Thumb Keyboard: Better German Layout (Letter ß)?
 

EDIT: Layout issue solved, shift issue remains. See post #5.
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Regular readers here know I'm a stylus addict and can't be convinced to use my fingers. Still, I try to use the thumb keyboard now just as an experiment. I found it's hard to use with the German layout because they moved one letter (ß) to the second tab. I read here that there's ways to re-configure the layout of the keyboard, but before I get my hands dirty:

Is there anybody out there who already changed the German layout?

Also, is there a way to get "shift" without doing this strike-up thing? A normal shift, not shift lock. Oh, and while we're at it: a "..." would be nice, too. ;)

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

When you press the "shift" key (arrow up) or Fn-Key they are only used for the next key you press, then return to normal state. Only pressing them twice locks the mode.
But to be honest, i dont need "ß" that often, so i don't really see a problem there...

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

what shift or fn-keys are you talking about? theres no such keys on the thumb keybord.

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

With the thumb keyboard, for a caps lock you press '^abc' which then turns to 'vABC'. To do a shift, you drag the single letter you want capitalized upwards.

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

OK, I did get my hands dirty. Followed the instructions in this thread and created a new layout for the thumb keyboard that has the following changes:

Lower case, first tab: Key for ".,? " etc. is now smaller, additional space used for letter ß.

Second tab: Letter ß replaced by "…" - I often use this and find it very difficult to type as three "."s because you'd need to pause for ~1sec after each tap in order not to get "," or "?" after the first tap.

"Shift" is not very comfortable the way it is, but as things are, I'll not get used to the thumb keyboard any time soon and probably end my experiment to return to the regular stylus-VKB, anyway. :)

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

Aw, I should probably make custom russian layout cause there's no "+" symbol in it. It's extremely annoying.

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

ahhhhh sorry, i thought you were talking an N810 wwth the slide out keyboard....
That's why itss always useful to mention, which model you are talking about ;)

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

The thumb keyboard is the same on both the N800 and the N810.

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

The term "thumb keyboard" is misleading as you usually use the thumbs for the slide out keyboard on the n810, too ;)

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

Thumb keyboard = Full screen keyboard
Finger keyboard/Virtual keyboard = Half-screen keyboard
Hardware keyboard = N810 only

Interesting to see this. Had a discussion last week about the French layout too at https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=887 ...

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. :)