Is there a updated Version of the GERMAN layout?
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.
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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.
BTW, how do you reply to someone’s post? I don’t see a way to do it on this forum. I’ve just been quoting people I want to respond to.
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.
Keyboards:
- Belgian
- Danish
- French Canadian
- French
- German
- Hungarian
- International English/Linux
- International English/Windows
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Latin American Spanish
- Norwegian
- Portuguese
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Swiss
- Traditional Chinese
- Thai
- UK English
- US English (RGB)
- US English (Linux/V2)
- US English
Num Pads
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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.
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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.
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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? 
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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.
[Checks preorder]
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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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Hi there,
I see I’m probably a bit late to the party, but I thought I’d share my two cents for the German keyboard layout anyway, maybe it’s worth something to someone.
I agree with most of what’s been said about the German keyboard layout:
- “Druck” button instead of the “PRT SCR” is on all the German keyboards I’ve encountered.
- “Bild” instead of “page” as well.
- “Fn-Sperre” ->I’ve also seen “Fn” with a lock symbol next to it or a white status led, while I would agree with another user in the posts saying the indicator light is important.
- Caps lock down arrow instead of up arrow is common on German Keyboard layouts. Other symbols I have seen on German keyboards (exclusively or with the down arrow) are a big “A” in a square box and/or a lock symbol next to it.
One point I feel very strongly about though, is the lowercase first letters on the special keys. I perceive it as definitely being grammatically wrong. As other users have mentioned; German capitalizes all nouns.
I understand to some extent that one might think they can get away with saying it’s a “style”, writing German all lowercase. I strongly disagree with this though. While this is a style, it is generally only done in texts to friends and family, etc. because of ease of typing and speed, definitely nothing official.
To everyone interested, not natively speaking German, I’d like to explain the problem. In the German language, capital letters play an essential role in defining the meaning of a word and are used a lot more, than let’s say in English. It can define if a word is a noun or for instance a verb. Writing a noun small, simply put, is misspelling it. It is comparable to writing “kiboard” instead of “keyboard”, or writing “weight” instead of “wait”, which is not only spelled wrong, but also has a completely different meaning.
That said; I would argue that if writing German special keys lowercase is problematic, writing a hyphenated German word lowercase is even more problematic. 
This is obviously just my opinion and I’m not trying to offend anyone with this point of view.
I realize that being this opinionated on a subject matter like this seldom helps to be productive in a discussion, so I’ll try and get some objectivity into it.
I currently happen to be procrastinating in a university building and decided I’d do a micro survey going around, taking photos of all the uniquely different keyboards I find here in a 20m radius. Obviously, this is not very scientific, but I promise I didn’t exclude any encountered keyboards along the way.
The keyboards I found were:
- Old Microsoft keyboard
- Old Dell Keyboard
- Old Logitech keyboard
- New Dell Keyboard
- MSI Gaming laptop
- Lenovo Thinkpad
- Microsoft Surface (Original type cover)
I’ll include the photos at the end.
The findings of this micro survey are:
- 7/7 keyboards have capital first letters on special keys (except for the MSI Gaming laptop, which has all caps)
- “Druck” 7/7
- “Bild” 7/7
- Capslock with an up Arrow 1/7 (Lenovo Thinkpad)
- Capslock with a down arrow 5/7
- Capslock with an “A” in a box 3/7
- Capslock with a locking symbol 1/7
- Only the more modern keyboards(4) had an “FN” key
- 1/4 was without a dedicated lock symbol,
- 1/4 was a lock Symbol with “Fn” written in it,
- 1/4 had “FnLock” written in it (Lenovo Thinkpad)
- 1/4 had the “Fn” key with an extra led showing the status of the lock.
Conclusion:
- Lowercase on special keys → DONT DO IT!
- “Druck” seems legit
- “Bild” seems legit
- Capslock with a down arrow definitely seems to be the way to go, feel free to sprinkle a symbol or two into the mix.
- “Fn” → It’s absolute anarchy out there. Personally, I’d prefer the Fn Lock Symbol with a light. But “Fn-Sperre” seems fine too.
Cheers!
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Then, you’ll absolutely have to avoid older Cherry keyboards (early 2000s to mid 2010s)
As long as it’s not a longer text, for me, using lowercase for function keys is an acceptable stylistic decision.
@next_to_utter_chaos Thanks for the heads up! I’ll talk to my therapist about it. 
All jokes aside, I am aware that evil keyboards out there exist.
Ok, would you agree that making a German keyboard using capitalized function keys is a good decision?
Yes, I second this! I would say use the Framwork gear logo. Gives it some personality and further branding. Or linux penguin inside the gear logo… 
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Thanks everyone for the feedback. As folks have noted, this thread is for catching factual errors in keyboard layouts (e.g. a missing or misplaced symbol on a key or an incorrect translation). Stylistic and feature requests are interesting, but are better placed into a separate thread to inform future products.
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