Talk:OLPC Keyboard layouts

..uh, you guys are gonna teach 100 mill kids how to break 1 bill fingers on q|awerty|z layouts???

..what's wrong with Dvorak layout's? (Other than these kids typing 40% quicker than you?)

== grab key? ==

To me, it looks like a stop key. That is what a hand in that position represents. Anyway... what does it do?

• It would look a lot more like a grab key if the thumb were on the left. Granted, that's a right-hander's view.

The is, according to the HIG, is for panning/scrolling.... --Xavi 14:06, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

The QWERTY phenomenon

It is interesting to note that although one of the three (3) parables Seymour has picked talks about the QWERTY as a phenomenon, the keyboard layout chosen for the XO is that very layout.

Seymour, are you all talk? Why do you make such a number of the QWERTY layout, if you are not willing to back that opinion by enforcing a different layout (e.g. the Dvorak) on the XO?

What kind of a learning tool are we making, if we are forcing children in emerging countries to learn to type on an archaic layout made for inefficiency? Shouldn't we be empowering the children, encouraging them to break the world record for type writing instead of crippling them with the XO's keyboard?

What kind of a message are we sending out the XO? That we are all for efficiency in power consumption and economics, but not user interface?

What kind of a message are we sending about staying true to our stated goals, our mission, our publicly expressed views about better education, if we are not willing to change the layout of the keyboards, when we already concede that the QWERTY layout is inferior (although the Wikipedia article on Dvorak does leave some room for debate on the superiority department)?

For some reason I found very little discussion on this. I think the external user interface is as important as the internal especially as one key tool for learning is writing. We should not hamper that with a design decision that cannot be thoroughly backed.

I hope it is not too late for this discussion. I'm sure it shouldn't be, since we're talking about another different layout for the keyboard, which already has a number of different layout options. Also since we're designing both the hardware and the software, the software can be made Dvorak (or other superior-to-QWERTY-layout) aware from the start and thus avoid some of the problems stated in the Wikipedia article on Dvorak.

More on this at the Keyboard design topic. The worst part of the deal is the usage of the same slanted-column layout they had to apply back in the old days because of limitations of the early typewriters. IMHO it would take little effort to make it slanted in a way to possess mirrored symmetry (or at least to have a plain matrix). -- bkil 20:51, 14 April 2007 (EDT)

A need for 6 international chacacters ĉĝĥĵŝŭ

Looking at some of the keyboad layouts, I must say I'm rather disappointed not to see c-circumflex g-circumflex h-circumflex j-circumflex s-circumflex u-breve on them all as standard. To my mind these six (which are from the Unesco-resolutioned Esperanto) are as fundamental as the 26 letters of the English alphabet. If the EU could save up to 25 billion euros a year by using Esperanto, if the Grin report is right, then think how important these letters could be for the keyboards of developing nations. AltGr-U and AltGr-^ would make sense, or at least please support the ISO 9995 hotkeys (circumflex and breve included). -- Irvdel 2007-07-13

Don't be disappointed: the Unicode combining characters for circumflex and breve are on all of the keyboards. If one prefers deadkeys, they can be remapped. --Walter 17:43, 13 July 2007 (EDT)

Could you add one more key to the EN-US layout (for next gen)? The Hawaiian letter `okina is not quite a grave -- it's a reversed apostrophe. It's treated as a letter, not an accent (i.e.: not dead and not a combining glyph). (For those who want to know, the Hawaiian alphabet consists of the latin characters AEHIKLMNOPUW, the `okina and the vowels can take a macron.) -- dave wallace 2007.12.14

You don't have to wait for us to redesign the keyboard: you can reassign a key in the xkb symbol table. Not sure where (what key position) you'd like to assign the okina to, but I'd be happy to walk you through the process. (The relevant file is /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us and the relevant place in the file to look is the xkb_symbols "olpc" section, near the end of the file. --Walter 14:24, 14 December 2007 (EST)

Thanks; that's probably going to be my first hack when my g1g1 machine arrives. -- dave wallace 2007.12.14 19:48UT

The ʻokina is in Unicode position U+02BB. I've chosen to use AltGr+K as the key assigned to the purpose. So the mod to .../symbols/us is to change the definition for key <AC08> to be " key <AC08> { [ k, K, 0x02BB, 0x02BB ] };", I presume. But will the glyph get displayed if that's all I do, or is there more hacking needed? -- Dave Wallace 2007.12.17 15:15UT

Should just work, as long as the font has the glyth. I'll try it on this end too. --Walter 13:01, 17 December 2007 (EST)

Tried it and it worked fine. Enjoy. --Walter 00:06, 18 December 2007 (EST)

Note that the proper syntax is "key <AC08> { [ k, K, 0x10002BB, 0x10002BB ] };"

Thanks for the correction and confirmation that it will work. -- Dave Wallace 2007.12.18 14:52UT

My G1G1 machine arrived two weeks ago. I tried editing the file using vi(m), but the XO doesn't want to display the turned comma glyph and the cursor doesn't advance. Do I need to do something beyond just editing the "us" file?

Can you email or post your edited file so I can take a look? --Walter 12:46, 2 January 2008 (EST)

It is at "http://www.wa1gsf.net/downloads/XO/us" -- davewa 2008.01.02 18:16 UT

Hmmm. Looks correct. Can you type any of the other AltGr keys, such as AltGR-J to get a Euro sign? Are you trying this in the Write activity? What font do you have selected? --Walter 13:51, 2 January 2008 (EST)

Other alt-gr keys work properly. Yes, in Write. Using "DejaVu Serif" font. -- davewa 2008.01.02 19:00 UT

One more thing: did you restart X? The changes don't take place until you restart (Ctrl-Alt-Erase). --Walter 14:13, 2 January 2008 (EST)

I've both restarted X, done a reboot and even done a shutdown-restart. No joy. -- davewa 2008.01.02 19:21 UT

The only things I can think of are: (a) the file is not actually changed in disk—please confirm the changes are in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us and (b) somehow you are not using the OLPC settings—please confirm that /etc/sysconfig/keyboard has the following :

XKB_MODEL="olpc"
XKB_LAYOUT="us"
XKB_VARIANT="olpc"
KEYTABLE="us"

Yes and yes (though the order in my keytable file is different: KEYTABLE is first, followed by XKB_MODEL, XKB_LAYOUT and finally XKB_VARIANT). -- davewa 2008.01.02 20:18 UT

You could try running xkbcomp manually to see if it's complaining for something:

setxkbmap -v
setxkbmap -print
setxkbmap -print | xkbcomp -

A few warnings are normal. Also try:

setxkbmap -model olpc -layout us -variant olpc

-- User:Bernie

Volume Control

Can someone explain the reasoning of the top right bar, which on the B4 controls volume? Why does have four symbols? Of which the left two look like brightness commands, the right two symbols appear to be volume, yet the whole thing is volume control. The sun symbols are in fact almost identical to the brightness buttons on Macbook Pro's. Its very confusing and somewhat ridiculous.

The brightness controls control brightness; the volume controls control volume. Not sure what is ridiculous about that. --Walter 15:33, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

The controls don't work properly until you have a late enough software release (Build XXX). The older builds use a different keyboard layout that worked on the B2's. --gnu

Layout

Ctrl being on the same line as ASDF is sooo archaic (Sun4/Sun5 keyboards). Also, Œ should be on O, much like Æ is on A, so that € can be on E instead. Spacebar could be narrower. (Sony Vaio PCG-U3's spacebar only spans VBN keys, for example)

Well, something needs to go there, and caps lock does not deserve such prime real estate. Typewriters used to put the tab key there. Of course, then there would be two tab keys or an empty spot. 24.110.145.202 21:27, 14 December 2007 (EST)