Recommendations for Pocket Keyboards?

Neat!

I have done just a bit of shell scripting on the L5 so far and was even able to use emacs reasonably well in the terminal app. This is also what I hope to be able to do some day.

Are you looking for a fordable full size keyboard or a mobile one for your workflow?

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Good questions and sorry that I did not explain before.

A real landscape mode would not just rotate the elements 90° (to be readable and top-down-organized), it would make use of the different ratio. For example you have a top panel on portrait view, that fits perfectly. You rotate it to landscape mode and things are just horizontal centered, not scaled to the left and right edges (which itself is also not so good) or reorganized in another way. That means:
a) Left and right is a lot of unused screen space.
b) You only see half the amount of context compared to portrait view, which also means you have to scroll much more.
A real landscape mode would reorganize it that there is no empty space and that the interaction feels as natural as it feels on portrait view. Here is my own creation (just Gimp edits) as example for top panel. On a full top panel you get 2 scrollboxes - one for quick settings and one for everything else, which can be read and used easily. I don’t think it has to look like this, but that it should make use of the available space in similar quality.

This was just a little example. But it shows the principle very well. On other parts the advantage can be bigger. The current plan seems not to changing the order of elements for landscape, because it brings more complexity in code. The reason is that devs don’t see any point why a phone should be used on landscape mode other than watching videos or playing games. But those things can be realized in fullscreen mode (which they want to improve). But it doesn’t match other use cases where people want to work something without docked mode.

And just to be said, similar improvements could be applied to all Phosh screens, not just top panel. The 2 things that are not GNOME philosophy conform:

  1. Reorganizing elements make the code more complex which also means more stuff to get maintained.
  2. In some situations it means to change gestures for example from top-down swipe to left-right swipe. That keeps things not easy, because it could confuse people … is the argument. If it feels good or not or if it could be seen easily how things will work or not doesn’t matter for the philosophy.

So in fact, nearly any really good landscape is impossible on Phosh. I don’t think we will ever get to a point where it feels good without a downstream fork.

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How about KDE’s HIG?

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Don’t know about it. Need to give a look later. Have to get my 3D print into hands now, which I will share later if everything works as expected. :wink:

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Sure, here it is once you are ready.

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I have a small to-go bag that I use to carry my L5 together with accessories (spare batteries, paper notebook, Franklin T10 mobile hotspot, etc), so I am hoping to find a keyboard that boosts my productivity when using emacs/terminal and also fits in my small bag, so that I can have a highly mobile workstation.

As I mentioned above, I ordered one to try, but it has not arrived yet. It is a corded USB qwerty keyboard that is smaller than most mini keyboards I have seen.

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Okay, have to agree, that looks good. It’s how we design for the web these days.

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Ha! I used have a Compaq iPaq device back in the day and I bought one of these for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzh00_ao9wI

It was a great setup but there was no software worth using on those devices. I haven’t seen any keyboard come even close to that level of engineering since, probably because this was before the iPhone and Steve Jobs introduced the touch interface concept as an alternative to physical keyboards.

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What was your question supposed to be: if I agree with its design or if it would be an alternative for me to use (instead of Phosh)?

What I can tell in a short view, the concept seems to be much more worked out compared to Phoshs concept. And it’s very close to my view of design decisions. For example I also described things like this https://develop.kde.org/hig/layout/onehand/ for L5. Since our phone has a huge display (and even thickness matters), the area is different (it’s easier to reach the side where the phone gets hold compared to the other side). And in fact, they referenced a link from 2013 where phone displayes where smaller in general.

I think I agree with 95% of what KDE has in mind - at least those things I read about concept. Or let’s say the other way around: they confirm my experience for UX design.

Btw I think it makes sense to create a separate thread to this topic. Maybe a mod could split the topics since we’re already far away from keyboards.

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Mostly the former about GNOME vs. KDE design philosophy. If you would rather develop on the other side, here is a good place to start.

The point is that I agree on KDE design philosophy for almost a decade. But I really like where Phosh started. I would like to see it not just “functional somehow”, but rather have a minimum amount of complexity to match the complexity of phone form factor. But it doesn’t seem to be compatible to GNOME philosophy, since it’s designed for desktop/laptop form factor.

And to make another point: it’s not too far away from what I would like to have. But it prevents the “last but important step”. Also Phosh has a pro thing above Plasma Mobile. It starts at zero and doesn’t depend too much on Android. It could go another ways with similar experience (KDE is much closer to Android like behavior, if I’m not wrong - even if I trust KDE to make the things better than Android).

If I would have the skill and time, I would create a down fork of Phosh to implement those things that are a step above GNOME philosophy. But I learned C 2 weeks ago in a 2 hour crash course. It’s enough to fix details, but I’m not sure how far I would come to rewrite a whole part of UI. Also said that I have not the time right now for any of such projects.

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try this: Corne-ish Zen – Lowprokb.ca
Pretty much full size but kinda pocket-able

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That’s cool!

I don’t think it would work for me, as it lacks keys that I frequently use for the terminal/coding: alt, ctrl, tab… etc.

Also the price is… not low. Lol.

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It’s multiple layer and configurable
configurable - any key can be ctrl (however u program it)
layers - key ‘A’ can act as ‘A’ on layer1 and as ‘1’ on layer2 (layers are switched by function key)

and I agree about price lol

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I am typing this from my newly opened keyboard :slight_smile:

The keyboard is perfectly functional, although a converter from USB A to USB C is required.

I miss some keys when typing, because they are so small, and the keys are rather stiff. Much stiffer than I expected. We’ll see how I like the typing experience over time. As for portability, it fits in my little bag perfectly, so I am looking forward to taking it with me along with my phone when I go out.

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