We need new keyboards

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Comments

  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,121
    danjac said:
    Note that the layouts T2 and T3 have been deprecated and are no longer included as part of the DIN 2137-1 standard. These layouts required the introduction of an extra key for group switching (beyond the existing modifiers like Shift and Alt Gr). I believe this requirement for hardware changes meant these layouts saw little adoption. Now that they're deprecated, these layouts were not selected for inclusion as part of the recent German keyboard additions to Windows.

    If an additional shift key is required on the keyboard, since Microsoft hadn't defined one as part of its standard for USB keyboard scan codes, could that keyboard have ever been adopted, even if it hadn't been deprecated?
    Well, I suppose Microsoft could always define an additional scan code, if the popular demand was overwhelming. (And in the world of old-style scan codes for PS/2 keyboards, Korean keyboards used completely different scan codes for functions similar to those used in Japanese keyboards; the Korean ones seemed to have been unofficial ones chosen locally.)
  • Matteo B.
    Matteo B. Posts: 6
    Heads up, I've discovered that the new Microsoft PowerToys comes with something called Quick Accent. It's supposed to help you type accented and extra related characters via a long press of the space bar.
    I kept it on for a while but I turned it off last week. The idea is great but I don't like how it controls, and I used to accidentally trigger it often with the default input delay. It would be great if it had a few extra options.
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 791
    I reject any makeshifts based on / related to – the common physical keyboard, as long as the layout cannot be designed individually and swiftly, and as long as the keys don’t switch to display whatever *I* intend they should display. It is a dead-end.
    Everything in the digital world gets changed and upgraded “once in a month”. Only the keyboard remains stone-age. How ridiculous is that?!

    As I may have mentioned earlier, the concept for the real new keyboard is existent. If anyone should read this and is interested in going for a solution, let’s talk about it.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,425
    I recently pondered the practicality of changing keycap displays for accents, given that typists should focus on the screen rather than the keyboard. Inspired by the sliding keys on iOS, I envisioned a touch sensor integrated into each physical key. This would allow users to glide their finger in a specific direction before pressing the key, presenting up to eight accent variations. A simple tap would then select the desired accent. With intelligent detection, the system could distinguish between intentional and accidental glides. This approach offers several benefits: typists can keep their eyes on the screen, the feature can be disabled for a traditional keyboard experience, and it leverages the familiar slide-to-select mechanism of iOS keyboards.
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,724
    edited August 4
    Macs have a system that works like iOS. If you hold down certain keys that for a second, this pops up:

    You can either select one of the accented characters with a mouse/trackpad or type one of the numbers to insert the desired character.

    Edit: The older option+key sequences still work, i.e., option-`+e to get è on US layouts, but the older key-repeat behavior is no longer available for letters and numbers, just punctuation and symbols. I don't know if there is a way to disable the newer accent popup and get the old key-repeat behavior for all keys.

    Edit: I guess you can disable the accent popup and restore key-repeat for all keys by entering this in the Terminal app: 
    defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Nick Shinn said:
    I’m puzzled how anyone could disagree with my previous post.
    As far as I am aware, it’s not possible to buy a new iMac without a new keyboard included.
    And I’m pretty sure I know my own feelings (such as annoyance) better than anyone else!
    Well, if Apple provides a new keyboard when buying a new model, you are not forced to use it, right? I have been using the 2000 Mac Pro keyboard as I have never felt comfortable with the "calculator keys" ones.
    I purchased a new Mac Studio in 2022 and since my old Mac Pro keyboard had a key which remained "stuck" I just looked for a used one and purchased a "new" old one… :)
  • joeprice
    joeprice Posts: 2
    Nick Shinn said:
    I’m puzzled how anyone could disagree with my previous post.
    As far as I am aware, it’s not possible to buy a new iMac without a new keyboard included.
    And I’m pretty sure I know my own feelings (such as annoyance) better than anyone else!
    I usually need a new keyboard by the time or before upgrades, for my desktop and laptop. 

  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 791
    Mark Simonson said:
    Macs have a system that works like iOS. If you hold down certain keys that for a second, this pops up: …


    hhm. when I activate this function, I see this:


    1. why is it another selection?
    2. why is it such a limited selection?
    3. what if I need another character not displayed here? (e.g. for Polish, Vietnamese or Navajo?)
    4. why do I get patronized in my choice of characters?!

    And, last but not least: 
    5. why should I want to bother about all these questions?

    I wouldn’t. I have no motivation to burden myself with reasoning about such out-of-the-place deficiencies. I don’t give a damn for such pseudo solutions. All I see is the unwillingness to provide a proper and reliable tool for text input work appropriate for the 21st century. All I smell is the spirit of Remington and Underwood.

    This sort of narrow-mindedness of treating typographic matters makes me suck …
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,724
    I don't know why the selection you get is more limited. Maybe you're running an older version of macOS than me (Sonoma 14.5)? Not sure.

    FWIW, the older direct method using "dead" keys + base character only provides access to some accented characters, mostly from the Western Latin range. This newer functionality goes somewhat beyond that for me, adding many characters that can't be typed with the old method, at least on the US keyboard layout.
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 927
    edited August 16
    Type designers [on Mac] should install the provided “ABC-Extended” keyboard layout. 
    This gives access to characters like eth and thorn via option-d (ð) and option-t (þ). Add shift for capitals, of course. 
    It also enables many additional dead keys — for example, option-m for ogonek or option-w for dot accent:
    So, option-m + a → ą ; option-w + c → ċ. And usefully (but not intuitive), option-w + i → ı (dotless i).
    There is even more non-obvious access to less common characters. In the keyboard viewer, shift-option-semicolon appears to yield the numero (№):

    But that is actually a dead key. If you type space after (i.e., shift-option-; + space) then you will indeed get №.
    But if you type shift-option-; + a, you'll get schwa (ə). Note that shift-option-; + e → turned e (ǝ) which generally looks identical, but is a different code point of course. Or, shift-option-; + n → eng (ŋ). Super useful!

    Similarly, shift-option-period is a dead key that yields glottal stop (ʔ) by default, but opens up access to a lot of pan-African characters as well:
    This keyboard is invaluable if you work with multilingual text.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,137
    I do a surprising amount of text entry using the Unicode Hex Input keyboard on Mac, but then I have memorised a surprising number of Unicode hex values. :D
  • James Hultquist-Todd
    James Hultquist-Todd Posts: 416
    For years now, I've been using a Planck keyboard and this software that lets me adjust every key and have multiple layers of key choices when certain other keys are held down.

    you can even program macros so I have a layer of keys that runs Robofont scripts. 
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,121
    Andreas Stötzner said:
    All I see is the unwillingness to provide a proper and reliable tool for text input work appropriate for the 21st century. All I smell is the spirit of Remington and Underwood.

    This sort of narrow-mindedness of treating typographic matters makes me suck …

    As I touch-type, I expect any keyboard input device that I use to channel the famous Underwood Five.
    There's history in that statement: the Underwood Five was a manual typewriter with a light touch, the first, in fact, that really met the needs of secretaries across the nation. As a result, machines like the Hammond and the Blickensderfer became obsolete overnight, and it wasn't until the IBM Selectric came along that it was finally possible for an interchangeable-element typewriter to compete with the Underwood Five on its own terms.
    I do agree that it would be highly desirable to have an easier way to access larger character sets. But the primary use of a keyboard is to type text... and usually in one's own language. Of course, if one's own language is Chinese or Japanese, the need for efficient handling of a large character set is not escaped thereby. But otherwise, this need is very secondary to the primary purpose of a keyboard.
    I'm sorry to be throwing cold water on you like this, but I feel it's very important to keep things in perspective: specifically, if a proposed improvement in keyboards is intended to make a larger character set more accessible, then in order for that improvement to succeed, it must not interfere with the primary function of the keyboard.
    So this suggests, for example, that perhaps an advanced keyboard might look like this: an ordinary keyboard with conventional keycaps on the bottom, with, say, a rectangular array of keys - say three or four rows of twelve keys - with keycaps that have displays in them, used for accessing the rest of the characters.
    Then the question becomes: how does one design an efficient menu system for selecting which character set to put on those auxilliary keys?

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