I just made a couple of mockups based on the new template, trying to get a sense of what the top surfaces might actually look like. Here’s the QWERTY one:
I made a very rough Linear A version as well:
In order to get the latter down to the right size to fit, I ended up with thinner lines than we probably want. I’ll happily do some more work on this, but probably not until January, as I’ll be away from home for a while.
Here’s a link for anyone who wants to play with the source SVG.
Here’s a corrected version of the QWERTY mockup (I neglected the “num” key):
It will be pretty straightforward to do the same for Dvorak, Colemak, Workman, et cetera. I don’t know what state all of those ones are in at the moment.
Here’s an update to the Linear A labels. I replaced the symbols that I remembered people saying they didn’t like (“archer”, “shepherd”, “scales”) with more abstract ones, and repositioned many of the symbols on the keys, and tinkered with some to make them fit better. I also changed the butterfly logos on the palm keys, so the wings are just outlines:
I tried doing the body of the butterfly as an outline, but it’s narrow enough that I thought it just didn’t work right unless the line width was much, much thinner than all the other lines in the symbols.
Here’s another version, because @jesse said he’d like the butterfly key to be the same as on the QWERTY layout (I left the butterflies on the palm keys for the moment because I don’t know what to replace them with):
I’m not fond of it, for a few reasons. It’s smaller than the butterflies on the palm keys, and that makes it tricky to maintain the same line width as the other symbols unless I distort it more. It’s centered on the key, unlike everything else (and it’s too wide to fit in the corner), and yet it looks like just another pictogram, so it looks to me like it just doesn’t fit.
As I said before, I prefer the butterflies on the palm keys (I’d probably prefer it that way on the QWERTY keycaps, too, for that matter), but if we must have one on that key, I think it would look better with filled wings, not the outline. On the palm keys, I do think the outline wings look better, but I could go either way on that.
