Printing-wise, I think that’s it. And yes, when there’s news to report, you’ll have it.
That’s what I understood, but I meant other things too. It’s influencing decisions (at least for me!) on preferences for key placement, potentially including stuff that may be printed. (This isn’t related to the runic stuff of course, sorry!)
Since Christmas is only two and a half weeks away, how about we put up a poll between Bauman, Linear A, and Mende? These three seem like the favourites so far, and I’d limit the poll to a finite number of proposals. I’d also close the poll on the 19th, that gives us plenty of time to vote, and to improve the proposals still. And there’ll be about a week between closing the polls and Christmas, so J&K can say the final word, and the winning proposal can be further fine tuned.
What do you think? Any objections?
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I guess I’d better get my less-rough version of the Linear A layout done soon!
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Summary - bamum, linear a, mende up for proposal/poll
Can we get a brief history of the font (again pls)? I recall reading on the other thread that one of these is some ancient language and another one is still in use by some tribe somewhere on this planet.
Also if @jesse could chime and and let us know which would (in theory) look best laser cut, and I’m not saying subjective best, but quality of the lasering.
Thanks.
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Accidentally posted this in the wrong thread, oops:
Linear A is an ancient script, Bamum is a script that was used in Cameroon, but apparently hasn’t been used since the 30s, Kikakui is by a very small amount of people in Sierra Leone.
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I’m still working on a better version of the Linear A layout, but the symbols won’t be radically different. I’ll probably try replacing some of the more complex ones with simpler ones, and I might make some adjustments to the line width and the corner roundness. If I get it done in the next day or two, I’ll post it here.
I recommend making this line bold, larger font, I had to read it twice to check I understood the way I was supposed to vote.
" the higher the number, the more you like the proposal. "
To be more specific about the history:
Linear A is an ancient (c. 2500 BCE) Minoan (Greek) script, which is famously still undeciphered. It’s related to Linear B, a later script used by Mycenaeans, which was deciphered in the mid-twentieth century.
Bamum script was invented by the king of the Bamum people in western Cameroon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It started as a pictographic system, and became more like a syllabary, but fell out of use by the 1930s. There may be a project that is currently working to revive the Bamum script, but their website hasn’t been updated in almost three years.
Mende Kikakui script was invented by an Islamic scholar in Sierra Leone for the Mende language in the early twentieth century. Like Bamum, it’s a syllabary for an agglutinative language. Kikakui was largely replaced by a Latin-based alphabet, but is still in use by ~500 people.
Symbolically, each of these works well for the Keyboardio Model 01, for those of us who care about such things. The two modern ones are new inventions for a type of language that is not best served by an alphabet, and the ancient one is undeciphered, which fits the idea behind the Runic keycaps well.
On another note, there is the question of cultural appropriation, which we haven’t discussed much, but which might be an issue for some of us when it comes to Mende & Bamum (everyone who knew the ancient Minoan script has been dead for more than 3000 years, though).
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I’m not sure this was the one @Jesse was referring to, but I have an immediate swastika association. Would make me feel uncomfortable having it on my keyboard (or anything for that matter).
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Thanks @merlin.
In light of this information, I have this unease with cultural appropriation, + if some of the symbols have certain meanings that aren’t known to me, but are indeed known to a few hundred in Sierra Leone, and the fact that while I may never visit Sierra Leone, it is entirely possible that I may meet someone from Sierra Leone that actually can understand Mende makes me less likely to vote in its favor.
Stylistically, I like the simplicity of MK (Mende Kikakui) and BN (Bamum Noto) more than Linear A (LA), but I do like that LA is largely not in common use, undeciphered, and the fact that there aren’t any Minoans around to claim foul makes this a less complicated vote.
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The not-quite-swastika was addressed earlier, by @TimNN: Runic keycap layout
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My thoughts exactly, I prefer Linear A for the same reasons.
@TimNN, or somene else: can you post a PNG of the Noto Bamum? I’ll replace the image in the poll then. I tried to save the SVG, and export it, but that didn’t do it any justice, nor did a screenshot. I won’t have time to fiddle with it today, so if anyone can post an updated Bamum, that’d be great.
Thanks in advance!
Edit: Meanwhile, I updated the picture with the one posted on keyboardio’s Twitter. If its good enough for twitter, good enough here too, at least for the time being.
Here’s a new, improved version of the Linear A layout:
Original svg file on Dropbox, for anyone who wants that.
Note: Lots of tweaking is possible with this, because I’m not really using a font; it’s all paths in the svg.
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@TimNN’s version of the Noto Bamum layout looks unbalanced to me; too many dots on the left side, not enough on the right. Easily fixed, though.
Thanks, updated the poll image!
Ah, right. Thanks. It’s my favourite version now.
So, I finally had the time to update the web version I made of the bamum layout:
- You can now easily swap rune positions by clicking on one rune and then another
- This will create a new entry in your browser history, so you can use Backward / Forward in your Browser as undo / redo
- Also the orientation of two of the runes were fixed.
(As Mentioned before, this was tested on chrome & iOS)
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Amazing work! Loving the amount of enthusiasm generated by this runic layout 
Firstly, I love them all. I think Bamum is visually my favourite (despite being the original proposer of Mende) - I prefer the clean minimalism it offers over Mende and Linear A …
However having said that, I definitely agree with the cultural appropriation thing. And there is something totally irresistible about using an alphabet which is still undeciphered thousands of years after it was created Somehow that feels like the perfect choice for a hacker keyboard, especially given that the whole point of the runic layout is to baffle other people 
When they first gawp at it and ask “what the hell do those symbols mean?!” I would prefer to be able to say “actually it’s an alphabet from 2500 B.C.E. which was never deciphered” than “it was created for the Bamum language by King Njoya of Cameroon at the turn of the 19th century”.
So in summary, personally I think Linear A is my #1 choice despite the appearance, but I’m concerned that the complexity might be too much for the laser etching process.
The ideal (fantasy) scenario for me would be to take the existing Linear A symbols and clean the style up a bit so that they are more minimalist, whilst not deviating so far from the original as to lose authenticity. But I’m not sure if that’s possible, and even if it was, I doubt anyone has time to do it …
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