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[Xii]

Cogmind assumes a US keyboard layout. Hacks use characters like \\ and (). Whenever I need to enter such hacks manually (like the door to recycling), I have to hunt blindly for the special characters on my (non-US) keyboard.

I know it adds computery flavor to have these characters, but from a useability standpoint I wish I could type hacks using just letters and spaces.

Some of this may be partially invalidated by autocomplete and upcoming improvements already, but do consider it.

[Kyzrati]

You can't use letters and spaces for special/unique hacks because letters activate hacks from the menu (potentially a~z), so there must be a non-character key to initiate them. \\ is hardcoded for that purpose.

Parenthesis are almost entirely avoidable by using the autocomplete menu, where the only time you might ever need to type one without it is by closing a schematic hack with a ')'.

There are no plans to expand specifically keyboard-based solutions beyond a US layout or those that can be activated by exposing keybinds and editing your own or using one of the other provided layouts.

I've offered the option on Patreon to vote for full mouse interface for manual hacking to avoid the keyboard entirely, because mouse support is the real solution for this, but it doesn't have many votes compared to other features, so I'm not sure that'll ever happen. It's quite a lot of work for what seems to be a small number of players.

[Xii]

I bump a terminal. The menu opens. a-y quick selects a direct hack. I press z to begin manual hacking.

Why can't I type "trojan track"? Okay, if I've used it before, I can type "tro" and tab+arrows to autocomplete. But the contents of that autocomplete menu change based on what hacks you've already applied, so the arrowing necessary is not constant, but variable. It takes disproportionate time and effort to make sure I'm selecting the right menu item, over simply typing "trojan track" and be done with it!

If I haven't used it before, and have a non-US keyboard, I'm now pressing random combinations of keys, shift, alt gr, whatever, trying to find the one button that summons the '(' necessary. Absolutely awful user experience.

Why can't I type "youarepotato" to open that one door? Why must it be "\\youarepotato"? All the manual hacks begin with a letter. Why can't this one?

I've offered the option on Patreon to vote for full mouse interface for manual hacking to avoid the keyboard entirely, because mouse support is the real solution for this, but it doesn't have many votes compared to other features, so I'm not sure that'll ever happen. It's quite a lot of work for what seems to be a small number of players.

While this is not a refuttal of your process, mind you that lacking accessibility may cause the playerbase to remain small.

[Kyzrati]

Why can't I type "youarepotato" to open that one door? Why must it be "\\youarepotato"? All the manual hacks begin with a letter. Why can't this one?

This is because a special character is needed for the keyboard to detect that you're going to be typing a special non-text command, so that it can open the menu and give you letter-based access to that submenu.

Absolutely awful user experience.

Indeed not great, but honestly the best solution for something like this is to provide either mouse support, or use an engine that natively supports non-US keyboards and also doesn't use ASCII bitmaps. The underlying issue is that keys are recognized by position, not by their value, because the alternative requires an engine that can recognize unicode and display it (<--the key factor here), which is not something I can do given Cogmind's architecture and display.