Shift+space typing &nbsp causes way too many accidents

[bnjbvr]

So I'm a relatively fast-and-imprecise typer, which means that if I've pressed Shift for some character, and the next one is a space, then there are large chances that I haven't released Shift yet, and that the next space I'm entering will be a non-breakable space.

This is unfortunate for many reasons:

• this breaks parsing of commands in shells
• this causes confusing issues in code files (unable to compile/interpret)
• most programs seem to consider that two words with a NBSP between them is a single word, so that pressing the keyboard input to delete the previous word (CtrlW, etc.) will remove both words and the space.

One could argue that 1. I should get more precise when typing 🤷 2. the entire software ecosystem is broken, but that's blaming the user and wishful thinking, so that's not satisfying 😁
Apparently, I'm not the only one suffering from this, according to the lafayette's discord there's been another user bitten by that, and the ArchLinux maintainer for that package has also removed the Shift+space, in a custom patch that's applied before setting up the keyboard.

Could we make it so that Shift+space is a regular space, and the NBSP comes somewhere else? Or create another variant that does that? Typing NBSP is quite infrequent for me (I'm usually not being as thorough with my French typography as I should), so the tradeoff benefit/loss is completely on the benefit side for me.

[fabi1cazenave]

First, a bit of context.

No-break spaces are used in French before punctuation signs like ;:!? and between «» quote signs. The narrow no-break space on Shift+Space and the ;: signs on Shift+,. belong to the same feature : making it comfortable to use the proper space symbol before punctuation signs. And FWIW, that’s what Bépo does, too.

I agree it’s tricky at first, and I’ve had quite a few bad surprises with unintentional no-break spaces in shell scripts. I think it’s quite easy to tweak your editor to catch these no-break spaces, and after a few weeks it’s very unlikely you’ll hit no-break spaces unintentionally… but I might be wrong on this.

TBH my initial idea was to leave Lafayette unchanged, i.e. focused on proper typography and full-sized keyboards, and create a collection of compact layouts for various European languages, a.k.a qwerty42, with as few changes as possible from ANSI Qwerty — i.e. Shift+Space would be just a space.

It turned out that qwerty42-fr is very superior to Lafayette for every aspect of my use cases, and the ErgoL project has been started from a qwerty42 basis, with great results IMHO. Thus I left the no-break space on Shift+Enter when I published it as a Lafayette variant.

[fabi1cazenave]

However, my concern about proper typography might not be shared by a majority of Lafayette users.

A solution could be to update and publish the Qwerty42 layout collection, and users who don’t want to bother with no-break spaces would just use Qwerty42-fr. The difference between Qwerty42-fr and Lafayette42 would be ridiculous (i.e. only Shift+Space), but why not.

Or maybe we should just keep only Lafayette42, but focused more on being an easy way to type in French on a Qwerty or compact keyboard, and disable the no-break space — people like me who want to keep the narrow no-break space by default on Shift+Space would just customize their keyboard layout (which is rather straight-forward with kalamine).

WDYT ? What would make more sense ?

[lobre]

One layout to rule them all! I'm sorry to jump in, but I just wanted to give you my opinion.

I would not be super interested in those qwerty42 versions. Developing, maintaining and releasing a single layout is already a lot of work.

If I want to stay close to qwerty ANSI, I would use variants already existing in the wild and globally available, such as qwerty intl (or altgr-intl).

I do think Lafayette is a superior idea. It is different but it aims at really interesting goals, and French typists can find a lot of value in this layout. To me, there is more value to continue the focus on this single (and already spread in the wild) layout.

There are plenty of issues in this repo, plenty of users of Lafayette, and the recent updates to Lafayette42 show that maybe someday we can have a consolidated version that would merge full Lafayette and Lafayette42, and embrace this compact-first idea. I am not sure that this layout is "done".

After having discussed this with me for the past few months, I realize that not a lot of people accept installing custom layouts. They prefer to use whatever is available (and I can relate). To me, that would make more sense to continue to promote Lafayette to a wider audience by making it more and more available.

Anyway, to go back to the initial topic, I personally like to have a layout that respects French typography, and I don't mind this shift-space. Like everything, it is just about getting used to it. If it is removed, it is for me a step back and a reason to stay with ANSI qwerty.

Just an idea: would it make sense to move it to altgr-space, so that it is less error-prone (and would it be)?

[bnjbvr]

I think it’s quite easy to tweak your editor to catch these no-break spaces, and after a few weeks it’s very unlikely you’ll hit no-break spaces unintentionally… but I might be wrong on this.

That's been my issue 🙃 I've been using the layout for almost two months and I keep on making that mistake; I suspect that my preference for speed rather than precision is not paying back in this context, nor the fact I've never learned speed typing the proper way. So I'm running into the issue almost every single day — to the point that I preferred to customize the layout so as to get rid of the shift+space.

But yeah, any other key chord that's not too frequent would work for me: alt+space, or deadkey+space, etc. It's still really nice to be able to do proper typography in French!