I am using the Silakka54 keyboard with great pleasure. I configured the keyboard in such a way that I am using the Colemak-DH layout for English. However, I also speak other languages which do not use the Latin alphabet. For those languages, the operating system deals with translating the key presses. The problem is that my keyboard sends key signals according to the Colemak-DH layout while the system expects the QWERTY layout. Ergo, I get nonsense when I type.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s say that pressing “L” on the QWERTY keyboard corresponds to the letter “Λ” being typed out. Since Colemak-DH moves the location of “L” to the “U” key, in order to type that character again, I’d have to press “U” on QWERTY, not “L” anymore. This breaks the layout.

One of the solutions I can think of is to make a macro that switches the keyboard over to a QWERTY layout and toggles the language change in the system. However, that would require me to reconfigure home row mods and other keys twice. Is there a more elegant solution for this problem, such as allowing the keyboard to send Unicode symbols? My keyboard uses VIAL for the firmware, by the way.

  • Victor@lemmy.world
    3·
    5 days ago

    Since Colemak-DH moves the location of “L” to the “U” key, in order to type that character again, I’d have to press “U” on QWERTY, not “L” anymore.

    This was a bit hard to follow, but don’t you find that if you press the L key to get an L when you type in English, it would also make sense to get a Λ on that same key? It’s a capital lambda, right? They are equivalent?

    My tip would be to just learn Colemak in the other languages as well. Consistency. 👍 Maybe that’s a bad tip for reasons I don’t understand yet. 😁

    Maybe I also just don’t fully understand the problem here.