Designing the ultimate NORDE Kit for GMK

[Wodan]

Hey pals!

Every time there is a nice and fancy GMK set dropping, I get all sad because it's almost guaranteed there will be no ISO-DE support. No support for any locale but US/UK ...

Unfortunately, GMK MOQ makes NORDE/International kits very difficult to sell.

That's why I wanted to call out to all you Nordics and help me find the optimum selection of keys that will add multi-locale support to a common GMK set without costing 50$ by itself.

So what I did is take this mockup for a proper NORDE kit done by Tomb3ry and cross out all the caps that I think are pretty close to other caps in the set. Please be aware that some local keys are already included in the original Carbon kit and are missing in this special NORDE kit.

Please also note that I AM NOT PLANNING A CARBON NORDE KIT.
I just had this mockup ready and Tomb3ry was nice enough to let me use it for this purpose. The idea here is to create an ABSTRACT kit and not one for a special set.

No matter what locale you're from, please let me know if there are additional keys that are part of your locale and you could easily live without or if there are keys that you consider very important for your locale that I crossed out.

The general idea here is: It's better to have basic support for my locale than no support at all!

I consider tertiary legends disposable for this approach and wouldn't keep two otherwise identical keys in this set if they just have different tertiary legends.



My goal is to come up with a set GMK will generally offer for 30€ or less!

Here's the GB DESIGNER version:

[duynguyenle]

I don't use Nordic layout, but it's great that you're doing this for the community. Any particular colourway in mind? OG Cherry beige?

[Virtureal]

You can combine Ö/Ø and Ä/Æ without offending too many scandinavians and save two keys.

[Wodan]

You can combine Ö/Ø and Ä/Æ without offending too many scandinavians and save two keys.

That's the kind of feedback I was hoping for. Would love to get more scandinavians personal opinion on that.

[Findecanor]

You still have some UK legends in that set: |\ 3£

I think removing tertiary legends makes sense, but you have crossed out some keys without tertiary legends while keeping the corresponding keys that has them.
'\ is in Norwegian layout.

You can combine Ö/Ø and Ä/Æ without offending too many scandinavians and save two keys.

If you could speak for Danes and Norwegians ...

Sure, there are only about 11 million people in the countries that use Ø and Æ compared to 97 million (Germany having 81 million) in countries that use Ö and Ä. But at what threshold would you want to stop?

[Virtureal]

You still have some UK legends in that set: |\ 3£

I think removing tertiary legends makes sense, but you have crossed out some keys without tertiary legends while keeping the corresponding keys that has them.
'\ is in Norwegian layout.

You can combine Ö/Ø and Ä/Æ without offending too many scandinavians and save two keys.

If you could speak for Danes and Norwegians ...

Sure, there are only about 11 million people in the countries that use Ø and Æ compared to 97 million (Germany having 81 million) in countries that use Ö and Ä. But at what threshold would you want to stop?

I don't understand. Are you opposed to combining the keys because germany also use the umlaut letters or because norwegians and danes switch their Æ's and Ø's, which I was not aware of, but you could either print three legends or physically switch the keys.

[Wodan]

You still have some UK legends in that set: |\ 3£

I think removing tertiary legends makes sense, but you have crossed out some keys without tertiary legends while keeping the corresponding keys that has them.
'\ is in Norwegian layout.

The kit should also include UK support. This way the UK caps often included in the base kit could be omitted there and moved to this NORDEUK kit or you just strike out the keys from this kit that are already included in the base kit for UK support.

My first STRIKEOUT round was also not very precise, there are some good candidates to keep and some others to strike out.

If you could speak for Danes and Norwegians ...

Sure, there are only about 11 million people in the countries that use Ø and Æ compared to 97 million (Germany having 81 million) in countries that use Ö and Ä. But at what threshold would you want to stop?

I never intended to make this a majority vote or a "VE VILL MAKE YOU SPEEK GERMAN" motion. Instead I was hoping we NORDEUK folks could sit together and come up with something better than NO NORDEUK kit at all. Because that's what we're getting most of the time so far. Either people don't care about GMK Norde kits because of MOQ and cost or they don't even want to go through the process of getting all our crazy legends and keycaps and profiles right.

So why not come up with something you can throw at every GMK GB/IC that includes 25-30$ worth of keycaps and will satisfy the great majority of NORDEUK customers.

[RichardinFinland]

Sounds like good logic to me!

[Findecanor]

I don't understand. Are you opposed to combining the keys because germany also use the umlaut letters or because norwegians and danes switch their Æ's and Ø's, which I was not aware of, but you could either print three legends or physically switch the keys.

I'm sorry, I thought the idea was to make Norwegians and Danes use Ö and Ä instead of Ø and Æ.
Also, I am not diametrically opposed to the idea of combining legends, I just want to get a healthy discussion going.

I personally would prefer {Ä, Ö, Æ, Ø} over {ÄÆ, ÖØ} over {ÄÆØ, ÖØÆ}.
When symbols for the three Nordic languages are combined in the same colour, the legends can sometimes be very confusing. Some keyboards have a solution to that problem by using different colours for different languages when the layouts differ but I don't think that we can't count on that being an option.
I also wonder if GMK has tooling for any kind of combined "Nordic layout" legends...

[nickle3246]

They can dye-sub secondary legends in different colors, like here: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/gmk-ta-roy ... ycap-set-2. So the could make double-shot German legends (don't know if they can do nordic as well?) and just print the nordic legends in a different color. I think this would actually look pretty good

[photekq]

They cannot dyesub. They can only pad print.

[laxu]

You can combine Ö/Ø and Ä/Æ without offending too many scandinavians and save two keys.

As a Finn I'd be fine with this as long as it's done in an aesthetically pleasing way.

[Virtureal]

I don't understand. Are you opposed to combining the keys because germany also use the umlaut letters or because norwegians and danes switch their Æ's and Ø's, which I was not aware of, but you could either print three legends or physically switch the keys.

I'm sorry, I thought the idea was to make Norwegians and Danes use Ö and Ä instead of Ø and Æ.
Also, I am not diametrically opposed to the idea of combining legends, I just want to get a healthy discussion going.

I personally would prefer {Ä, Ö, Æ, Ø} over {ÄÆ, ÖØ} over {ÄÆØ, ÖØÆ}.
When symbols for the three Nordic languages are combined in the same colour, the legends can sometimes be very confusing. Some keyboards have a solution to that problem by using different colours for different languages when the layouts differ but I don't think that we can't count on that being an option.
I also wonder if GMK has tooling for any kind of combined "Nordic layout" legends...

Yeah sorry that I didn't make it clear that I wanted to combine legends, I agree that {Ä, Ö, Æ, Ø} over {ÄÆ, ÖØ} over {ÄÆØ, ÖØÆ}, I was just trying to propose a possible place to save caps.

[duynguyenle]

The kit should also include UK support. This way the UK caps often included in the base kit could be omitted there and moved to this NORDEUK kit or you just strike out the keys from this kit that are already included in the base kit for UK support.

My first STRIKEOUT round was also not very precise, there are some good candidates to keep and some others to strike out.

Hey Wodan, if you're planning to include full UK support, I think there are a couple of keys you need to retain, specifically these:


Edit: I forgot, the R1 `| needs to be there too!

[beltet]

I think it would be sufficent with one key with "§,½". I dont care wich one, i'm not that picky with that.

[Wodan]

Okay time to revive this topic. I am not giving up the hope we will see GMK International kits if we "optimize" the kits well enough. To visualize what my optimization efforts mean to certain international layouts, I have put together the international keycaps from:
- Germany
- UK
- Sweden
- Spain
- Norway
- Denmark
- Italy

Color legend:
- White: ANSI keys for position reference
- Green: My proposal for a GMK international kit
- Red: Keycap will be missing
- Light blue: Very similair keycap included in WHITE or GREEN keycaps
- Dark blue: Identical keycap included in GREEN keycaps

Remarks:
- I think it's best to completely omit the leftmost keycap of row 1, that would REALLY bloat the kit

Really looking for feedback here. Any other locale that would fit into that sheme?

Here's the link to the OLKB layout: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/# ... 1bddb1a9a2

With the current selection, this means we could cover five popular European layouts and give partial coverage for two additional ones with just 34 keys. This should be ~30€ in GMK prices ...

[Nuum]

IMHO you could also omit Q@, E€ and Mµ, most vintage sets don't have E€ anyway and nobody seems to be bothered. Maybe just keep Mµ as a novelty.
It's a bit sad that so many keycaps for IT and ES would be missing.

[Wodan]

I could totally live without Mµ, E€ and Q@ but those keycaps are quite popular for their aesthetics. Should we have to remove more keys, those were the first candidates.

It's a shame with ES and IT but they are VERY individual ...

Will try and add PT

[Wodan]

Okay little update with Portuguese now:


Added one key that will help ES, IT and PT. Unfortunately, not even PT and ES share many of the still-red keys.

We're at 35 keys now, that's about what I was expecting ...

[Alkhar]

Okay time to revive this topic. I am not giving up the hope we will see GMK International kits if we "optimize" the kits well enough. To visualize what my optimization efforts mean to certain international layouts, I have put together the international keycaps from:
- Germany
- UK
- Sweden
- Spain
- Norway
- Denmark
- Italy

Color legend:
- White: ANSI keys for position reference
- Green: My proposal for a GMK international kit
- Red: Keycap will be missing
- Light blue: Very similair keycap included in WHITE or GREEN keycaps
- Dark blue: Identical keycap included in GREEN keycaps

Remarks:
- I think it's best to completely omit the leftmost keycap of row 1, that would REALLY bloat the kit

Really looking for feedback here. Any other locale that would fit into that sheme?

Here's the link to the OLKB layout: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/# ... 1bddb1a9a2

With the current selection, this means we could cover five popular European layouts and give partial coverage for two additional ones with just 34 keys. This should be ~30€ in GMK prices ...

Hello Wodan, would it be difficult to add the keycap from the isofr layout ?

[Wodan]

Hello Wodan, would it be difficult to add the keycap from the isofr layout ?

Unfortunately, yes. The whole numbers row of ISO-FR has zero matches to begin with. That would be 10 French-only keys to begin with. Looking at the other keys there is hardly anything else that matches, maybe 2-3 keys. We'd need to put in 15+ French only keys to have similair coverage IT or ES gets with practically no individual keys.

[Rimrul]

In the first column there's a red key shared by PT/IT and one shared by SE/DK. There's also one shared by ES/IT in column 18. You could add those to increase support for the existing layouts.

[Wodan]

In the first column there's a red key shared by PT/IT and one shared by SE/DK. There's also one shared by ES/IT in column 18. You could add those to increase support for the existing layouts.

That's three additional keys already, 10% of the current key count. If we added those first-column keys, DE and GB should be added as well as it affects the largest number of potential buyers and we're at five additional keys. Plenty of popular layouts don't even use this key (most < 75% layouts) so my concept would be to leave it out for all international layouts.

The ES/IT keycap in column 18 was also noticed but I don't see much benefit in adding this single key would not make this cluster look any better for those locales. The keycap contains a closing bracket and we couldn't offer the matching opening bracket. Since they do have the [] in their legends, I was hoping they could live well with the corresponding ANSI keycaps for those slots "{[" and "]}" <= those keys actually make up the most beautiful cluster of the ANSI layout in my opinion.

[Wodan]

I have updated the OP with the latest result of my work on this. With the current selection of exactly 30 keys, I am hoping for a markup of <25$ for a GMK set that includes these keys. If ISO-UK support was already planned as part of a GMK set, the markup to add support for many other ISO-locales should be <20$



Please have a close look at my latest mockup and let me know if the picture is self-explanatory. Any questions post here.

[Wodan]

Already got the response from GMK regarding my quote for the initial query. This quote include the 35 keys I was originally considering, we're now at 30 keys so expect prices to be even lower than what I quote here:

MOQ 150 sets, ca. 16,50€ (netto,EXW)
MOQ 250 sets, ca. 15€ (netto, EXW)
MOQ 500 sets, ca. 13,50€ (netto, EXW)
MOQ 1,000 sets, ca. 11,50€ (netto, EXW)

These prices are only valid when _ADDING_ these keys to a FULL BASE KIT (100+ keys). But they are still a lot lower than what I was expecting. This means you can safely say even with the lowest MOQ of 150 these ISO-International keys could be added to any GMK Base kit for less than 20$ (including tax, customs, currency conversion)

[JohnB]

Wodan - good luck with this! Let me know if I can support you in any way. I am an ANSI-US user, but still want to show my support!

JohnB

[Wodan]

Wodan - good luck with this! Let me know if I can support you in any way. I am an ANSI-US user, but still want to show my support!

That's really cool, we will need all the support we can. How do you feel about the ISO Enter key as an ANSI user?




Question to EVERYONE from the ISO crew:

The "ISO" key next to the short left shift ... "split left shift" ... does anyone else agree it should be mod colored?

I know it is technically wrong but it is so much better looking ...

[dorf]

Question to EVERYONE from the ISO crew:

The "ISO" key next to the short left shift ... "split left shift" ... does anyone else agree it should be mod colored?

I know it is technically wrong but it is so much better looking ...

Stop! It's not! Leave the poor key alone!

[pomk]

STOP! It is not a modifier. Leave it alone! Unless of course the mods are all the same color with alphas, then I guess there would not be a problem

[Rimrul]

How about marking the five keys (this one + the one left of the enter on the home row) as "optionally offer in modifier colour"?