AltGr layer for diacritics

[NickG13]

I was talking with Lobo-Feroz and it emerged an idea which I applied to my personal layout: using third layer of certain letters as an alternative for less frequent (but related) characters.

For example, I've put:

• In the U key, the third layer could be ü
• In the N key, the third layer could be ñ
• In the C key, the third layer could be ç

[Lobo-Feroz]

I think this is an awesome idea just for the ü.

This makes much more sense than having a special diacritic key just for this symbol, since the diaeresis is not used in any other circumstance.

I'd keep ( ´ + n = ñ ) just because I think it's easier to type, but we can have both versions.

[iandoug]

That is the approach I took to the trial layouts I made.

I think the previous suggestion was to put the magic diacritic key (MDK) on the AltGr layer.
But then every diacritic letter requires three keys:
AltGr + MDK + letter
as opposed to, for example, putting it on the letter's AltGr layer, for example
AltGr + letter.

For Spanish, this works fine, except for the rare ü, which we put on the next closest letter instead, since u already has ú.

I did try some experiments replacing k and w with ó but you immediately run into SFB problems, from mixing vowels and consonents.

So Qwerty:

Early version Poqdea on ANSI (can optimise further)

If we don't need the diacritic diaeresis then we can remove it and use ASCII " as combining character to make French letters. Same with acute accent.

[binarybottle]

Next nearest key to "u" is a good idea for ü, or in case new layouts arise, choosing a mnemonic key, such as : or "with two components.

How exactly are you proposing we make French letters? It would be nice to be able to construct any letter with an acute or grave accent, or circumflex, or umlaut.

[iandoug]

I'm on Linux not Mac, we have the Compose Key function which can do all sorts of magic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key

There are software solutions for Win and Mac (Karabiner)

For example, Compose + letter + ' gives acute version ... é á í ĺ ś (assuming it is defined in config file)
Compose + letter + " gives ë ä ü ÿ etc
Compose + letter + ` gives è à ì ò
Compose + letter + ^ gives ê â î û etc ...
or ç or ñ or ł or Ł or £ or ° or ∞ or π or φ or even ☭ if needed :-) (that's Compose + CCCP)

Usually config file defines both letter + modifier and modifier + letter, so you could go Compose + ' + a instead to get á

French + Spanish + German quickly use up all AltGr spots. The Compose key is elegant solution (same config file also defines any Dead Key patterns) and is much superior to Windows "just memorise this list of numbers to type special characters" method.

[iandoug]

How exactly are you proposing we make French letters?

I think there is a reason why French have their own layouts ... The Germans tried to cover multiple languages and it quickly becomes difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTZ#/media/File:German-Keyboard-Layout-T2-Version1-large.png

Their red X functions as a Compose key.

[binarybottle]

How exactly are you proposing we make French letters?

I think there is a reason why French have their own layouts ... The Germans tried to cover multiple languages and it quickly becomes difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTZ#/media/File:German-Keyboard-Layout-T2-Version1-large.png

Their red X functions as a Compose key.

What a mess!

[binarybottle]

I'm on Linux not Mac, we have the Compose Key function which can do all sorts of magic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key

There are software solutions for Win and Mac (Karabiner)

For example, Compose + letter + ' gives acute version ... é á í ĺ ś (assuming it is defined in config file)
Compose + letter + " gives ë ä ü ÿ etc
Compose + letter + ` gives è à ì ò
Compose + letter + ^ gives ê â î û etc ...
or ç or ñ or ł or Ł or £ or ° or ∞ or π or φ or even ☭ if needed :-) (that's Compose + CCCP)

Thank you -- I love that last one! So these can be typed sequentially?

[binarybottle]

I re-read all the comments and suggestions from @iandoug, @Lobo-Feroz, and @NickG13 (thank you, team!) and came up with the following. I don't know what's practical with respect to using a compose key across platforms, so I incorporated the accent / AltGr layers for diacriticals. Please tell me what you think.

[Lobo-Feroz]

OK I must stand corrected.

I made the typefu of this version and tested it. Layout file and screenshot:

Engram-ES - V0 - 20210822.tfl.zip

The big problem: the current diacritic key in center right column, upper row is very uncomfortable. I have tested it and in a staggered keyboard moving the right index finger from its home position (qwerty J, engram-es T) to the diacritics position (qwerty Y), is a very hard movement, I can't accomplish it with my finger alone, I need to move my whole hand (and I have relatively big hands).

It's for sure not a movement I want to make several times per sentence, since there are usually accented vowels every few words.

Heck, it's even harder than doing it in the current qwerty-es, since the current accent key is one key to the left of the right pinky (where the K is here in engram-es), and I can hit it moving just my pinky one step to the right.

I can't seem to make a list of words or sentences with tildes on type-fu (it doesn't seem to recognize them as valid), if I manage to make it I'll upload it here.

Note: conversely, moving the left index to the center bottom row (qwerty B) is harder due to the staggering. But we don't use ¿¡ that much: at most, once per exclamation sentence. Qwerty T and N, which would be engram-es -_ and ?! , are easier, again due to the staggering. Of course in ortholinears this would be different. The main problem is with the ´ in the Y key, which would be an uncomfortable movement, and used a lot.

[binarybottle]

. For french it might be more problematic. At this moment I don't know any french-speaking person that could enlighten us.

https://github.com/phques
May be able to help if I could figure out how to mail him ...
Let's try this: @phques

I work with a group in Paris, so I can reach out to them.

[phques]

Hi, what would you like to know?

[iandoug]

Hi, what would you like to know?

Thanks :-)
See #28 (reply in thread)
This is layout for Spanish, but they're trying to accommodate French diacritics as well.. and are looking for suitable inputs :-)

[phques]

One thing with the diacritics key in the place of qwerty's "Y" is that the combo AltGr+Y is not easy on the fingers. Try it in your keyboard. You have to tuck the thumb under your palm then stretch the index to reach the Y key. It's a very weird position. For spanish it's not a big deal since we dont use those two diacritics ´ ^. For french it might be more problematic. At this moment I don't know any french-speaking person that could enlighten us.

You can have a look here for a letter frequency chart on Wikipedia, the corpus is the French Wikipedia (2008).
(the ones in green are NOT valid French, ignore them)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9quence_d%27apparition_des_lettres_en_fran%C3%A7ais
'é' is very common, the Canadian French layout has a key assigned for it.
'à' is the word "at" .. so pretty common too ;-)
The MacOS Canadian French layout has an interesting way of handling this : ùàèéç all have an assigned key and have other characters on Alt-Gr (Option). Of course this is only makes sense if you're creating a French layout !!
Personally, when using my own (English) layouts, I found that trying to have support for French was never satisfactory and I end up just switching to Canadian French to write in French.

[binarybottle]

Thank you for your prompt feedback, @Lobo-Feroz! Please tell me what you think about the following:

[iandoug]

Attached
json.zip
img.zip

[binarybottle]

Trying to understand why you ignore DE, DO, AD, or alternatively, why appearance in bigram is more important than appearance alone...

If you read the documentation in the Jupyter notebook (or in the README, but this needs to be updated), you will see that all letter pairs are accounted for -- I don't mention the D+vowels because they are on opposite hands. Letters are accounted for in order of decreasing frequency.

[binarybottle]

Attached
json.zip
img.zip

These look great! Can't wait till they are complete!

[Lobo-Feroz]

Type-fu 5.3.2 supports correctly the diacritics in the dead key (thanks to the author Jarek Foksa for releasing this fix).

(If it doesn't update you need to "relaunch" the app from the main url type-fu.com)

I've created a words dictionary with the 10K most common words in spanish based on @iandoug 's "goodwords" file. It needs some cleanup for duplicates but for the purposes of testing the keyboard it works perfectly fine:

Spanish words - 10K - 20210824.tfd.zip

With both the layout and this sample text file anyone who wants to test engram-es can do it via this website. Now moving on to the windows layout...

[Lobo-Feroz]

There are at least 3 styles
I have an ANSI cheap keyboard that looks like the ISO105, except key next to Z is removed and replaced with large shift.

Thanks for the reference @iandoug. I'll be setting up the windows layout next, I don't know how complex would it be to make a slightly different layout for ANSI/ISO or if possible at all, so I'll focus on creating the current one that has the asterisk on the ISO key, for starters.

(I'm still curious about this, so I'll try to look it up and make another thread for this ANSI/ISO issue, but I really want to have a working engram-es keyboard ASAP)

[binarybottle]

@iandoug, @Lobo-Feroz, @NickG13 -- I put the latest layout in the README as a placemarker until we finalize our diacritical strategy: https://github.com/binarybottle/engram-es/blob/master/README.md

[Lobo-Feroz]

Thanks for the mentions Arno ! I think this version is good enough to make public and see if other people can give more usage feedback. I'm having a go at type-fu now but next thing I want to do is the windows layout.

A copypaste thingy: "AltGr + 6 = » (open quote/comillas)" should read "close quote"

[binarybottle]

Thank you -- fixing now!

[iandoug]

☆ + Shift + [letter] = [letter] with a diaresis/umlaut: ü
☆ + AltGr + [letter] = [letter] with a grave accent: è
☆ + Shift + AltGr + [letter] = [letter] with a circumflex: â

Um, how do you do the Capital versions?

Mockup attached. I added single and double typographic quotes, ordinal indicators, and Not sign.

Have not attempted to add the diacriticed versions.

engram.es.ansi.json.txt

[Lobo-Feroz]

Um, how do you do the Capital versions?

It's a dead key, so two strokes. Capital character is shift in the second stroke.

Note however, as I've said in a previous comment, that this seems very uncomfortable for the AltGr diacritics è and ê. Spanish does not use them, but other languages might require other solutions.

Spanish only uses áéíóú and ü, and for those the key function is the same as before, it's only physically displaced (before, it was in the place of the K here, next to the enter).

[Lobo-Feroz]

By the way, how do you upload a json to keyboard-design.com? I managed to export one, but couldn't find the way to import.

[iandoug]

By the way, how do you upload a json to keyboard-design.com? I managed to export one, but couldn't find the way to import.

do you mean klanext.keyboard-design.com ?
On the Configure page, click Import button, then paste the Json into the dialogue and click Import.

Am looking at making conventional upload/download operations work.

[iandoug]

Be aware that KLA has no concept of dead keys (yet), and if the required letter is not on the keyboard, it is ignored, which affects the score.

Layouts that DO have the letter "type" it, pushing up their scores.

So at the moment we can't fairly use KLA to evaluate layouts.

If you want to add a layout permanently to KLAnext, email it to me.