Runic keycap layout

Regarding palm keys:

I know that the physical structure of the regular keys and the location of the LED are a huge determinant of the size, shape and position of each key’s label. Isn’t that the case for the palm keys as well? If the palm keys have an off-center LED, that would make it very hard to put translucent markings on the palm keys and make them look good. Am I wrong?

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I actually slightly tweaked the locations of the LEDs on the palm keys so they’re “horizontally” centered on the bottom half of the keyswitch. It should not be a big deal.

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I know we’re not really clear on what we’re having on the palm keys, or even if we’re sticking solely to Linear A, but just to reinvigorate things how about one of:

U+1070F, U+10710 or U+10711 on one, and
U+1070C on another?

Sorry, can’t drop in the symbols on current machine - here’s the unicode link for those that need it.

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I finally found the time to make a few images with an assortment of the suggested palm key symbols. I have not yet been systematic; I’m sure there are several that people requested that I haven’t done yet, but hopefully, this will be a good start:

First up: “handplanes” (actually “dogs”, if I understand correctly):

Next: “chanukiot” / “candelabra”:

Ensuite: “not palm trees”:

Followed by: “miscellaneous tree-ish symbols”:

Then, I took the “scales” glyph, turned it on its side, and mirrored the triangles to make it look a bit butterfly-ish: “la balance du papillon”:

For comparison, the Keyboardio butterfly (hollow-wing version), which I still like the best:

I have attempted to center all of these on the spot where I think the LED will be. If the labels are centered on the key, they probably won’t look as good when backlit, but I’m really just guessing.

Please send me a message if there’s a particular symbol or set of symbols you’d like me to make an image of, which I haven’t already done. I don’t want to make all possible combinations, so these are just a sample to facilitate a decision; they can of course be recombined and rearranged.

And @jesse, let me know if I’m using up too much storage on the server by uploading these images – I can find other ways of distributing them, of course.

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By the way, does anybody else get the same optical illusion that I see, where some of the symbols look like they’re not quite aligned with the major axis of the elliptical button?

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Yes, I see that too. I accept that they are correct, but they look like they are angled wrong.

All of the options are acceptable in my opinion, though I like the butterflies the best.

On the actual palm keys, this might not be noticeable — or it might be worse — because they’re not symmetrical in three dimensions.

Looks like Discourse has a dedicated CDN, so unlikely to ‘fill up’ – unless they impose artificial limits…

I’m surprised, my favorite out of that list is “chanukiot” / “candelabra”; followed closely by “not palm trees”. :smile:

Far and away my least favorite is “la balance du papillon”.

And the more I see it, the more I come around to @jesse’s position on reserving the keyboardio logo for understated branding. It increasingly just doesn’t look “right” on the palm keys.

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I kind of like “not palm trees” with “miscellaneous tree-ish symbols” - i.e. 1064B with 10695 (sorry merlin!) They seem better suited to pair with each other for some reason. Funny how different they all look once they’re on the keycap layout rather than the huge list on the unicode page.

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What about a grid of dots where each dot is the width of the lining for the pictograms? Perhaps having any typography or imagery on the palm keys is the wrong way to go.

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upvote for chanukiot" / "candelabra and miscellaneous tree-ish symbols, (left tree-ish) looks like a “Y” with lollipops on the ends.

I fear that I erred in putting the captions above the images instead of below. The “Y” with lollipops is “not palm trees”, actually. I hope my ambiguous labelling hasn’t caused too much confusion.

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So you’re saying I actually like handplanes? And “Not Palm Trees”? And Not Candelabra, and misc tree-ish symbols.

I must say that I very much like the ‘Not palm trees’ choice, especially given that the left symbol reminds me of the option symbol on Mac keyboards. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_key )

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Really liking the left “not palm tree” symbol. Not so much the right one.

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I think my favourite out of this set are the “not palm trees”, but like @Simon-Claudius, I find the left considerably more likeable than the right. My second favourite are the “misc trees”, and the situation is similar: love the left one, not so much the right one. Perhaps a variant with the left of “misc trees” on the right, with the left “not palm tree”?

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I didn’t intend for the “not palm trees” and “miscellaneous” images to be taken as sets that should go together; I just wanted to get a bunch of symbols up there.

It looks like people generally like the olive tree symbol (the “Y with lollipops”). I do have a concern about that one, however. Because so much of it is a centered vertical line, if we put it centered horizontally on the keycap, it will line up with the webbing underneath. That webbing might block enough light from the LED to detract from the appearance. I’ve made an image to help us get some idea of what it might look like. Mind you, I’m really just guessing here:

I made the background white, and the webbing a translucent grey, with a little bit of blur, and turned the symbols into holes in the oval keycaps, so you can see through. On the right side I added a “light” (a red circle with a lot of blur) underneath the webbing layer. I used @algernon’s suggested symbols (if I understood correctly), both of which might suffer from this potential problem.

I think it’s probably fine, but it may be worth considering. My own favorite is the “chanukiot”, which doesn’t have a vertical line in the center, and ought to be mostly immune to the webbing problem, but it’s not a very strong favorite, and the only one I’m feeling that I really don’t like is the “fig tree” (the right palm in “not palm trees”).

There’s one other symbol I’ll mock up (the “wheat/barley” one), which gave me another idea; we could rotate the palm key symbol so it’s not aligned with the long axis of the ellipse. This will probably look better with some of them than with others.

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(I had a saved incomplete draft reply from weeks ago for @fishheadsoup, here it is:)
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