Pi-Top

…which is why written French frequently drops accents when writing in capital letters. :-P

wth many problems :)

So QWERTZ, AZERTY and QWERTZ.

Logically, that should have been QWERTY, AZERTY and QWERTZ, but it appears to be AZERTY, AZERTY and AZERTY, as that type seems to be in use in the whole of Belgium. So your original assumption was correct after all…

…many problems - and you mssed the solut on. :))

…many problems – and you mssed the solut on. :))

That the French use the nternatonal communcaton language?¹ :))
Oo-er, war mmnent or mass French sucde…

¹ Most populous country on earth uses it for foreign comms

As you mght have notced, t s actually possble to wrte n Englsh leavng out the letter ‘’ (the one between ’h’ and ‘j’).¹

t gets better. The human mnd s extremely powerful, so much so that many people can read when only the frst and last letters of a word are correct, and the rest is scrambled. Why? Because the bran sees the words as a “whole”, not ndvdual letters.

Try ths, something that found wth Google:

I cnduo’t bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

So, wonder f t works n French?

Sleon une édtue de l’Uvinertisé de Cmabrigde, l’odrre des ltteers dnas un mtos n’a pas d’ipmrotncae, la suele coshe ipmrotnate est que la pmeirère et la drenèire soit à la bnnoe pclae. Le rsete peut êrte dnas un dsérorde ttoal et vuos puoevz tujoruos lrie snas porlblème. C’est prace que le creaveu hmauin ne lit pas chuaqe ltetre elle-mmêe, mias le mot cmome un tuot.

t s a bogus study, by the way. No such thng was ever done at Cambrdge. Shame, because there s some nterestng psychology behnd how we recognse words. nstead, t s a meme referred to as “Typoglycemia”. ☺

¹ The letter between ‘h’ and ‘j’ s very very narrow. f you look at your keyboard with a magnfying glass, you mght see t.²

² Assumng a “standard QWERTY” layout, of course! For others, YMMV.

QWERTZ, AZERTY, QWERTZ, QWERTY – A storm in a teacup that can be dealt easily¹….. making it right handed² is unforgivable :D
¹ Simply mash any old key and let spellcheck sort it out – note: this can produce interesting work reports.
² Promised left handed version doesn’t appear to have materialised as yet.

making it right handed2 is unforgivable

Ambidextrous is the way to go. Lefties just need a bit of practice, righties never cope. :)

QWERTZ, AZERTY, QWERTZ, QWERTY – A storm in a teacup that can be dealt easily

Not really. There are several specal characters and ‘m’ s absolutely not at the same poston.
For keyboards, almost the same s really worst than completely dfferent :)

My Pi-Top arrived and it pretty much just works with RISC OS!

When I say pretty much, the standard image allows it to boot to a 1920×1080 res screen and there’s no menu button (obviously). But !WinMenu solves that problem easily! I’ve had a go at several 1360×768 MDFs, which don’t seem to work repeatedly – I guess a Config.txt issue. 1280×720 is fine though.

Obviously WIFI doesn’t work, but a bit of space under the slide in panel is the perfect size for an ASUS bridge adaptor (seen here) but a TPLink WR702N is a better and cooler fit, and also configurable via Otter.

It does need some form of battery monitor though, as it’s currently a bit of a “hope it doesn’t die” kind of thing! Maybe a modification of Jeffrey’s portable module for the Pi-Top would open up a world of RISC OS laptops, along with a WIFI stack.

We expect to be offering RISC OS’ified Pi-Tops next month!

We expect to be offering RISC OS’ified Pi-Tops next month!

With battery management? To me, that seems more crucial than WIFI at this point in time.

Battery management is certainly something we would be looking into but I suspect it wouldn’t be as significant as it might be thought. The screen will probably be the biggest power drain. We will have to investigate. I am awaiting technical information from Pi-Top.

Edit: It’s been pointed out to me that knowing when the battery is about to die could be critical!

Stick anymode on, much easier than making MDFs :D

The encouraging thing is that pi-top are talking about battery discharge times of 10 hours and more.

The encouraging thing is that pi-top are talking about battery discharge times of 10 hours and more.

I can safely say the battery life on this, according to my very unscientific test (i.e. just playing with it!) is HUGE! I’m very impressed that it hasn’t needed charging yet, and I’ve used it for several hours from only 74% charge (as shown by Pi-Top OS).

Stick anymode on, much easier than making MDFs :D

Does not fully work on a Pi A, where I must use both (MDF and Anymode) to get best results.

For anyone interested, here’s a tidied version of my RISC OS Pi-Top, with wireless access via a TPLink WR702n. I managed to source a 20cm flat MicroUSB cable fro power and a 30cm flat CAT6 cable for ethernet which I fed under the Pi.

Slider Off
Slider On

Configurable wireless access using Otter Browser from a RAM Disc.

For anyone interested, here’s a tidied version of my RISC OS Pi-Top …

Would it be possible to put the photos somewhere where NetSurf could view them? I haven’t yet got Otter to run here!

I viewed them here using NetSurf v. 3.1 without problem.

I viewed them here using NetSurf v. 3.1 without problem.

Ah – spurred on, I found an old 3.0, and that works! Thanks!

I guess it’s one for the NetSurf list! I’ll find out when it stopped rendering them if I can.

Current versions of NetSurf can view the photos, but you have to disable Javascript.

It’s another manifestation of Mantis issue 2378.

@andym – Do you have any problems with the ‘F’ keys?
My Pi doesn’t recognise the F12 key with the PiTop :(

Fn F12 works fine here. One of my Shift keys is sticky, so it’s maybe worth doing what Pi-Top suggested to me, which was prise of the key top and use compressed air to remove any debris. That or blow really hard! Did you find anything mapped to Break?

I’ve used KeyMapper to map the left Pi-Top key to break and the right Pi-Top key to Menu, but would prefer to map one of the three special keys on the top row to Break, if possible. But I have no idea how to read the codes so I can map them.

What’s the quality of the screen like? Also it seems a bit pricey considering you could buy a windows/chromebook laptop with a better screen for less i understand they don’t have the economies of scale but i’d like to see where that £175 goes. How sturdy is the overall design?