What do people think about the keyboard on the N900?

I am currently experimenting using my N810 keyboard as much as possible as if it was an N900 keyboard. For example, only using the left Shift key, and only using my right thumb to hit Space. Obviously I can't replicate the cursor keys on the right-hand side, nor the Ctrl key.

Is the Ctrl key 'sticky' on the N900 (i.e. press and release then the next key you press is modified by Ctrl)? Ctrl+X/C/V etc. is going to be hard if not. And why is there an on-screen Ctrl key on the X Terminal toolbar?

Who knows what they were thinking for the N900. However, the port of xterm for the tablets has a feature for emulating missing keys as on-screen buttons in that toolbar. Menu>Tools>Settings>Toolbar shortcut. You can add Home, End, Enter and more. See http://www.internettablettalk.com/wi...ial_xterm_Keys
anyway the CTRL button is "sticky"/toggle. Of course that's only xterm. There are other programs that use a toolbar and perhaps can/will support sticky keys.

Personally, I hope that Ctrl won't be sticky (or this should be configurable); with two hands, it should be OK, in particular because the device is smaller. But I haven't tried...

Concerning the xterm keys, I find this feature very useful, though very limited (reduced number of keys). I'd like something similar available for any application and entirely configurable.

BTW, how about the special characters used in some languages, such as French (e.g. éèêë âîôû àùïç)? With the N810, I can enter them without using anything on the screen, e.g. with Chr+eee for ë (this is very useful). Unfortunately, as the N900 keyboard has fewer keys, in particular no Chr, something like that doesn't seem to be possible, perhaps except with special key combinations. I wonder if something like pressing two keys at the same time could be used to enter additional characters. Otherwise I hope that the on-screen additional key feature is configurable enough (on the N810 it is rather useless). I also sometimes need other Unicode characters such as the mathematical ones.

Note that even though I often write in French, I also program a lot, so that I want to stay with a traditional QWERTY keyboard, not a French one (and in particular I want the 4 distinct arrow keys).

Well sticky isn't incompatible with non-sticky, is it?

I also write in french a lot (QWERTY fr-ca version) and I'm wondering if the SYM key (Fn-ctrl) might be replacing the Chr key?

I'm really hoping the keyboard is easy to use with terminals!

I hope it will be - since most common Ctrl-combinations are with keys on the left side of the keyboard, having the Ctrl key also on the left side seems quite awkward to use otherwise.

I suppose it's possible, but having to press eg Fn+Ctrl+A to get "á" doesn't strike me as terribly usable.

Another question is how language switching works (if it does).

Not without overloading the osso-xterm shortcut toolbar with the missing essentials (if they can even fit there) - off the top of my head it needs ESC, Tab, %, ^, ~, | , < , > , [ , ] (bold ones also missing from the N810 keyboard), and possibly left & right arrow keys for non-english variants.

I used one at OneDotZero and the keyboard was fine. Had better feel than the N810 keyboard imo. Only having shift on one side can be a bit of a pain (ZZ in vi for example), but really it's not too bad, and just the price you pay for a smaller device.

The sym key brings up an onscreen list of symbols, these include the various accents.

Good to know :-)

Sorry, but I don't buy that. For example, HTC & Sony Ericsson managed to put much fuller layouts in about the same size just fine.

The sym "key" being Ctrl+Fn, right? Otherwise sounds like pressing and releasing Chr on the N810. Is there an equivalent means of entering accented letters without going through the on-screen palette (like holding Chr and pressing the desired letter key repeatedly to cycle through the available accented options on the N810)?

Single-shift is definitely a pain -- still after having been using it for a while now. But, overall the N900's keyboard beats out the N810's by a long-shot -- there is no comparison. I still prefer using the VBK on my N810. Not so on the N900.

Tim

I have got the same question.

It may be OK when the tablet is on a table. Otherwise I don't think it is really easy. Well... as Fn is sticky, it should be OK.

FYI, on my N810, I have remapped the Yen key to get the pipe character and the Pound key to get the backtick (a.k.a. backquote or grave accent). Still on my N810, the square and curly brackets and PageUp/PageDown are available on the osso-xterm shortcut toolbar (but I miss Home/End and Insert).