is possible add more than english keys?

[letarg0]

I'm from Poland and use ąćłŃŹŻ etc.
Many people using Celsius degree char, phi, paragraph (on apple keyboard) etc. French have many chars, Korean too.

I'm found only one https://klawiatura.wordpress.com/ but this is only concept

[kaievns]

that's a good idea, thanks! although i wouldn't know how to. can you point me towards some sort of a description, what it looks/works like?

[kissu]

Pretty sure you're talking about some US international layout that is basically using a compose key for thing like â which is achieved by pressing ^ then a.
But it somehow depends on which OS you do use and the level of customization that you wish.

The best way will be to use a flashable mech board PCB and use QMK firmware on it to emulate that behavior with Unicode and some quick OS switching binding.

I may write a blog post for it in the next weeks/months, so stay tuned and I'll post it here when done.

[letarg0]

@KISU
in Polish lang:
Z+dot upper = Ż
z+coma = Ź
;)
In French You have 4 version of e, no modification keys are not a solution. Look at korean (hangul) or japanese with " and small circle , no us international are not international only irytational.

@madrabbit on web page are explayned 26 more keys (+ 2 rotor/tube) layout are specific for every producent himself. Look at french version https://klawiatura.wordpress.com/wersja-dla-laptopow-keyboard-laptop-version/
in any language count of keys are this same but functionality everyone can change

[kissu]

@letarg0 not sure of:

• why some macro compose key cannot be a solution
• what various hiragana/hangul/cyrilic/other have to do here, like really
• what is the issue with the US international mapping
• who you may think will use that kind of keyboard (pro tip: there is no such layout on any custom PCB available, ever)
• what are those damn knobs 🎛 doing there ? 😂
• you ever typed in French 🇫🇷 before (let me doubt about it 🤔)

[letarg0]

@kissu

why some macro compose key cannot be a solution

I give You answer, french E : You must have 4 modificators for e. Realy You would like using ctrl+E, alt+E, one Function + E , second Function key + E and meybe second two for AE and OE ;)
otherwise, the modifier is more difficult to use than a regular key

what various hiragana/hangul/cyrilic/other have to do here, like really
No everyone using latin/english.

what is the issue with the US international mapping

I wrote upper, this are not easy. Please change numbers and use modificator for letter. Simple 1=F+a, 2=F+s etc. And write for a week , You undestand.

who you may think will use that kind of keyboard (pro tip: there is no such layout on any custom PCB available, ever)
what are those damn knobs 🎛 doing there ? 😂
you ever typed in French 🇫🇷 before (let me doubt about it 🤔)

please write in google japanese keyboard and dont wrote fud. japanese keyboard are different than english, this is not only change char on keys, this keyboard have more keys. English are not for everyone.

knobs are for wolume control, manipulation of 3d objects in 3d program and etc. Tell me why using F1..10 (or 11.12) therefore are potenciometer in this keyboard.

Yes i wrote in french, esperanto, japanese, chinese (yes! old and new) etc. ;)

[kissu]

@letarg0 a compose key have nothing to do with some basic modifiers. With QMK you can use lot of various input methods: compose key, tap dance, leader key without even talking about some basic layers that you may put diacritics on.
Reminder, compose key: take a dead key, bind it, then use ' + e and you will get é. Use ^ + e and you will get ê and so on. One compose key for all the available diacritics.
An example among others...

Not saying that US international is the most optimized mapping indeed but at least, it does support every available chars with their own diacritics.
Ofc, some 60% split vertical staggered custom keyboard with tilt adjustment and some homemade mapping, personnal switches, cool case (and so on) is better. By far better than some super exotic layout with a bizzilion of keys because the mapping is not optimized/layers/custom enough for the needs and requires your hands to travel too much distance for even the basic stuff.
Even an Ergodox Ez is better than the one in your shared link.

Yep, Japanese layout uses JIS (rather than ANSI for the American one or ISO for the European one).

Knobs are not bad but not really mandatory IMO. Still, there are far better (ergo + design) implementations than the one you are talking about.
3D may use a basic mouse or some trackpad (Wacom ?) if really needed.

[kissu]

Just realized that the linked website is Russian 🇷🇺 but writen in some weird Latin form. 😂

[amatsune]

You're not considering that what's optimized for typing in English is definitely not optimized for typing in other languages, as the key pairings/trios don't appear in the same frequency, and for languages that heavily use accents, even if you do use a dead key to make the combined character, you have to take into account the frequency of usage of those keys as well to produce an optimized layout for that language.
That means training the algorithm with a different set of examples and a few extra parameters to be taken into account.

Also, certain keyboard layouts have different key counts, for instance Brazilian ABNT has 106 (that's 2 more keys than the standard US layout) which means we can take advantage of those keys for the layout, specially considering the use of accents and diacritics, or the infamous ç, even if we do find that doing '+c to be more efficient than having a dedicated key for that commonly used letter, simply leaving the extra key unassigned would be silly.

[kaievns]

anyone wants to tackle this one? seems like a great idea, linux folks have made it as the ralt layout. would make sense to add it to others as well

[AtilaSaraiva]

I'm brazilian, so I'd like to write my characters every now and then even though I mostly write in english. Maybe training the AI to generate a whole new layout considering the new keys would be kind of a waste of time. However, it would be nice to be have some way to write á and ç for example without having to switch back to qwerty. I am thinking about getting a layout that has that feature built in and just swap the assigned keys to the halmak layout, preserving the ability to produce internacional characters.

[dessalines]

It wouldn't be too difficult to adapt the keyboard-gentics repo to other languages, and use sample text in that language.