New render, contains 100% more stylus than before

February 6, 2009

Another official blog post from ED, another render for your peepers to get intimate with. Click! Zoom! Enhance! EvilDragon’s own words go something like this:

This time, you can see the Pandora including the stylus.
The keyboard layout is nearly finished, we’re still discussing about some keys and the font, however, I don’t think much will change.
Fn+[1 – 0] are the F-Keys, SELECT will be used for CTRL.

The forums are all a-chatter about the font as we speak (believe it or not). ED has already chimed in to point out that this is not the final font. Keeping this in mind, if you’ve got two cents, here’s where it goes.

Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged font, render, stylus |

37 comments

That’s right, this font definitely should not be used 😀
by JP February 6, 2009 at 2:03 pm
nasty font there… but I do like the fact that the pandora will cast no shadows… 🙂
by Rick February 6, 2009 at 2:08 pm
^ Ha. Pandora by Anne Rice.
by gruso February 6, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Not digging the font either, I think something more modern/minimalistic is the way to go
by shadow.8 February 6, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I hate it. I much prefer the one that was in the render before this.
by Butterman February 6, 2009 at 2:16 pm
It seems from the render that the stylus does not suck more than others. I’ve bought myself a couple of good multi-pens that include styluses (I have a Parker 3-way and a Lamy 4-way) and tought myself to always have one in my pocket. The Pandora stylus will do for the odd occasion when I can’t be bothered to whip it out. 🙂

In fact, the only PDA ever to come with a decent-to-marvelous stylus is the Newton 2×00. Then again, that Green Brick is big enough to house a full length writing implement, not to mention that NewtonOS relies exclusively on the stylus for both navigation and data entry.
by Karel Jansens February 6, 2009 at 2:30 pm
^ Ha. Pandora by Anne Rice.

– has trouble with mirrors too!

Rick
by Rick February 6, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Well, the font is ugly, that’s correct.
But I can see a more annoying problem here: there’s no “windows” key. Hopefully there will be one in the final design.
by TT February 6, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I like the font… 😀
by OrR February 6, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I see some german character (ü ö ä) but no french one (é è à ê…).

I guess it can’t have every international character…
Otherwise the layout seem pretty nice.
by marshal February 6, 2009 at 3:44 pm
TT I would have thought that the uh… “windows” key was more necessary for a… dare I say it… windows computer? Rather than an ARM Linux one?
by renegadechic February 6, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Can I get mine in comic sans?
by Nate February 6, 2009 at 4:53 pm
renegadechic:
I was doing a bad joke…. sozza….
by TT February 6, 2009 at 4:55 pm
I wonder why so many people have voiced doubts about the reachability of the analog nubs when there are important buttons placed even further in the middle. Hitting the center buttons with your thumb will become quite nasty, especially if you are trying to pause a running game with Start or plan to switch weapons or trigger some other in-game function by pressing Select. We can probably expect many people to map their emulator’s Start and Select-like buttons to the Enter, Space or Shift keys instead. But then, what are those center buttons good for in the end? If they are only comfortable to press when holding the Pandora single-handedly (and therefore probably not while playing a game) they might become additional typing keys for the people who wanted period and comma have seperate buttons or for those who missed their national characters…
by Yoneda February 6, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Yoneda: I think you forget how small the Pandora actually is. Reaching the very center buttons shouldn’t be a problem for most people.
by MeltingIce February 6, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Yay! A new render!

I’d heard that the CTRL button might be mapped to one of the shoulder buttons… it’s good to hear otherwise, and my concerns about not being able to reach the Select button were easily dispelled by a quick look at a paper model (which I hope/assume is the right size).
by Clean3d February 6, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I was looking at the thumbnail and wondering “what’s so bad about that font?”. Then I looked at the larger version and went “Oh.”

Sans-serif, please!
by pelrun February 6, 2009 at 6:03 pm
The font looks alright to me.
by Ashdjones February 6, 2009 at 6:10 pm
The Pandora with that font, is like a nicely shaped chick with a butterface.

I’d rather have wingdings on my keys.
by Causticous February 6, 2009 at 6:27 pm
@marshal (about french characters)
you can always remap the keys (in X I believe, though I have never done it myself) so you can make those whatever accented characters you want
by HTL2001 February 6, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Actually, I think that this font is ridiculous without even being bad.
Go figure.
by MilanC February 6, 2009 at 7:28 pm
how to write ångström with that keyboard layout I cant find a å
by lootic February 6, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Don’t really care what the font is as long as you can see what letter the key is it’s a no brainer.
by puppydee February 6, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I couldn’t care less about the font; it’s the key mapping that is deeply worrying me. Is this some kind of joke from ED, or are we seriously going to get a Pandora with what I can only describe as a German keyboard layout?

What’s the point? Linux has plenty of provisions for dead keys, so why do all these dotted, trema-ed and otherwise mangled letters have to be on the keyboard, while (as someone noted) there isn’t even room left to put a comma on the base row?

Just put a comma in the bottom left, throw out all those weird letters and replace them with dead key accents and have room left for whatever important symbols that were most likely forgotten.

Oh, and about the remapping comments: Who will reprint the remapped keymats? Heck, if we’re all going to have to remap anyway, just leave the keymap blank and we’ll just feel our way through it.

If this is going to be the final keyboard layout, I’ll have to seriously rethink my commitment to the Pandora…
by Karel Jansens February 6, 2009 at 10:44 pm
ED and MWeston have discussed the layout a bit more in the linked thread. It’s worth having a read.
by gruso February 6, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I like the font. Looks different 🙂 and not yet another (yawn) sans style font.

ljones
by ljones February 6, 2009 at 11:25 pm
TT, bit of a late reply, but i do apologise! i guess i am a humourless bore haha

someone should make a blue screen of death screen saver, just for lulz
by renegadechic February 7, 2009 at 12:07 am
wow-/awesome
by Kloplop321 February 7, 2009 at 12:51 am
I like this keyboard layout.

You absolutely need easy access to slash and period when you’re using a Linux based machine.
by Andy L February 7, 2009 at 1:31 am
+1 on the need for san serif. No question.
by Newguy February 7, 2009 at 1:40 am
This has caused… quite… an outrage

I’m coming to get the rest of you font bastards!
by poisonedv February 7, 2009 at 3:24 am
“The Pandora with that font, is like a nicely shaped chick with a butterface.” (Causticous)

Haha.

Interestingly, I’ve heard that prepping hardware and software for international markets is pretty expensive for major U.S. companies like Apple and Microsoft, because of the complexity of making products consistent with various international language standards. I’ve actually never seen a device with a keyboard layout that was intended for both U.S. and European markets. OLED keys would solve this problem but of course would cause much bigger problems. They would however be awesome. More realistically, there could be presets for key mappings and overlay stickers for the keys. Stickers would probably not work extremely well on this device though. I personally think individual mappings will work fine for me.

As an aside, I would prefer sans serif as well, but it’s not that important to me.
by cobaltage February 7, 2009 at 1:27 pm
more news, please
by Pandora February 8, 2009 at 4:58 pm
It’s been a very slow news weekend, I’ve been on the forums but there’s not much to report!

I can tell you that the devs have been taking in all the feedback on the forums, and there is still a week or two before the manufacturer needs to know what gets printed. So there’s still time for changes and we’re waiting on the next official update. Personally I think the debate has reached critical mass; if there are any more polls on the topic, there will be a small meltdown. 😛

Another keypad tidbit was mentioned, it’s not new information but it’s relevant to the keymapping discussion. The three buttons up the middle (Start, Select, logo) are connected to a GPIO line separate from all the other buttons. This means they can have universal functions, regardless of what software is running. For example, the logo button may be used to bring up a Pandora “dashboard” or something like that. This means that the logo button is not available for remapping.

I don’t have access to the source for that right now, but if you check the Unofficial Blog thread in Pandora General, the information is in Chip and Mali’s recent posts.
by gruso February 9, 2009 at 12:00 am
And so we have a “Windows” key after all!
by neogramps February 9, 2009 at 10:28 am
I like to think of it more like the Xbox button on the 360 pad. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than a Windows key though.

Anyway, here’s the source on that info: http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?act=findpost&pid=699133
by gruso February 9, 2009 at 11:38 am
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