Keyboard Layout Survey

[TomXP411]

On 5/3/2022 at 7:56 PM, Michael Steil said:

• The ROM bank is still only 2/3 full. Who can think of other useful layouts?
• Any comments on the order?
• The Japanese layout doesn't seem to be too useful, since the ISO-8859-15 encoding can't map any of the Kana characters, so it's very close to a US keyboard, no?

The two things I"d like to see are an easy way to select a specific layout (already there maybe?) and a Dvorak keyboard, for those people who swing that way. If for no other reason, than to say we support Dvorak .

 

Edited May 4 by TomXP411
Dvorak is a proper name, not an initialism or acronym

[Michael Steil]

On 5/4/2022 at 8:36 AM, TomXP411 said:

The two things I"d like to see are an easy way to select a specific layout (already there maybe?) and a DVORAK keyboard, for those people who swing that way. If for no other reason, than to say we support DVORAK.

To switch to US Dvorak:

KEYMAP"EN*US"

Details: https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-docs/blob/master/X16 Reference - 02 - Editor.md#Keyboard-Layouts

[Michael Steil]

Added a few more:

EN!US	United States - Colemak	-
NL-NL	Dutch	00000413
HR-HR	Croatian	0000041A
SK-SK	Slovak	0000041B
SQ-AL	Albanian	0000041C
SL-SI	Slovenian	00000424
LV-LV	Latvian	00000426
LT-LT	Lithuanian IBM	00000427

[TomXP411]

On 5/4/2022 at 12:15 AM, Michael Steil said:

To switch to US Dvorak:

KEYMAP"EN*US"

Details: https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-docs/blob/master/X16 Reference - 02 - Editor.md#Keyboard-Layouts

It took me a minute to see the difference between "EN-US" (QWERTY) and EN*US (Dvorak). That's Fantastic, thank you.

So the next obvious question: Do the low-level keyboard routines still return the same scancode for the same key position? 

1. For example, if I wrote a game that used WASD (on an EN-US keyboard) control and ran it on a keyboard with a French AZERTY keyboard, will the scan codes be returned for the ZQSD keys? 
2. How hard will it be to translate from a known scancode (say the W key, $1D) back to the key label for that layout (The Z key on AZERTY or ,/< on a Dvorak keyboard)?

I'm just thinking about games that use the keyboard for input, we'll want some way for game programmers to be able to show the correct key labels for their language, since some of these keyboard layouts can be pretty different. 

 

[Michael Steil]

On 5/4/2022 at 11:03 AM, TomXP411 said:

So the next obvious question: Do the low-level keyboard routines still return the same scancode for the same key position? 

1. For example, if I wrote a game that used WASD (on an EN-US keyboard) control and ran it on a keyboard with a French AZERTY keyboard, will the scan codes be returned for the ZQSD keys? 
2. How hard will it be to translate from a known scancode (say the W key, $1D) back to the key label for that layout (The Z key on AZERTY or ,/< on a Dvorak keyboard)?

I'm just thinking about games that use the keyboard for input, we'll want some way for game programmers to be able to show the correct key labels for their language, since some of these keyboard layouts can be pretty different. 

Yes, scancodes are pre-tables. If if you want to know the label on the key, you can use the documented scancode-to-PET/ISO tables that are guaranteed to be at 0:$A000. The the Programmer's Reference Guide for the layout of these tables as well as a BASIC example that accesses them.

[svenvandevelde]

On 5/4/2022 at 4:56 AM, Michael Steil said:

The ROM bank is still only 2/3 full. Who can think of other useful layouts?

Since you have 40C French included, instead of 80C Belgian French, as both are very similar, suggest you add 813 Belgian point, the "Flemish" azerty version. You would do 5 million people a favour. 

What about Russian (Not kidding), Chinese, Romanian, ...

Another 1.5 billion...

 

 

[svenvandevelde]

On 5/4/2022 at 3:50 PM, svenvandevelde said:

Since you have 40C French included, instead of 80C Belgian French, as both are very similar, suggest you add 813 Belgian point, the "Flemish" azerty version. You would do 5 million people a favour. 

What about Russian (Not kidding), Chinese, Romanian, ...

Another 1.5 billion...

 

 

Please consider this additional info ...

http://www.kbdlayout.info/KBDBE/

[BruceMcF]

On 5/4/2022 at 9:50 AM, svenvandevelde said:

Since you have 40C French included, instead of 80C Belgian French, as both are very similar, suggest you add 813 Belgian point, the "Flemish" azerty version. You would do 5 million people a favour. 

What about Russian (Not kidding), Chinese, Romanian, ...

Another 1.5 billion...

For the majority of that 1.5b, the mainland Chinese layout is EN-US. The translation of keystrokes into Hanzi is on the computer system side, not on the keyboard side.

It would always hit me on classroom display computers in Beijing if I forgot to change WIndows7 from Chinese language input to English language input. But I never had to worry about typing on a keyboard I was not used to.

For adding a big chunk of a billion people, 00004009, en-IN, might be good.

[Ed_]

1009 Canadian French

[svenvandevelde]

On 5/5/2022 at 5:30 PM, Ed_ said:

1009 Canadian French

Touché!

Edited May 5 by svenvandevelde

[Edmond D]

On 5/5/2022 at 8:34 AM, svenvandevelde said:

Touché!

Rarely heard in my experience with speaking Quebecois. I've heard other "choice" words, none of them should be said in public, plus my horrible spelling (any language) would prevent me from writing them here.

 

[svenvandevelde]

On 5/5/2022 at 6:05 PM, Edmond D said:

Rarely heard in my experience with speaking Quebecois. I've heard other "choice" words, none of them should be said in public, plus my horrible spelling (any language) would prevent me from writing them here.

 

There are obscure dialects in domestic Wallon regions which probably would increase the likelihood of fluent communication between Belgians and Quebecians

[Edmond D]

On 5/5/2022 at 10:18 AM, svenvandevelde said:

There are obscure dialects in domestic Wallon regions which probably would increase the likelihood of fluent communication between Belgians and Quebecians

I found that Belgians appreciated my attempts to communicate; Parisians wanted to communicate a few choice words AT me.

Anyway, I think having multiple language for keyboard layouts is going to help the X16. 

Perhaps someone has a list of how many different languages the C64 or Atari had back in the day.

 

[XTronical]

809 United Kingdom 

[BruceMcF]

On 5/3/2022 at 10:56 PM, Michael Steil said:

• The Japanese layout doesn't seem to be too useful, since the ISO-8859-15 encoding can't map any of the Kana characters, so it's very close to a US keyboard, no?

If Japanese speaking people want to get the Japanese 80s retro experience, that would be JIS X 0201, which combines a slightly modified 7bit ASCII with 64 half width Katakana characters in the upper half of the character set, and the Japanese keyboard layout would work with that just fine.

Going from that to JIS X 0208, which includes over 6,300 Kanji characters, would be a bit more of a challenge (to put it mildly).

[mobluse]

PS/2 keyboards:
0000041D Swedish *3 (I would prefer 0000083B Swedish with Sami to the degree that can be implemented with ISO8859-15 characters.)
00000409 US *2 (I would prefer EurKEY, but US International with AltGr dead keys is OK.)

Below keyboards work only in emulators, unless an adapter works:

USB keyboards:
00000809 United Kingdom (I would like a layout similar to EurKEY.)
00000406 Danish

Bluetooth keyboard:
Nordic layout i.e. these on top of each other, but with different colors where there is conflict:
00000414 Norwegian (I think the Norwegian layout is best among the Nordic since it has | and \ easily accessible.)
00000406 Danish
0000041D Swedish
0000040B Finnish (Same as Swedish.)

I have another bluetooth keyboard:
00000409 US, but with Å Ä Ö also printed on [ ' ; and that is supported in Linux ("Swedish - Swedish (US, with Swedish letters)").

I have laptops with Nordic layout; also for emulator use.

Edited May 7 by mobluse
US International with AltGr dead keys is OK, but not US International with dead keys

[Cyber]

On 5/4/2022 at 5:56 AM, Michael Steil said:

Thanks for all your input. Together with data I have from 2019, I have compiled the following list, in the order that F9 will cycle through them:

00020409 United States-International
00000809 United Kingdom
0000041D Swedish
00000407 German
00000406 Danish
00000410 Italian
00000415 Polish (Programmers)
00000414 Norwegian
0000040E Hungarian
0000040A Spanish
0000040B Finnish
00000416 Portuguese (Brazil ABNT)
00000405 Czech
00000411 Japanese
0000040C French
00000807 Swiss German
00010409 United States-Dvorak
00000425 Estonian
0000080C Belgian French
00001009 Canadian French
0000040F Icelandic
00000816 Portuguese
0000080A Latin American

• The ROM bank is still only 2/3 full. Who can think of other useful layouts?
• Any comments on the order?
• The Japanese layout doesn't seem to be too useful, since the ISO-8859-15 encoding can't map any of the Kana characters, so it's very close to a US keyboard, no?

What about cyrillic (russian, ukrainian, etc.)?

[Michael Steil]

On 5/7/2022 at 10:48 AM, Cyber said:

What about cyrillic (russian, ukrainian, etc.)?

The built-in character sets don't have Cyrillic glyphs, so supporting a Cyrillic keyboard layout wouldn't do much. Since keyboard layout files can be loaded from disk as well, and so can character sets, an application can be all Cyrillic quite easily!

[mobluse]

I believe most of those that use US International use the version with AltGr dead keys. The standard US International with dead keys affects the normal use of ` ~ ^ ' ", which is bad for programming e.g. C-like programming languages and Forth. Now X16 has US International with dead keys. If you want to type " now you have to type " and space.

[TomXP411]

On 5/7/2022 at 9:22 AM, mobluse said:

I believe most of those that use US International use the version with AltGr dead keys. The standard US International with dead keys affects the normal use of ` ~ ^ ' ", which is bad for programming e.g. C-like programming languages and Forth. Now X16 has US International with dead keys. If you want to type " now you have to type " and space.

It shouldn't be an issue if you're using PETSCII mode, since PETSCII mode doesn't use the dead keys or have diacritical marks.

I figure every programmer in the world who's not in the US deals with this every day. How do our friends in other countries deal with this? 

In my case, I have two layouts set up in Windows, and I can switch to the US-International layout when I need to work on non-English forms. I can just press Control-Alt-1 or Control-Alt-2 to quickly switch layouts on my work PC. (If I need to do something in another alphabet entirely, then I will copy and paste from a PDF.)

Either way - as you pointed out, getting the actual punctuation out of a "dead" key is just a matter of pressing that key twice, or pressing the space bar next. 

[mobluse]

On 5/9/2022 at 8:20 PM, TomXP411 said:

It shouldn't be an issue if you're using PETSCII mode, since PETSCII mode doesn't use the dead keys or have diacritical marks.

I figure every programmer in the world who's not in the US deals with this every day. How do our friends in other countries deal with this? 

In my case, I have two layouts set up in Windows, and I can switch to the US-International layout when I need to work on non-English forms. I can just press Control-Alt-1 or Control-Alt-2 to quickly switch layouts on my work PC. (If I need to do something in another alphabet entirely, then I will copy and paste from a PDF.)

Either way - as you pointed out, getting the actual punctuation out of a "dead" key is just a matter of pressing that key twice, or pressing the space bar next. 

I guess most people in other countries have a keyboard suited to their language, but programmers often use US keyboard since it has faster access to keys common to programming languages. I think X16 would get critical reviews in the USA if the only US like layouts are US International and Polish Programmers, where Polish Programmers is the best since it only has one dead key: ~. I'm Swedish and used US International in Windows for years since 1994 when I could (i.e. on non laptops and I brought my own keyboard to work), but I think United States (International) with AltGr dead keys is better and it also doesn't irritate native US keyboard users since the dead keys require Alt Gr. In Linux you start this with: setxkbmap us altgr-intl.
It's not built in to Windows, but e.g. this exists: https://github.com/thomasfaingnaert/win-us-intl-altgr

Now I mostly use UK keyboard in Linux with the layout setxkbmap gb which works rather well also for Swedish and many other languages since it is already international. For US keyboard I prefer EurKEY: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/

That the PETSCII mode has no dead keys is good, but e.g. Forth uses most ASCII characters that are not in PETSCII, and e.g. a light-weight PHP or Python (e.g. Snek) might be ported to X16 and that might need ISO8859-15

[TomXP411]

On 5/9/2022 at 5:05 PM, mobluse said:

That the PETSCII mode has no dead keys is good, but e.g. Forth uses most ASCII characters that are not in PETSCII, and e.g. a light-weight PHP or Python (e.g. Snek) might be ported to X16 and that might need ISO8859-15

Well, I'm just going to point out that they have the same dead keys already on their Windows, Macs, and Linux machines... so it should be no different on the CX16. 

I actually really appreciate that there will be an ASCII mode at all.  The fact that it also incorporates international character sets is a nice bonus.

 

[BruceMcF]

On 5/10/2022 at 12:19 AM, TomXP411 said:

Well, I'm just going to point out that they have the same dead keys already on their Windows, Macs, and Linux machines... so it should be no different on the CX16.

Let me try it and see. '"~^ nope, all four live keys. They would be dead keys if I changed to an English International keyboard, but I would do that in a context where I wanted to use (at least some of) those characters as accent keys, such as typing pinyin pronounciation of Chinese words with the proper tone mark.

[TomXP411]

On 5/10/2022 at 2:42 PM, BruceMcF said:

Let me try it and see. '"~^ nope, all four live keys. They would be dead keys if I changed to an English International keyboard, but I would do that in a context where I wanted to use (at least some of) those characters as accent keys, such as typing pinyin pronounciation of Chinese words with the proper tone mark.

Nobody was discussing the US English layout. This entire thread is about international layouts, and all of them, that I'm aware of, have dead keys. 

 

[svenvandevelde]

There is only one master keyboard layout for the cx16, would you agree? (just teasing a little).

That being said, on this keyboard is a 40/80 button which does not seem to work properly. Not sure if this button was meant to switch between 40 and 80 columns automatically?

Edited May 11 by svenvandevelde