Request: Review of Framework Laptop 16 Keyboard Layouts

[Tobias_Gorgens]

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?

[Jonathan_Haas]

@MJ1

You can set the RGB keyboard to just white if you have no desire for RGB.

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.

[MJ1]

@Jonathan_Haas

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.

[OperationCWAL]

@Akanar

Would look real silly to have an RGB keyboard with a White backlight Numpad.

[Checks preorder]

[jared_kidd]

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.

[christian_kret]

@Matt_Hartley

German

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:

1. Old Microsoft keyboard
2. Old Dell Keyboard
3. Old Logitech keyboard
4. New Dell Keyboard
5. MSI Gaming laptop
6. Lenovo Thinkpad
7. 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!

[MJ1]

Welcome to the forum @christian_kret!
Very helpful information. With example pictures too.

[next_to_utter_chaos]

@christian_kret

• Lowercase on special keys → DONT DO IT!

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.

[christian_kret]

@next_to_utter_chaos

@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.

@next_to_utter_chaos

As long as it’s not a longer text, for me, using lowercase for function keys is an acceptable stylistic decision.

Ok, would you agree that making a German keyboard using capitalized function keys is a good decision?

[Techie_Zeddie]

@jared_kidd

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.

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…

[nrp]

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.

[Ivan_Jelenic]

Slovenian layout (which is also the Croatian layout) looks good.

[Florian_Beck]

Not exactly a factual error, but to me it’s not clear what the framework logo on the F12 key does?

[Schuasda]

The key is explained further up in this thread:

Request: Review of Framework Laptop 16 Keyboard Layouts

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the F12 / Gear symbol key. Keys like this are extra keys / special keys (aka hotkeys or multimedia keys), and there is no standard or even typical set of keys that are included on keyboards, nor standard placement for them. Many of them, like the gear / settings key, have no standard function either. The user decides what they want it to do. For some keys, Windows (or other OS) might give the hotkey some default action, just to avoid it doing nothing by…

[Techie_Zeddie]

@Request: Review of Framework Laptop 16 Keyboard Layouts

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the F12 / Gear symbol key. Keys like this are extra keys / special keys (aka hotkeys or multimedia keys), and there is no standard or even typical set of keys that are included on keyboards, nor standard placement for them. Many of them, like the gear / settings key, have no standard function either. The user decides what they want it to do. For some keys, Windows (or other OS) might give the hotkey some default action, just to avoid it doing nothing by…

I think that brings up the OS’s settings, but I’m not entirely sure.

Windows has moved from their Control Panel to a Settings page. Gnome’s the same too (both are very similar to mobile OSes). I’m not familiar with other DEs to know if they have a single Settings panel this will open, too.

[MJ1]

@Florian_Beck

Not exactly a factual error, but to me it’s not clear what the framework logo on the F12 key does?

It sends the “Media Select” keycode. Windows assigns this an action of launching the default media player, same on Linux.

But you can change that default action and program the key to do whatever you want.

F12 / Framework key

It sends a keycode known as “Media Select” from the extended multimedia key set (0xE0, 0x50). Typically, that means it will launch a media player. You can bind it to do whatever you please. If you’re using xbindkeys, for example, you would call it XF86AudioMedia. Various window managers and desktop environments offer different functionality for keyboard binding.

[StarrWulfe]

Japanese
Request: Review of Framework Laptop 16 Keyboard Layouts - #12 by Matt_Hartley

Is it possible at this late stage to also include the Macbook variant layout for those of us coming from that platform as well, or is this too much of an edge case to consider? the main difference is the way it treats the “Henkan” functions of switching between Japanese characters, Chinese characters (Kanji) and Latin/Roman characters, all of which are inherent and necessary when composing the typical Japanese document.

Basically after using a Mac for so many years, my muscle memory has made it much quicker to switch on the Macbook layout because the buttons to the left and right of the Spacebar are labeled “Latin” and “Kana (Japanese)” respectively so it’s easier than the typical method of using the one key to the left of the “1” key that does the same thing in the normal Japanese layout. Those keys next to the space key in this case are muhenkan; don’t change to Kanji, and henkan – change to Kanji. This is used when already in kana mode typing in Japanese characters and needing to make (or not make) them in to Kanji. To the right of that you have the katakana/hirangana/romaji (latin characters) switching key.

These methods are holdovers from legacy Japanese input method editors from back when electronic word processors were being normalized in the 1970s and '80s. Incidentally, the Japanese characters on the keyboard layout itself is a holdover from Japanese typewriters and I have never seen someone use them directly outside of those working in train stations and certain government fields where they have special machines that use this layout to do data entry functions; no one in Japan really learns that method of typing nowadays and the norm is to use Roman/Latin letters to “sound out” the Japanese characters and software IMEs will automatically make the right characters appear.

In Apple fashion, they simplified this and made it necessary to need only the two extra buttons on the keyboard next to the Spacebar.

if possible, please consider adding this layout variant to the lineup.

[Azure]

@StarrWulfe

or is this too much of an edge case to consider?

If all you want is to switch the key next to the 1 with one of the keys to either side of the spacebar, you can take advantage of the fact that it has support for qmk to change that in software.

[MJ1]

@StarrWulfe

Those keys next to the space key in this case are muhenkan; don’t change to Kanji, and henkan – change to Kanji.

I search a bit about those keys regarding qmk. Seems they are known as KC_MHEN and KC_HENK.
Yea, I think there wouldn’t be a problem using them. As Azure said, you should be able to remap the keys to either side of the spacebar to them. And also change the key next to “1”. You can move / rearrange keys any which way you want in qmk.

[fw16]

I agree with @StarrWulfe. If that is too much to ask, then maybe an “Linux variant” where instead of a Windows key there is a super key. I am also coming from a Mac Japanese keyboard layout, but I am fine with the current proposed layout. I will definitely use Linux on my Framework 16, so having a super key would be ideal.