this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

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Keep it ergo

Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)

i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²

¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid

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People with completely custom non-english layouts, how do you program them? (self.ergomechkeyboards)
submitted 1 year ago by WFH to c/ergomechkeyboards
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Especially on QMK/TMK, especially non-english ones.

Do you mangle the QWERTY layout to fit your needs, especially when there is no correspondence between QWERTY and you language's layout or do you send directly Unicode characters?

I'm working on a French, Bépo-inspired, completely custom layout with full access to diacritics and ligatures. The keyboard must be OS-agnostic as I'm using Linux at home and Windows at work, and should be completely compatible with the AZERTY layout as understood by the OS and need no install or configuration on the PC as work PCs are usually completely locked-down and don't allow input layout modification.

Letters like é, è, à, ç, and ù are directly accessible on the AZERTY keyboard, so a bit of mangling should work (despite ù being used in a single word in the entire language but whatevs)

My concerns are:

  • ê, ë and so on are pretty common but need a dead key to be typed. Not ideal. It might be possible with a macro, but Unicode might be more efficient.
  • æ and œ are completely absent from AZERTY and cannot even be directly typed on windows despite appearing on very common words like cœur or bœuf. They are hidden behind AltGr-A and AltGr-O in Linux tho. Unicode is a must.

Thanks!

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[–] Aldoo 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you are allowed to configure the keymap on all your host systems, the way to go is to choose a keymap having all required characters (for instance, standard Bépo), install it everywhere, and have your keyboard produce (sequences of) keycodes depending on this.

An alternative would be to input Unicode characters via XCompose under Linux and WinCompose under Windows. The latter claims to be compatible with the former, so it's worth a try (but you need to be allowed to install WinCompose, of course!)

Other Unicode input methods based on alt+number/ctrl+shift+U+number/... all are OS specific unfortunately.

Edit: btw, PM me if you want my QMK macros for dead key based diacriticized characters.