Re: Thumb Keyboard: Better German Layout (Letter ß)?
 

There's still room for improvement. The quotation marks “, ”, ‘ and ’ are wrong for a German layout. The right ones would be „, “, ‚ and ‘.

I'd love to change this with a def-file that's compatible with ukeyboard, but I'll need some more time to do this.

Re: Thumb Keyboard: Better German Layout (Letter ß)?
 

:D Didn't even notice it's missing.

Re: Thumb Keyboard: Better German Layout (Letter ß)?
 

… which tells us more about your spelling than about the quality of the layout, doesn't it? :p

It's not as if you could choose not to use a letter when it's in the word you type.

Re: Thumb Keyboard: Better German Layout (Letter ß)?
 

All german letters which cannot be found on an english keyboard have a replacement so you can write a correct text without them. In this special case it's controversial if the letter "ß" is really needed. German spelling rules have changed a few years ago but this obsolete letter survived oddly enough.

Re: Thumb Keyboard: Better German Layout (Letter ß)?
 

Here's a thought regarding the 'ß' keystrokewise: I'm not real any good with German, but isn't it eßentially ;) the same as a doubled lowercase 's'? If so, perhaps a slider key with 's' and 'ß' on it is the answer. Tap once for a single 's', tap twice quick for a 'ß', and tap twice slowly when you need a double 's'.

But like I said, I know little of German, and much of that from Swiss German, where they mainly don't use 'ß' at all; perhaps this solution is unwieldy (do you need double 's' often?) and/or based on a complete misunderstanding on my part.

Technically, though... I just tried it. Sliders don't seem to work right at all on the stylus keyboard, but on the finger keyboard, an 's'/'ß' slider works quite nicely, showing only one entry. Another idea, an 's'/'ß'/'ss' slider (which sounded plausible) tries to display all three entries, though, looking horrible. And, as I expected, it fails to backspace both 's'es when it recycles on the 4th tap. So that form's ugly and broken, but 's'/'ß' is OK.

Re: Thumb Keyboard: Better German Layout (Letter ß)?
 

No, not at all. It's considered a spelling mistake if you write 'ss' instead of 'ß'. Also, it indicates a difference in pronunciation ("Masse" vs. "Maße" - in "Masse", the "a" is short, in "Maße" it's long).

Of course, ß is just another one of s-characters (like the long s that we had in English and German) and will probably disappear someday just as the long s did. But as long as it's there, and as long as there are strict rules on when to use it, it's just a letter like W and K and should be there on a professional keyboard. (You wouldn't type "UU" instead of W and get away with it, would you? ;) )

The problem with slider keys is that they make it difficult to tap twice (=two characters). Thats why I included the typographical "…" as a single key into my layout: Tapping [.]-pause-[.]-pause-[.] just drove me mad. [s]-pause-[s] would be even more annoying as "ss" occurs more ofte than "…".

I think it's nice the way it is now. It'll be perfect once I corrected the quotation marks. ;)

I think they officially did away with it only recently, but don't use it any more since the 1930s. The swiss needed to somehow get all the French accents and German umlauts onto their typewriters, so simply changing the spelling rules and making 'ss' the real replacement for 'ß' seemed a reasonable thing to do for them. :)