Bug 17467

You are composing entire layout from the scratch. Would it make sense to include some existing dvorak variant and make the patch smaller?
Also, would it be ok to name the variant just "dvorak"?

Thanks

This proposal is very interesting. I was the chairman of the workgroup, under Kotoistus, which drafted the new Finnish keyboard layout standard (SFS 5966), and I also maintain the current version of the layout for X11 on my site. I wonder if we couldn't cooperate a bit and try to create a layout for Dvorak which conforms to the new Finnish standard. A big advantage would be that we could have a Dvorak layout which would then support a large repertoire of characters (all latin letters in Europe etc.) and symbols. I don't use a Dvorak layout myself, so I don't have the ability to judge the other merits or dismerits of such a project.
My site is http://kotoistus.tksoft.com/ 

(In reply to comment #0)
> Created an attachment (id=18722) [details]
> The ArkkuDvorak section of the symbols/fi file
> 
> Addition of a dvorak variant to the Finnish layout. Based on ArkkuDvorak
> http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kkuloves/dvorak.shtml
> 
> Hope it could be added to the symbols/fi file.
> 

I don't really understand what it means in practice to conform with the new Finnish standard. Do you mean that the same symbols would be found under the dvorak variant?

The reason why I posted this proposal was simple. I decided to give a go for the arkkudvorak layout and still have other variants available for my wife with a simple click on the flag in KDE. So I had to add it manually since there wasn't a dvorak variant for the Finnish layout, at least in my Debian Etch installation. Basically I have not created anything, just made this proposal for a variant that Kimmo Kulovesi already has created. The arkku-prefix is there to identify which Finnish dvorak variant it is. I understand this is a little strange but I don't know how else the additional three letters could be figured out. I presume this problem exists for any dvorak variant for a language with special letters, if it is to maintain the original dvorak layout for letters a-z. I don't have a problem renaming it to just dvorak, but how could the letters å,ä,ö,Å,Ä,Ö be found if there's no hint of the kind of dvorak variant?
I would just like to see it added in one form or another so that it's easy to select for anyone. I have never worked on anything regarding keyboard layouts so I don't really know how the process goes. I just thought that it's a gaping hole in the Finnish keyboard not to have any dvorak variants included. The details of the layout itself can be found at the creators website at http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kkuloves/dvorak.shtml

OK, my bad. I thought you were also the author of the layout.

Anyway, it is possible to inherit from another Dvorak layout and just alter the äöå characters for the Finnish layout OR implement the ArkkuDvorak layout as-is. I haven't compared the layout with those found in other locales, so I can't say which option is the best. 

I think it would be good to either (a) add a layout with only those three extra letters (plus maybe s with caron) and inherit the rest OR (b) create a new Dvorak layout which has all key positions as they are in Dvorak, and copy level 3 and 4 values from the new Finnish standard layout. The  engraved character, not the key position, should be used when deciding the assignments. However, since I am not a Dvorak user, and don't have one myself, I can't say if this solution would work. I would like to hear the opinion of someone who actually has a Finnish version of the Dvorak keyboard in use. Also, is there a common Finnish Dvorak keyboard or are they custom built by users? 

I emailed "Arkku" (Kimmo Kulovesi) and asked him about this as well.

> I emailed "Arkku" (Kimmo Kulovesi) and asked him about this as well.

Thanks for e-mailing me. I don't really have a strong opinion about this, one way or another, but I'd like to point out that practically every (regular) key in my layout has special characters defined for Alt Gr and Shift-Alt Gr combinations. (That's essentially why the whole layout is defined from scratch; there's something defined for every key anyhow.) These special characters include the s with a caron (š) under Alt Gr - s, etc, but most of them have just been thrown in there at random. It would probably be better to sync these with some “standard” specification, e.g. that for the Finnish QWERTY layout (if such are now defined therein). 

The Finnish standard (SFS 5966) layout is the same one currently defined for QWERTY in the Finnish symbols file. Synchronizing them would be very desirable. We could then say that the DVORAK layout can be used to input all European languages which use the latin script (or at least the official EU ones). I hope you have time to look into it at some point. I will be glad to help where I can.

It seems another dvorak variant for fi was added recently:

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/commit/?id=57594e7e2de293ad3bf317a935e0726232a80445

Perhaps this bug can be closed now? Thanks.

> Perhaps this bug can be closed now? Thanks.
So, what do other Finnish people think? Close this one?

Well, for anyone using the ArkkuDvorak Finnish Dvorak variant layout, the other Finnish Dvorak variant linked above is largely useless, since it moves keys around, i.e., it would require willingness to learn a different arrangement of keys.

Meanwhile the advantage of the ArkkuDvorak layout is that it is completely backwards compatible with the US Dvorak layout (when used on an international keyboard), which is probably how most of us Finns first encounter a Dvorak layout, since that is the only one that traditionally ships with operating systems. Since the physical keyboards used in Finland have more keys than the ones used in the US, the US layout leaves one key unspecified - this key the only one changed by the ArkkuDvorak layout when used without modifiers or with only shift.

Myself and most Finnish Dvorak users that I know use the ArkkuDvorak layout, so from that point of view I strongly disagree that a different Dvorak variant would suffice to close this bug simply because it happens to be Finnish. Disclaimer: I am the author of the ArkkuDvorak layout.

Thank you Kimmo! Troy, Marko, will we have consensus here?

(In reply to Sergey V. Udaltsov from comment #10)
> Thank you Kimmo! Troy, Marko, will we have consensus here?

My main concerns here are that we don't end up having N different Dvorak variants for Finnish (ok, as long as they are in base.extras, they do not clutter interfaces for casual users). Since I don't use Dvorak myself I thought the earlier variant which is named as "Finnish Dvorak" in symbols/fi was somewhat established or even official variant, now it sounds like ArkkuDvorak might be more widely used thus making the "Finnish Dvorak" naming a bit odd, not sure should it be adjusted or not to make it sound less official.

The second concern is the one Troy brought up above earlier, have you Kimmo reviewed the official SFS 5966 standard layout (included nowadays also in symbols/fi), do you see any room for alignment there wrt special keys?

In any case, I'm certainly not against ArkkuDvorak in principle, it would probably be a very good addition, let's just clarify these few aspects to get everyone on the same page.

Thanks.

re. SFS 5966, adapting it to the ArkkuDvorak layout is problematic since the design goal is compatibility with the US Dvorak (to support being able to type on a pre-installed US Dvorak layout on computers where installing a new layout is not possible, among other things).

Most of the SFS 5966 additions concern the numeric keys and special characters, which already differ significantly between Finnish QWERTY and the English layouts, i.e., it is possible to take the keycaps from a US or international English keyboard and arrange them to form the US Dvorak and ArkkuDvorak layouts (excepting the one unspecified key). The same is not possible with the Finnish QWERTY keyboard due to keys differing not only in placement, but also in combination of symbols.

I recognise the attraction of defining a "real" Finnish Dvorak variant by rearranging the keys of the SFS 5966 layout, which also allow physically rearranging a Finnish keyboard to the correct layout. However, this would render the US Dvorak layout practically unusable for tasks such as coding and to some extent command-line, both of which make heavy use of "special characters".

Of course if there were an official Finnish Dvorak variant, it would surely start shipping with all major systems. Sticking with a US-based layout may even hurt the development of such a variant... That being said, if one were to develop a non-QWERTY Finnish layout incompatible with US Dvorak, why not also move _all_ the keys around to optimise it for the Finnish language, i.e., why should it be a Dvorak layout at all?

In any case, just as many Finnish programmers switch the special characters on the QWERTY layout to better locations (e.g., to match the US QWERTY layout), I prefer to stick to the US Dvorak layout for those. However, other parts of the SFS 5966 include new characters under Alt Gr + the letter keys, most of which could be easily adopted, since currently the ArkkuDvorak layout is largely random for most of the Alt Gr + letter combinations.

(In some parts I disagree with the SFS 5966 placement, though, e.g., the š is not entirely unused in Finnish but is absent from the layout in favour of using dead keys to produce it, whereas they have placed the German ß on Alt Gr + s and nothing on Alt Gr + B. I have chosen to place š under Alt Gr + s, and ß under Alt Gr + b due to visual similarity.)

(In reply to Kimmo Kulovesi from comment #12)
> 
> In any case, just as many Finnish programmers switch the special characters
> on the QWERTY layout to better locations (e.g., to match the US QWERTY
> layout), I prefer to stick to the US Dvorak layout for those. However, other
> parts of the SFS 5966 include new characters under Alt Gr + the letter keys,
> most of which could be easily adopted, since currently the ArkkuDvorak
> layout is largely random for most of the Alt Gr + letter combinations.

Yes, this was the part I was wondering; for example, for the L key instead of the Greek lambda/Lambda dead_stroke would be provided. But it's of course up to you.

> (In some parts I disagree with the SFS 5966 placement, though, e.g., the š
> is not entirely unused in Finnish but is absent from the layout in favour of
> using dead keys to produce it, whereas they have placed the German ß on Alt
> Gr + s and nothing on Alt Gr + B. I have chosen to place š under Alt Gr + s,
> and ß under Alt Gr + b due to visual similarity.)

I think the background was that since SFS 5966 is meant for making it possible to write Nordic languages there are other letters using caron as diacritic than just s so it is produced with dead keys like others, thus leaving AltGr + s for ß (FWIW, see also https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libX11/tree/nls/fi_FI.UTF-8/Compose.pre).

Thanks.

SFS 5966 had the goal of making it possible to enter all latin based (forget exact wording) European scripts, which includes more than a thousand characters. We also made an effort to include as many other latin based scripts as possible (e.g. Vietanamese). One of the reasons was to take full advantage of UTF-8, which is now the official standard character set for Finnish. This way the widest possible range of names can be entered with the Finnish keyboard layout. 
Previously only ISO-8859-1 charset was used, making it impossible to enter many commonly used names.

I personally find it inconvenient to use the plain Finnish keyboard, since it is ill suited for programming and console work on UNIX, due to many of the US keyboard characters being placed under multiple key presses. However, programmers are not the main audience of the SFS keyboard layout. 
I can therefore fully sympathize with Kimmo's design goals which start with the US Dvorak layout. If he has designed a fully working layout which meets programmers needs, it might make sense to name it "Programmers Dvorak (ArkkuDvorak)." This way a key design goal is stated in the name, and further development has some guideline to reference. The other layout can have some other design goals. Of course, if the majority of Finnish Dvorak keyboard users are actually programmers, then it would make sense to make Arkku the default and name the other one something else, indicative of its own design goals. 
I would find it sad if a less used variant became the widely implemented default.

As an aside, a fully programmer optimized QWERTY keyboard would be based on the US keyboard, with extra keys added for ä and ö, and possibly also for å. These characters are so common, that if one writes a lot of Finnish, they need their own key positions. The only workable solution would be a keyboard with an extra column of keys, without sacrificing the size of the enter, shift etc. keys (as is done on some keyboards which try to cram in extra keys). This wasn't on the table when designing the SFS keyboard, as the goal was to provide a layout for existing Finnish QWERTY keyboards.

The primary design goal was/is full backwards compatibility with the US Dvorak, i.e., I (and presumably many others) first tried Dvorak using the US Dvorak that ships with nearly every OS, which had the side effect of making the US layout (when mapped to a Finnish keyboard) already familiar by the time that typing Finnish became a concern.

Thus, the layout's suitability for programming is really a property of the US layout, and I would be hesitant to call it "Programmer's Dvorak" (especially as it may imply that it would be less suitable for non-programmers, which I don't think it is).

That being said, I agree that the name "ArkkuDvorak" is a bit unfortunate at this point, but probably somewhat recognisable among current Finnish Dvorak users. (Originally I just went with the eponymous naming because when I made it around 1999 I didn't even know if I would stick with the layout in the long run, let alone if there would ever be other users.)

I'm not opposed to adding some further explanation to the name for new users, e.g., if the layout selection has "Finnish" as a category then "ArkkuDvorak (US compatible)" could be the layout.

I'm not sure what's the most efficient way to conclude this but I'm CC'ing Pekka Oinas who submitted the current "Finnish Dvorak" earlier (see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102055) and could perhaps comment how widely his variant might be in use.

(In reply to Marko Myllynen from comment #17)
> I'm not sure what's the most efficient way to conclude this but I'm CC'ing
> Pekka Oinas who submitted the current "Finnish Dvorak" earlier (see
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102055) and could perhaps
> comment how widely his variant might be in use.

Thanks for the CC.

As for how many users my layout has, the answer is simply "probably not many". It's been a personal layout of mine for many years, and I only decided to publish it last fall when I noticed there is no existing Finnish Dvorak variant to be found anywhere in XKB, and the only other Finnish Dvorak variant in general is ArkkuDvorak.

As for the naming, I must confess I did not put much thought into that. It was not my intention to pitch it as an "official" Finnish Dvorak layout (though I would be delighted to see an official Finnish Dvorak variant, regardless of what shape or form it takes). Originally I called the layout "Finnish Custom Dvorak", but I thought that the "custom" part would sound a bit silly if it was to be submitted to XKB, and simply left it out. It is, after all, a Dvorak layout intended for typing Finnish. 

I decided to roll my own layout because I did not think the ArkkuDvorak compromise of having ä and ö behind a second- and third-level modifier to avoid relocating a single key's worth of special characters was worth it. I also did not quite like the Svorak variant, because I felt it made *too many* compromises in order to accommodate the extra symbols, and because å isn't all that useful for Finnish.

For a "normal" user, having special punctuation such as colon and semicolon and special characters like less- and greater than on the first level isn't that big of a deal. Certainly it's less important than having regular letters of the alphabet on the first level. I believe my variant strikes a good balance in this, as it puts ä and ö on the first level with a minimal amount of reorganizing. Of course it is still a compromise solution, but short of adding extra keys, something has to be compromised in order to accomodate Finnish symbols onto the Dvorak layout in a reasonable fashion. I think this is acceptable; after all, the regular Finnish QWERTY layout also has a very different special key layout compared to other layouts. In fact, most layouts tend to have something unique about their special key placement.



I don't see a reason why the ArkkuDvorak layout could not be submitted into Extras as well. It almost certainly has more users than my layout, and has existed for almost two decades. Personally I do not much like the solution ArkkuDvorak offers — if Ä and Ö were to be placed under the second or third level, it would make much more sense to place them on the same key as A and O than it does to place them on the same key with each other and infringe the rule of "lower case letter with shift produces the equivalent upper case letter" — but nonetheless ArkkuDvorak has existed for a long time and has an userbase, which has to stand for something.

The best solution would obviously be an official Finnish Dvorak variant that somehow manages to please everyone, but that's unlikely to happen. For one, it would almost certainly have to make some significant compromise in the vowel cluster to accommodate å, because Swedish language support is a disproportionally big deal in Finnish politics (and would therefore no doubt bleed into any sort of national standardisation effort). It would also be difficult to justify a need for it because of Dvorak's marginal status.

Because of this, I think it would be best to create some sort of an informational website for Finnish Dvorak use, that introduces and distributes any and all Finnish Dvorak variants. Currently the representation of Finnish Dvorak layouts primarily consists of the ArkkuDvorak website at http://arkku.com/dvorak/, and a single blog post at http://www.kammo.net/dvorak-simplified-keyboard/. Having a simple informational website, a bit like http://aoeu.info/ for Svorak, might contribute to the visibility of Dvorak among Finnish typists.

I would like to add that the Finnish Dvorak layout I submitted shouldn't be considered the definitive Dvorak layout for Finnish. I agree that the naming is a bit deceiving in this regard, and am open for name suggestions (assuming renaming layouts is even reasonable; I'm not sure how existing users might be impacted).

Creating a layout that essentially reorganizes SFS 5966 is an interesting idea. As someone who does a fair bit of programming I'm not a big fan of the punctuation and special characters on the Finnish keyboard either, but reorganizing the SFS 5966 keyboard to a Dvorak layout could produce a good Finnish standard as the layout already shifts around the punctuation so that an extra key for Å is freed up.

There is a layout called sv_dvorak by Thomas Lundqvist (http://tlundqvist.org/sv_dvorak/) which does something quite similar to my layout with regards to the placement of Ä and Ö, and places Å to the top left of the keyboard on the QWERTY Q. This could be a good starting point for a reorganized SFS 5966 layout. Obviously it would dissatisfy programmers, but perhaps it could be a good solution for the common typist.

If there is ever to be a standard Finnish Dvorak, I believe this might be just the proper approach for it.

I'm glad to see this "bug" finally got some activity and discussion from seemingly the right people. Based on what has been written, I don't think we will find one Dvorak layout that will satisfy everyone. ArkkuDvorak has been great for me since I mostly type in English and do some programming here and there. Finnish is OK using this layout, Swedish is almost unbearable with the frequency of å, not to mention the uppercase versions of all three (Å,Ä,Ö). I honestly don't know if I'd recommend ArkkuDvorak to a person that writes a lot in either of those languages. That seems to have been the motivation for others to create their own variants, like Pekka Oinas mentioned earlier. The 'åäöÅÄÖ' problem got even more pronounced with my Kinesis Advantage keyboard, so hardware also matters.

That being said, I don't think most people choose Dvorak for its superiority in being optimized for Finnish or Swedish. Since it is not a default layout for any locale, people choose it out of curiosity and logical key placement. If one wanted to create a custom keyboard layout that is optimized for Finnish, it wouldn't look like Dvorak. Instead, it would find out statistically what the most common letters are and try to place them on alternating hands, just like Dvorak did for the English language. I'm sure people have created such layouts. Adoption is another thing. Since Dvorak is a well known alternative layout, and because Kimmo's ArkkuDvorak layout conforms to it 100%, I would say that for the discussion we have at hand (Finnish dvorak variant), his layout is a good candidate, unlike the ones that switched characters.

At the same time I would also be in favor of more Finnish/Swedish-friendly layouts for those who predominantly write in those languages. But I would refrain from calling those Dvorak if they deviate from the original. Pekka's idea of devoting a page for alternative keyboard layouts is good, whether or not they all can be made available via official channels. If the adoption of one alternative eventually becomes more popular than others, perhaps this topic can be revisited. 

Most importantly for me though, is that I have the ability to write in all three languages without switching layouts, plus a lot of other characters from other languages. Staying in the one layout that works for me is all that I want, even with the disadvantages of the occasional Finnish and Swedish typing. Besides, I really like the level 3 and 4 characters that Kimmo put into ArkkuDvorak, most of them found by accident. The ellipsis is my absolute favorite. That said, if the size of the layout is an issue, some of those Alt+Gr characters could probably be dropped, or conform to other layouts. I haven't tried any other Dvorak variants for Finnish/Swedish so I can't comment on the usability of them. But I can understand that every layout has its proponents; learning one takes time and once you get used to it, you don't want to change.

I would be curious to know how the dvorak layout discussions panned out for other languages. I'm sure all that use non-ASCII characters have had similar problems.

As a conclusion, I think there's a general consensus that ArkkuDvorak has its following due to having been around for so long, and although it's not perfect, it meets the needs for its users. If Pekka's layout was added to extras out of the blue without any discussion (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102055), I would think that a more established layout would deserve to be added as well. Just my thoughts.

(In reply to ove from comment #20)
> That being said, I don't think most people choose Dvorak for its superiority
> in being optimized for Finnish or Swedish. Since it is not a default layout
> for any locale, people choose it out of curiosity and logical key placement.
> If one wanted to create a custom keyboard layout that is optimized for
> Finnish, it wouldn't look like Dvorak. Instead, it would find out
> statistically what the most common letters are and try to place them on
> alternating hands, just like Dvorak did for the English language. I'm sure
> people have created such layouts.

There is a layout like this for Finnish known as DAS, which I believe is included in the base.xml for Finnish. I would raise two key points about this layout: (1) it follows the same distinction of vowels being typed on one hand and consonants on the other as Dvorak, though the sides are reversed (vowels on the right, as opposed to the left on Dvorak), and (2) according to the website at http://c.seres.fi/DAS.html, the eight "home keys" on DAS account for 68% of the letters in the Finnish language, whereas Dvorak's home keys account for 58% and QWERTY's for 34%. Of course this statistic completely ignores bigrams and other factors that also affect keymap ergonomics, but those are too complicated to include in a comment like this.

As an interesting curiosity, the home keys of the German Neo layout, designed with similar principles as Dvorak but for German, account for 62.55% of characters in the German language compared to Dvorak's 56.3%. For the French BÉPO keyboard, these numbers are 64.09% and 57.07% respectively, although it should be mentioned that French uses even more accented characters than Finnish does, which are present on BÉPO but absent on Dvorak. For English, the home keys on Dvorak cover 59.88% of the characters.

I digress, but the point I'm making is that Dvorak seems to quite functional for many European languages that use the Latin alphabet. It may have been originally optimized for English use, but it appears that much of that optimization could carry over to other languages as well. In today's world, where English is the online lingua franca (and by extension, the offline one, too), this ought to be a useful perk for many users. 

Ultimately I am not sure what to make of this, though. I chose Dvorak partly because I type a lot of English, partly because I was allured by the more ergonomic/comfortable key placement, and partly because I prefer the US layout arrangment of special characters for programming. However, I also wanted to have the Finnish characters easily accessible, which is why my layout is a compromise that works for me. Other people may want different compromises, and for a "regular" Finnish layout matching the special character keys (though not their positions) of the standard Finnish QWERTY keyboard would likely make more sense than sticking with the US layout.

Lots of unanswered questions on this topic. Perhaps it would be best to form some sort of a Finnish Dvorak user website or mailing list to organise and collect the various layouts and layout ideas, achieve some level of general acceptance on 2-3 different ones (eg. Finnish Programmer Dvorak and a regular Finnish Dvorak), and then once there's some form of a concrete userbase behind these layouts we should reconsider pushing for their inclusion into XKB. Perhaps even into the base layouts; after all, DAS keyboard is also there, and as far as I am aware it is not an official standard or anything.

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