Taking on "Alternative keyboard layouts"

[codemonkeymike]

So we all know wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts is a truly impossible to follow page. I have been wanting to rewrite it for a while but am getting around to it now.

My idea:
Level 2 => Language the layout was originally made for
Level 3 => Creator and if creator only made one layout then the layout is the level 3
Level 4 (optional) => Layout for creators who made multiple layouts

Level 2 is organized by the most layouts to the least (1. English>2. German>3. French this seems to be what will be expected)
Level 3 is organized by date created (in the case of having a level 4 date of the oldest layout)
Level 4 (optional) is organized by date created

I will be using an infobox template to have each layout include: Creator, License, Introduced, Link, 3 Key Layout Lines. Infobox colour can be used for layouts that are superseded by the creators own work (red) or active as considered by its developer (green)

Lastly hopefully I can rewrite the text content for a few layouts then get some people to help based on what I have written, maybe, hopefully.

I think non standard key layout keyboard layouts should be on another page, which I may get around to doing myself as well. IE: Ergodox Colemak, Typematrix Dvorak

What I need help with now:
How do I define an area that I want for a section of content, as in I want everything under my level 3 title to the next level 3 title to be contained in a box with the height of the tallest piece of content. You can see I achieved this using line breaks in the initial prototype but this is odiously not optimal.

Initial prototype wiki/Letter_layout

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The standard approach is to force a new section using:

{{-}}

You would place this before each heading to clear anything that is "floating" to either side of the page. It's like clear: both in CSS.

It's still ugly and sub-optimal but not anywhere near as bad as manual line breaks.

By the way, you might want to consider a custom infobox template, so that you can give label1/data1, label2/data2 etc. For example:

[wiki]Template:Infobox dkeyboard[/wiki]

These templates simply map each of label1/data1, label2/data2 to a name, so instead of this:

| label1 = Creator
| data1 = August Dvorak and William L Dealey

you'd write:

| creator = August Dvorak and William L Dealey

[codemonkeymike]

Ah that clear float fix worked well, thanks. I will make the template for key layout later today, does all the data seem right? Also I am thinking of putting the image of layer-0 of each layout above the authors name in each template box. Although I am unsure if that will be too small or not.

[codemonkeymike]

How do I make a new template?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

If you put in the address of a nonexistent page, you're prompted to create it. For example, you could click the link above to "Infobox dkeyboard", then add "layout" to the end of the URL and press enter, then click "Create" at the top right.

Alternatively, simply search for the name of the template (e.g. "Template:Infobox dkeyboardlayout") and then the search results page will give you a redlink to click to create it.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

One thing I would note, referring to the "incredibly poor design" of QWERTY sounds very biased.

[codemonkeymike]

One thing I would note, referring to the "incredibly poor design" of QWERTY sounds very biased.

Indeed, I haven't gone about rewriting the articles attached to the old page yet. I am no master of words but I think I can do a bit better then what was there in the first place.

Edit: did write up a few of the layouts descriptions

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Ah, right, I didn't realise you'd copied that from the original page.

I do think that the page would benefit from larger diagrams, but they would need to be in a consistent format. Export from Keyboard Layout Editor to SVG would be ideal, but then you end up with the horrible font rendering that rsvg is currently providing.

[codemonkeymike]

I was thinking something similar, although the approach I was taking was looking for a tool with a liberal license that allowed me to use the resulting images on the wiki. This layout tester has a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license which would mean we would only need attribution and are free to share the images as we please on the wiki. I am open to other suggestions though. As for the diagram position I am a bit in the woods with that one:
* At the top of the article would give the clearest picture without needing enlargement
* A thumbnail in the info box would probably look the cleanest
* A gallery at the bottom of a section would provide the most flexibility

[codemonkeymike]

Ok so I went with thumbnails and it seems to look OK. Hard to tell at a glance what the layout actually is but if someone wants to fill me in on how it could be better I am all ears. I re wrote most of the section and added some new ones.
* Dvorak, Colemak, Arensito, Workman, and Neo deserve a full rewrite but I just proofread them for now
* AdNW and Norman need a write up
* Michael Capewell deserves an introduction
* A better intro for the article is needed

wiki/Letter_layout

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I am not sure if the images should be inline, or to the side. If you do want them to the side (or if that is the consensus) you should add the images directly to the infobox, like you see with other infobox types, as that would be tidier.

[codemonkeymike]

Ok, wiki/Letter_layout is in a done state. So The next step was to replace wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts with wiki/Letter_layout . How should I go about this, it is not easy to find any information to merge wiki pages.

[tactica]

Merging is documented in MediaWiki.org here, but a sysop must do it as this requires a special privilege regular users don't have. I have never done this but apparently merging these two pages will simply add the following changes from the old page to the log of your new page:

(prev) 19:06 10 jan 2018 . . Tactica (talk | contributions | block) (40 205 bytes) (Removed calls to {{key press}} for consistency.)
(prev) 20:24 11 dec 2017 . . Iandoug (talk | contributions | block) (40 247 bytes) (Added split case layout designs)
(prev) 08:07 23 oct 2017 . . Yellowfour (talk | contributions | block) (37 736 bytes) (→‎BEAKL (2016): link to main article; update to BEAKL 9)
(prev) 00:45 15 oct 2017 . . Daniel beardsmore (talk | contributions | block) (37 768 bytes) (Split out from keyboard layouts; still a confusing mess)

Should I cross fingers and press the big red button?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

At least being a wiki, you can roll back the change if it creates a huge mess (I have no idea how it's going to automate such a merge).

[codemonkeymike]

Seems I can't do it, if someone else can do it then please do. If all else fails I will just do it the way I know you're not supposed to in a wiki.

[tactica]

Done. Apparently everything went as expected, let me know when it is OK to delete the old page.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Was something supposed to have happened besides wiping the revision history for alternative keyboard layouts?

(Honestly I have no idea what on earth you stood to gain from trying to mash the pages together with a spork.)

[tactica]

Those changes are now listed as the initial history of the new page. That's what was supposed to happen, methinks. In a way, it's like if the old page was updated, it's just that the changes appear on the new page.

Why the history of the old page had to be messed with, I don't know either... Maybe a consistency thing, in order not to have a set of changes listed twice.

@codemonkeymike

As soon as you confirm there's nothing left on the old page you want to recycle, I'll delete it. I suppose the next step should be renaming the new page to the old known name in order to keep links working.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Except now we still have two pages (after a merge there should only be one, by definition) and deleting the old page would remove a lot of information that has not gone anywhere. The new page is not a replacement for the old one; all you've managed to do is screw up the history of the old page, which appears not to be reversible (the "Unmerge" option is a mirage).

[codemonkeymike]

Yah I think the course of action is to undo the merge, copy the markdown from the new page to the old page, turn new page into a redirect to the old page. We loose the history of me making the new page, but in reality its just me and an commit from Daniel. I think we can live with loosing that history.

[tactica]

The merge is now undone.

BTW the special page is named "MergeHistory" for a reason - it does merge revision histories, not actual content like SVN, etc. do. You may not like it, but it does work as documented.

[codemonkeymike]

I copied over the markdown from the new page that I was making to the old page. The edit history of the "new work" I did will be lost this way but that is not the worst thing in the world. Should I delete the new page (key layouts) as it was essentially just used as a scratch pad and has no backlinks

ooo, I found this site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170102201 ... /kyb04.htm
Interesting historical tidbits

[tactica]

I copied over the markdown from the new page that I was making to the old page. The edit history of the "new work" I did will be lost this way but that is not the worst thing in the world. Should I delete the new page (key layouts) as it was essentially just used as a scratch pad and has no backlinks

I did that just now. As a regular user I don't think you would be able to delete it anyway.

ooo, I found this site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170102201 ... /kyb04.htm
Interesting historical tidbits

As long as the resulting page does not become a mess again...

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It's clearly not worth me wasting any more time on this as no-one's paying attention. The entire of the text for AdNW is gone. Malt is gone. BEAKL is gone. A large part of the page has just been summarily obliterated with no explanation. I have no idea why anyone would want to destroy so much information, but since no sense is going into this, do whatever you wish.

[codemonkeymike]

It's clearly not worth me wasting any more time on this as no-one's paying attention. The entire of the text for AdNW is gone. Malt is gone. BEAKL is gone. A large part of the page has just been summarily obliterated with no explanation. I have no idea why anyone would want to destroy so much information, but since no sense is going into this, do whatever you wish.

The plan was to make another page for layouts made for ergonomic layouts. Don't sound like I just kicked your dog, there is a reason the page layout was changed, there is no reasonable way to add Malt and Beakl to the page and have it still make sense. The AdNW writeup was just a copy pasta from their site (or maybe a blog). Beakl is made for ergonomic (type matrix I believe) keyboards and has its own page already wiki/BEAKL . Malt was for the Maltron. These will get homes.


Edit:
Anyway AdNW article was added back in with a bunch of edits. I don't know how to restrict images sizes though. The one image is far too large

[Daniel Beardsmore]

You can't just destroy all the page contents in the hope that one day you might do something with them — you may not ever get around to it, and in which case who else would know where all the material went? However, I will leave you to butcher it however you please. It's not my responsibility.

[codemonkeymike]

You can't just destroy all the page contents in the hope that one day you might do something with them — you may not ever get around to it, and in which case who else would know where all the material went? However, I will leave you to butcher it however you please. It's not my responsibility.

The content is there in the history, you can still view the old page. Most of the stuff that is not there right now is just biased crap or content that doesn't belong on this page. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow then someone can revert the page to how it was.

[tactica]

Anyway AdNW article was added back in with a bunch of edits. I don't know how to restrict images sizes though. The one image is far too large

I'm not even sure Adnwqa2.png is so useful, IMO the original image is far too small to provide details. Anyway, the "thumb" keyword was missing in both pictures, so changing the absolute horizontal size was being ignored and the wiki would use the original sizes no matter what.

[codemonkeymike]

We are in the early days of creating the ergonomic keyboard layouts page wiki/Ergonomic_keyboard_layouts . Mostly just a copypasta from the old alternate layouts page.