It’s a matter of taste, and habit. Not a universal criteria.
The physical layout resemble a lot to the one of my 2016 Dell XPS, including these small arrow keys. I hated it at first, and for a long time. Now I am used to it and happy to see it on the FW16 .
Only difference I see with my XPS layout is that the row 4 staggering is slightly shifted, such that | is not a standard 1u. And that’s will be a minor pain for me as I move this key around… Would have to swap it for a non-legend one maybe (even if I touch type I prefer to keep the legend consistent for those very tiring days).
I would like to 3rd the vote using the Framework logo rather than the “super” text too. I think its a great subtle way to promote and brand a special laptop. And I’m more than happy to talk about it if anyone asks!
Also add another vote to having an LED indicator for Fn lock (like Caps). Too often I have the uncomfortable situation where I had to guess if I’m already in Fn locked mode or not. Not cool.
As for the numlock/Fn key for the number keypad, I have mixed feelings about removing the numlock. It’s been a tradition, but I do like the idea of relegating the secondary functions to Fn (it’s already a secondary key modifier already) and repurposing the traditional numlock. If you DO decide to keep the traditional numlock, please put a LED indicator for it too please.
And whatever the case, I already put in my pre-order. If this keyboard becomes available, can I modify my order to use this English US Linux keyboard instead of the standard one I have? I sent a support ticket.
I would get one of the RGB keyboard options.
You could then program the Fn key to change color to indicate that Fn-lock is on (or off), same for numlock, or literally any key. It does take modifying the QMK firmware code (you can’t currently do it from a GUI), but it’s not too hard. And I’m willing to bet users will post step-by-step guides and even just precompiled firmware.
You can remap the “numlock” layer to be whatever you want.
The amount of things you can do in QMK, people who have never used it will be amazed.
I hope it’s not too late for the changes. But we can stay positive because Framework delivered so much cool and innovative stuff the last 2 years and almost always heard the community and improved things. But they have a lot of things to do in the moment with the FW16 release. So it probably just takes a while.
Probably not, the detail images in the keyboard selection of the configurator show the original version for German while an updated version is shown, e.g., for Spanish.
Until you’ve run multiple consumer surveys about this and aren’t just going off the opinions of you and your friends, I’m going to trust that Framework has a little more knowledge about their overall customer base and what they want from a keyboard layout.
But I don’t want RGB. Having an Fn-lock indicator that’s just a white LED would be nice.
As for QMK firmware code, no idea, since I’m not a developer. If there is a guide or or a GUI interface, I can take a look at. I’m more of a hardware enthusiast, and maybe a bit of scripting but that’s it.
You can quote their whole post or type @ and it brings up a list of users from the thread, start typing their name, and it will narrow to list. You can click to select them. @Techie_Zeddie
@MJ1 [quote=“Matt_Hartley, post:1, topic:32704, full:true”]
Hi everyone, thanks for all of the feedback on the previous rounds of keyboard artwork review (from the Framework Laptop 13 reviews). We have languages we’d like your eyes on double checking. I’ll add one keyboard per post to make it easier to reply to.
Table of Contents
Thanks @Anachron for putting the links together.
The RGB keyboard is the only one where you have individual controllable leds for each key, and multiple controllable leds for the larger keys. It gives you the option to do something to create a fn-lock or numlock indicator. You can set the RGB keyboard to just white if you have no desire for RGB.
I’m not a QMK developer either. You can copy other people’s code or ask for help on how to do something on the QMK discord.
And in the future, per-key led control might even be configurable in a GUI. In the meantime, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Framework community doesn’t create guides for common things like a fn-lock indicator.
Maybe I’m too late to ask. (I just put in a deposit for an 16" AMD model – replacing my 2013 primary laptop after all this time!)
But a question: why the dead space next to up arrow? Why not dedicated pg-up/pg-dn keys there? I can deal with the “half sized” keys (full sized would be better, but I get the design constraint), and I can deal with losing home, end, and delete as discrete keys. But why the empty space? The Dell Latitude E6540 keyboard is the keyboard to beat. I still use mine here a full decade later because of it having the most dreamy laptop keyboard I’ve ever experienced.
Hey there,
I would love to see a German keyboard with the super key (or even better, the framework gear) instead of the windows logo.
Is this possible or maybe already planned?
Most RGB keyboards are pretty terrible at making white light, though, as they mix red, green and blue LEDs, which due to different LED efficiencies typically results in a bad off-white that’s somewhere between blue and pink.
While this is true, you can compensate for it by adjusting the color to shift into a more neutral white. E.g. if it’s giving you a cold / blueish white, then adjust warmer. Your laptop makes white using RGB. How good you can get it depends on the RGB implementation, how fine the adjustment steps are, and if there are enough steps at the brightness level you want.
With QMK, if you use extremely bright WS2812 LEDs you don’t have a lot of steps at very dim brightness levels & you can’t do precise mixing. I recall seeing in Framework’s code that they’re using a different RGB driver. Hopefully they also don’t use extremely bright LEDs, no need to get a suntan off your keyboard. When you say most RGB keyboards are bad at making white light, you need to try a QMK one with well selected RGB LEDS, or at least having a reasonable max brightness (not artificially limited in code). It makes a difference. It’s also possible in QMK to just have a separate white-led backlight. I saw a separate backlight pin defined in Framework’s code, I just don’t know what they are using it for.
Ugh, to me it feels like putting the word “super” on the Linux keyboard is a huge missed opportunity. That’s more of a “generic” instead of Linux. Would have been awesome to have a linux penguin or at least a framework logo on that key.
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