “just showing that there is a dialytika option is more than enough”, then obviously the right choice is to use the actual dialytika/diaeresis symbol instead of
΅, as that also matches the actual character mapping in most common implementations.
-The Q key is missing the tertiary legend for aesthetics, as none of the greek speakers I reached out to considered it to be essential.
-The W key is missing the tertiary legend for the exact same reason.
Your last two points are understandable. If it's for aesthetics' sake, I'm not going to try and argue with that because it's very subjective. While the visual inconsistency of one key having a quaternary sublegend while the other two don't is a bit disconcerting, I also understand that it results in a cleaner look, which some may prefer. It's up to the set's designer to decide what to do with those two keys, I'd say.
