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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: nads93uk on Thu, 25 February 2010, 17:06:54

Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: nads93uk on Thu, 25 February 2010, 17:06:54: I have many cheap keyboards from a mystical place in the South of Asia known as Bangladesh. The keyboards seem to be quite confusing. I plug some into my Mac and its picked up as JIS, i plug others into a Mac and they're picked up as ANSI.

Here is what the right side looks like:

(http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/9299/picture1cn.png)

Has anyone seen these? Can anyone identify? I am simply curious.
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Thu, 25 February 2010, 17:45:47: layout looks like any regular big-L ansi keyboard
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: spolia optima on Thu, 25 February 2010, 21:10:51: ansi = wha wha i'm a big logical baby

what kind of keybaord is that btw?
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: nads93uk on Fri, 26 February 2010, 02:01:48: Quote from: spolia optima;160774
ansi = wha wha i'm a big logical baby

what kind of keybaord is that btw?

It's a Bengali Keyboard with the obsolete Bijoy layout, not that its needed anyway, these days everyone uses an IME

Quote from: ripster;160787
I like the key lettering.

I forsee good Karma for using that keyboard.
Show Image
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=8113&stc=1&d=1267161968)

LOL, well Bengali did start off as a language for the Buddhists, so I s'pose so.

Strangely, most of these are picked up as JIS after my leopard updated to 10.5.8. How come the backspace is so small and I have an extra key?
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: ch_123 on Fri, 26 February 2010, 04:03:02: Once upon a time, IBM made this keyboard -

(http://www.clickykeyboard.com/2009/nov21/009.jpg)

Some Asian manufacturers still think it's 1984 to this day...

Specifically, it's to do with them being cheapskates and wanting one layout that's suitable for all countries. The big L enter is basically an ANSI and ISO enter combined. If you want to make a keyboard for Britain or Germany or the like, you just need to add an additional button between left shift and Z, whereas on a regular layout, you have to play around alot to shift the keys to different locations.
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: quadibloc on Fri, 26 February 2010, 13:58:03: Quote from: nads93uk;160798
It's a Bengali Keyboard with the obsolete Bijoy layout, not that its needed anyway, these days everyone uses an IME
...why would anyone use an Input Method Editor unless they absolutely had to (i.e. they're typing in Chinese or Japanese), given that an IME requires you to pick choices from the screen as opposed to just typing what you want to type directly?

It may be that there are enough characters, and the way the vowels are applied, in Bengali is complicated and not an ideal fit to the 48 or 49 keys used for typing on the normal computer keyboard, but dead keys and some statefulness rather than a full IME should be adequate...
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: nads93uk on Sat, 27 February 2010, 09:35:48: Quote from: quadibloc;160951
...why would anyone use an Input Method Editor unless they absolutely had to (i.e. they're typing in Chinese or Japanese), given that an IME requires you to pick choices from the screen as opposed to just typing what you want to type directly?

It may be that there are enough characters, and the way the vowels are applied, in Bengali is complicated and not an ideal fit to the 48 or 49 keys used for typing on the normal computer keyboard, but dead keys and some statefulness rather than a full IME should be adequate...

Theres about 46 consonants in total and about 20 punctuation marks, writing Bengali is very difficult let alone typing.

For Example:

Im going to try use letter for letter, just to show order.
Amar Nam Nadiim= A-MA-R NA-M NA-DII-M

but when doing the E sound (e in best) it is written like this:

Kemon acho= EK-MON A-CHO <---See how the E sounds comes before the K

Pochondo Koren= PO-CHO-NDO KO-ER-N <--- You get it?

And there are LOADS of exceptions, so yeah, an IME is ideal
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: Computer-Lab in Basement on Sat, 27 February 2010, 11:32:19: My Chicony keyboard has the L shaped enter key and the small backspace key. It is a pretty standard layout, just less common.
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: kishy on Sat, 27 February 2010, 12:30:49: Can't forget about this guy...

(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=8132&stc=1&d=1267295434)
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: quadibloc on Sat, 27 February 2010, 13:31:02: Quote from: Computer-Lab in Basement;161138
It is a pretty standard layout, just less common.
It was a very common layout at one time; in the early days of 101-key keyboards, except for the Model M itself, about the only company that made the other layout, the same one as IBM had, was Keytronics.

However, that just makes it a pretty common layout; it is still not standard at all. The keyboard IBM made was the standard for the IBM PC, and other manufacturers simply had the choice of being compliant with the 101-key standard, or being non-compliant, by making a keyboard similar to the 101-key keyboard, but with the main typing area modelled after the 84-key standard keyboard.

Standard, of course, isn't always good. Thus, Keytronics made a nice nonstandard keyboard with 10 function keys that was roughly similar to the 101-key keyboard before IBM had the idea.
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: phoenix on Sat, 27 February 2010, 21:44:59: While we are on this topic, what about this one?

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1285

It has a big L, backspace seems to be in the wrong place, and there's an additional key to the right of the right shift.
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: Specter_57 on Sat, 27 February 2010, 21:57:28: ..

In reference to post #6, still think it's 1984..... that keyboard in the pic..ha ha...some might have the idea that those two "cranks" on either side of the board are to wind it up, much like a mechanical alarm clock.

Don't know why that idea came to me...just did.

Oh well.

.....
Spec57
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: quadibloc on Sun, 28 February 2010, 07:07:17: Quote from: phoenix;161222
While we are on this topic, what about this one? It has a big L, backspace seems to be in the wrong place, and there's an additional key to the right of the right shift.
There are keyboards with the big L Enter, and with the |\ key on the right of the right shift.

I like that layout, because it could be considered an improvement on the standard. Layout number 4 in this diagram:

(http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/images/rightarr.gif)

But I've never seen a keyboard like that which also included an extra key to the right of the backspace by shortening the backspace from double-width to single-width. I think this is just the result of the artist not being worried about matching a real keyboard layout exactly.

There are real keyboards where backspace is replaced by "cursor left" and then the "cursor right" key is put on the right of the backspace, though. The keyboard of the IBM 5100 is an example of that.

(http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/images/5100e.gif)

Somehow, though, I don't think the cartoonist went that far back for inspiration.
Title: What Standard does this layout fall under?
Post by: fastbuck on Sun, 28 February 2010, 07:20:05: I'm now using keyboards with layout 2 from that diagram, which is on Chicony KB-5181 and KB-5191. Hitting backspace is a stretch with standard QWERTY, but I use COLEMAK that changes CAPS LOCK to Backspace, and makes this layout perfectly usable!