New keyboard layouts

[Paul Fox]

noiseehc wrote:
 > Could you just put UP to the place of ?, put ? to the place of RIGHT, 
 > and put RIGHT to the place of UP?
 > I am not THAT old to understand what is so cool about that "hjkl vi 
 > arrangement" and I guess no children will either.
 > I feel that moving just one more key from its 101 key standard position 
 > cannot suck more that the current arrow key arrangement...

please don't misunderstand -- the intention of the arrow key arrangement
never had the goal of recreating hjkl.  if that had been the goal, we
could have put the arrows _on_ h, j, k, and l, and used the Fn key to
produce them, which is how those vi commands came about in the first
place:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg
obviously, compatibility with a 35 year old terminal is uninteresting.

the real goal was to not misplace the ? key.  

paul

 > 
 > 
 > Walter Bender wrote:
 > > On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Tiago Marques <tiagomnm at gmail.com> wrote:
 > >   
 > >> I was just looking at the layout again and just noticed the new arrow keys
 > >> placement. That is a very awkward placement. Is that definitive or can you
 > >> do something like shorten the shift key to accommodate the UP arrow?
 > >> I suppose that would be another hard sell for deployments against netbooks
 > >> with the regular placement of keys.
 > >> Best regads,
 > >> Tiago
 > >>     
 > >
 > > We debated this one. A shorter shift key would be difficult to type
 > > on. We opted to emulate the hjkl vi arrangement.
 > >
 > > -walter
 > >
 > >   
 > >> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Tiago Marques <tiagomnm at gmail.com> wrote:
 > >>     
 > >>> I must ask, what's the default behavior of function keys in the new
 > >>> layout? Fn changes them to F keys, or are they F keys without Fn pressed?
 > >>> Tiago
 > >>>
 > >>> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Mikus Grinbergs <mikus at bga.com> wrote:
 > >>>       
 > >>>>> The following are the keyboard layouts and legends for these
 > >>>>> new keyboards.   Much thanks to Walter Bender for developing
 > >>>>> these given a bad set of constraints.
 > >>>>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_English_Non-membrane_Keyboard
 > >>>>>           
 > >>>> There may be users who wish to plug in an external keyboard.  Such
 > >>>> external keyboards often have function keys grouped in sets of four.
 > >>>> Such grouping places F5 at the beginning of a row of four keys, and
 > >>>> places F6 in the middle of a row of four keys.
 > >>>>
 > >>>> Suppose users might be pressing the key for 'frame' more often than the
 > >>>> key for 'search'.  Should the 'frame' function be assigned to the F5
 > >>>> key, since on external keyboards the F5 key might be easier to locate ?
 > >>>>
 > >>>> mikus
 > >>>>
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 > >>>>         
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 > >>     
 > >
 > >
 > >
 > >   
 > 
 > part 2     text/plain                 129
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=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org