V3 Keyboard and Layers
Hello,
somehow the new v3 version has up to three layers.
Is there any documentation about the layers?
Could I "programm" a complete different key layout on one of the layers, something like Neo 2?
https://neo-layout.org/index_en.html
Thanks a lot
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Hi,
We are still finalizing the firmware, and thus the programming capabilities, of the V3. The base layout of the keyboard is determined by your system language settings, but you can move keys around in the programming layers if you wish. We will have more information available in the coming days and weeks.
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Hello Page,
Thanks for the response.
Then I will hope.
Please keep in mind, there is currently NO Hardware keyboard for the neo2 Layout on the market. Currently everything needs to be done by Software.
So if your keyboard would Support Neo2 out of the box with Hardware it would be the only one on the market.
Maybe you sales and development Departement can Team up 😁.
Thanks a lot and good luckP. S. Since I have my custom Layout (neo2) already done I will order soon.
Vielen dank -
Note that supporting Neo2 in hardware would have a lot of drawbacks, which is probably why nobody has done it as of now.
Compare with Dvorak and Colemak. They are just simple key swap-arounds, everything else regarding modifiers and shifting works the same. That's why they're easy to do in hardware without causing potential usability headaches.
A keyboard's job should just be determining and sending raw key codes for the plain keys. It's not its business knowing about shifting states, dead key states, caps lock and so on. That's what the OS needs to do.
If you were to go forward and do it anyway, you would have to make a lot of assumptions about how the user configured the keyboard in the OS. For instance, you would probably have to require the user have configured a German QWERTZ layout, as that's the target audience and the most likely setup of their OSes provided they don't use a Neo2 layout already. But this would make the so-configured keyboard nearly unusable with different keyboard layouts in the OS or while in the BIOS setup, as they are not simple key-swaps.
The keyboard would then have to keep track of modifier states and other stuff and send out not just single key codes, but also synthesized modifier key presses for some keys, according to what character is specified to be produced. That in turn would make pressing some keys simultaneously impossible as some keys would require synthesized modifiers and others not, which will annoy gamers.
Also don't forget that there's not just only one German layout in the OS. Even when you stick to a single OS (let's say Windows), you can have different variants that have slight differences in behavior. The keyboard cannot possibly account for all those situations and thus will work incorrectly when presented with a variant it wasn't designed for.
In the end doing Neo2 in hardware to remap to a more traditional layout would likely just elicit a lot of support requests and disappointed users and so I believe it's not worth it.
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