Keycap mount nomenclature

[Daniel Beardsmore]

(From other topics — seems pertinent to give it one of its own so that everyone is copied in on the answer)

Blatant hijack, but out of curiosity, where do "U" and "Z" mount come from? Signature Plastics mount names or something?

On a somewhat related note: where did the names "U mount" and "Z mount" come from? Is this just made up by some keyboard community or is there a reason for them being named as such?

From Melissa at Signature Plastics: "Back in the late 1970's Comptec Incorporated (the parent company before we had a management buyout in 2001) created a 14 digit intelligent part number to aid in the production of various styles of keycaps. The 4U, EX, 1Z descriptions were created to designate the mount style."

So there you have it. I should be getting a full list, but some specific details are lost in time now. I've asked her specifically whether "U mount" is even a valid term for all 4 mm cruciform caps, or "Z mount" for all 5 mm slot caps. Possibly, but probably not, in which case we may be looking at needing new terms, and that's going to be a LOT of edits across the wiki if we do. Same as if/when we rename "Alps CM" to a less controversial name. Probably will just keep U mount and Z mount anyway; we may get some more terms too.

However, this means that people need to measure their Futabas, SMKs etc to check the mount measurements, as the list won't contain what keyboards/switches they fit, only a description of the mount itself. (There are so many switches with unknown mount spec/mount compatibility, in particular vintage Alps and Cherry equal cross (+), tall cross (┼), bar (|) and tee (⊢) mounts.)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Have a screenshot from Excel. The table system in phpBB is horrible beyond belief. I would be here all night.

I've asked, but I imagine these are current products only.

Note that mount "GZ" is for family 86, which is "CHERRY G86 STYLE KEYS". Clearly Alps is not Z at all.

Suggestions for new names?

[webwit]

GZ? 1Z and EX says Alps mount.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Alps has one that's not Z, and there's a Z one that isn't Alps. Therefore "Z" cannot stand for Alps. Nothing there can. I guess modern Alps keycaps are usually or always 1Z (hence "Z mount") but it's neither a systematic nor a logical term.

[webwit]

If you survive the Alps, you will be promoted to Level 2, where the disciple must break the IBM Plt.No code. After that is level 1, of which I cannot tell you anything, or I'd have to kill you.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I tried the FCC ID on my NTC board. Nan Tan Computer Co, device registered in 1986. Sadly NTC/Nan Tan have either closed, or have gone ninja. Which is a nuisance, as I could have had a lead on Type IV switches.

What would be really nice is to have the mount measurements of all the vintage switches (equal cross (+), tall cross (┼), bar (|) and tee (⊢)) and the approximate dates for these switches. For one thing, we would see what's compatible. The Futabas-or-clones on the BBC Micro look U mount, but they're not. I should measure one of those ...

This is one of the few times where Google Docs almost makes sense, but I might just start a new topic instead.

[laffindude]

NanTan seems to be predecessor of Clevo (laptop ODM).

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Maybe. NTC registered my keyboard in 1986, Clevo was founded in 1983. Clevo don't mention NTC or Nan Tan on their website. If Clevo did buy out NTC, I doubt they'll know or care who supplied Type IV Alps switches.

Anyhow — Melissa may send me the details of previous mount types (she sent only the ones that could be cross-referenced fully, not entirely sure what she means, but I have a spreadsheet with a lot more details about keycaps than what I took a screenshot of, just not of any mounts other than what I listed).

I suspect we'll just keep U mount and Z mount for the sake of continuity.

[webwit]

Here's a lead:
http://www.computing.net/answers/window ... 54991.html

Also, Chicony is part of the Clevo Group.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I suspect that an acquisition like that would be the end of any irrelevant data such as switch purchasing. I doubt the Clevo staff could care less what NTC did anyway. I would have to dig up the GH wiki and see what else used that switch. (Chicony can't be e-mailed either. No addresses published.)

Curiously, the vintage switch recognition page in the GH wiki (that I didn't know about) appears to be missing from the Wayback Machine. Doh. Could have been useful even if there were no pictures (which there won't be).

[Findecanor]

Blatant hijack, but out of curiosity, where do "U" and "Z" mount come from? Signature Plastics mount names or something?

Yes, that is my fault. I was under the impression that SP used some kind of industry-standard nomenclature.. but I stand corrected.
I introduced it into the Wiki when I wrote Keycap mount. Then I edited pages here and there to link to it and I added categories for switch mounts.

[webwit]

Haha. In that case maybe it's best to simply use "Cherry compatible" or "Alps compatible" mount? Or by form: cross shaped, and uhm, rectangle shaped or something along those lines.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The problem isn't whether it's industry standard—it's that "U mount" and "Z mount" do not correspond with Signature Plastics in the first place, and they do not recognise those terms. The letter "U" is common to Cherry MX keycap mount designations, but SP do not have anything that collectively represents Alps, and "Z" includes both Alps and Cherry G86.

It's a toss-up — we could a) keep the terms for continuity; b) accept that they're confusing and meaningless and use named terms; c) not only keep them, but adopt more single letters for other types, just to be consistent, even if that puts us even further at odds with SP, who have at least one meaningful double-letter code (ML for Cherry ML).

I'd like to create a set of complimentary diagrams to these, except with dimensions: http://deskthority.net/wiki/Switch_recognition (not sure how I want to fit everything in — remove the 2D, remove the 3D, or just make really big pictures), but I shall decline from doing so until this is settled.

Also, many mounts remain unknown. I've got the dimensions of both BBC Micro switches (may match Futaba, may not — the switches are decidedly different from HaaTa's Futabas) and Alps integrated dome, and they're not the same. We won't know how many mount sizes exist unless we can convince everyone to help collate a master list of switches.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Haha. In that case maybe it's best to simply use "Cherry compatible" or "Alps compatible" mount? Or by form: cross shaped, and uhm, rectangle shaped or something along those lines.

"Cherry MX compatible" maybe, and "Alps ......... the switches what have that long slot that may or may not have a stick up the middle of it" as opposed to Alps tee, cruciform (integrated dome) or bar switches. (Tee, bar and cruciform switches may all be compatible at least within the same vendor (Alps or Cherry) but we need them all measuring. I've done the only old switch I have, the may-or-may-not-be-Futaba switch, and I've put out a question to Futaba to see if they still have anything on file about any of their switches.)

[webwit]

It's a toss-up — we could a) keep the terms for continuity; b) accept that they're confusing and meaningless and use named terms; c) not only keep them, but adopt more single letters for other types, just to be consistent, even if that puts us even further at odds with SP, who have at least one meaningful double-letter code (ML for Cherry ML).

I wouldn't use U or Z mount because that was a mistake and are not associated with the form of the mount. Neither would I use what seems to be internal SP codes, because that is no industry standard. I don't think there is an industry standard, or names. So that leaves naming after the main switches and/or naming after form or something new altogether.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I figured that since there are no standard terms, and we've polluted the wiki and forums with the wrong ones, it can't be too bad to simply keep them. But if you want the whole wiki rewriting with new terms, feel free to give that task to someone who wants to rack up their edit count for next year's award … Obviously they'll need image moving rights too; I've used "U mount" and "Z mount" a LOT in the past few months, and I will have to keep doing so for internal consistency reasons.

[webwit]

Lame! Never stick with mistakes, always refactor!

[002]

Haha, yeeeaahh have fun with that. Suddenly my Charcoal/Black dilemma is child's play.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

If I were to going to write "–compatible" I'd want to use the ID of the first switch with a 4 mm cruciform with 1.5 mm by 1 mm arms. It wasn't Cherry MX. It may be Cherry M8, but then it gets complicated. "U" essentially indicates the cruciform dimensions, while M8 had a much shorter stem and you can't exchange the caps. But then, BTC U mount sliders aren't spot on — they're close, but not a great fit.

"Alps compatible" is hopeless. You'd have to first name the range of switches that introduced it. Maybe the classic Z mount, which now needs a new name, so you're in a circle ... (I've only just named it. Back to "corned-beef tin" switch. Could easily be an older Z mount Alps switch).

I'm in no great hurry, seeing as there's no easy answer … Having a nightmare trying to diagram the NMB switch as they're all subtly different in annoying ways and there are barely any suitable photos to trace. I have one relatively good picture, but I can't figure out whether I'm getting perspective skew or whether the outer dimensions changed as well, vs the one I was using before (that's just too low resolution).

[002]

I can probably get you a decent picture of an NMB switch but I only have the one type.
I could ask rzwv on Twitter if he can bang up some better pics too as he has multiple examples.

The strange thing about NMB switches is that there are even variances in switch appearance between the same type of switch. The 'eyes' of the space invader come to mind when I was mucking around with my board the other day.

[webwit]

If I were to going to write "–compatible" I'd want to use the ID of the first switch with a 4 mm cruciform with 1.5 mm by 1 mm arms. It wasn't Cherry MX. It may be Cherry M8, but then it gets complicated. "U" essentially indicates the cruciform dimensions, while M8 had a much shorter stem and you can't exchange the caps. But then, BTC U mount sliders aren't spot on — they're close, but not a great fit.

"Alps compatible" is hopeless. You'd have to first name the range of switches that introduced it. Maybe the classic Z mount, which now needs a new name, so you're in a circle ... (I've only just named it. Back to "corned-beef tin" switch. Could easily be an older Z mount Alps switch).

You keep saying U mount and Z mount when we now know this means nothing. So if I substitute U mount for cross mount and Z mount for rectangle mount in your text it seems to work, wouldn't that be better and something people who read these articles can immediately understand?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Yeah, it does seem that the little white follower arm at the back is what makes it click, as only the clicky ones seem to have that — will update the article. In which case, what on earth makes them tactile? Even the contact separator bar in the slider varies in width from one to another. Pink sliders for lock switches for no reason? Guess I need a top-down shot of the pink one (as it has its own shape), and (as it's more fun) anything with eyes that isn't black (to make the slider stand out). These are switches from Hell. I figured they'd be pretty easy to draw, too, but they're even more annoying than Cherry MY was.

[webwit]

Suddenly my Charcoal/Black dilemma is child's play.

Topre calls it black, so I'd use the same. Or something like this:

Black*

* A charcoal black but no one can agree what exact color yada yada etc.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

You keep saying U mount and Z mount when we now know this means nothing. So if I substitute U mount for cross mount and Z mount for rectangle mount in your text it seems to work, wouldn't that be better and something people who read these articles can immediately understand?

No. There are various cruciform mounts. BBC Micro Type 1 is 3.75 mm by 4.7 mm, with 1.25 mm wide arms (which is probably the same as vintage Futaba); Cherry M8/MX is 4 mm with 1 by 1.25 mm arms. Alps integrated dome (the one with a white slider, not the one with the black slider) is a cross 4 mm by 5 mm. Cherry M7 is a very much non-uniform cross, as are old Alps cruciform switches, which may or may not be the same dimensions as each other. There are so many different cross mounts.

Rectangle is way too vague — there are all sorts of square and rectangular mounts out there.

Whatever term we choose, it has to be specific and unambiguous, and we should really be clear whether it includes the keycap stem dimension, as that's not compatible between MX and M8 even if the cross dimensions are the same. Depends what meaning we intend to convey — and I would presume we mean "can exchange keycaps".

[webwit]

Maybe something like standard Cherry cross mount (or cruciform as you like to call it) and standard Alps rectangle mount for the two most important reference points (forgetting about IBM at the moment). If one likes codes, it would be CC or AR (or SCC and SAR), but I wouldn't do that.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I like U mount and Z mount simply because they're concise. "Standard Alps rectangle mount" is verbose, and that's got to be retyped in forum posts, wiki articles etc.

By the way, you mean "Standard Cherry MX/MY cross mount" — M7 is a standard Cherry cross mount, it's just not a current standard cross mount. Considering the wiki as a whole, the term chosen needs to be independent of time. "Standard" just means "not including weird switches like MX orange". Or "Orange", if it doesn't actually have an MX part number.

Personally I will be sticking with U and Z mount until someone goes through and edits all the articles, moves all the images, updates the image descriptions, and renames all the categories. I've said all that I can on this, and at the moment there's no compelling alternative to what was a happy mistake.

[webwit]

So far for Mr. Perfect Wiki, sticking with a silly mistake because he's too lazy to correct it. I find it funny that as soon something becomes less glamorous work, you want to argue the error away or delegate the correction work to "someone". What's less funny is that fucking someone has been me so in prior events, that's why I have most edits, all other editors were too lazy. Without refactoring errors, structure and consistency, a wiki slowly becomes shit. But maybe you now shut up for some time with the endless whining about dedication and lack of help, as you're just picking cherries yourself?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

No, I'm saying that I'm not doing all that to go from one "wrong" name to some other randomly chosen wrong name that's clumsy and cumbersome and a nuisance for everyone to memorise and reproduce correctly, or otherwise dilute into a number of irritating variants. There's nothing inherently wrong with U mount and Z mount, and they serve a very specific purpose in a way that, frankly, could never have been achieved intentionally. I've come to realise that it's a really happy accident. I'm happy to keep U mount and Z mount. If you actually want to go to all that hassle just for the sake of a long-winded way to describe a keycap mount accurately, that's fine, be my guest.

I'm happy to fix everything once I'm satisfied that it's a genuine improvement, but I could not see that happening, and I was resigned to letting someone else force a choice that I don't agree with, but at that stage, would be powerless to avoid. The problem is that everyone who's read the wiki or any recent forum topics already knows what the terms mean, and now you want them scrapped simply because they have insufficient grounding.

I do agree that it would be nice to have something more "correct", but I don't see that you can achieve something that is actually precise and jargon free at once. Cherry MX-compatible would work for U mount, but Alps-compatible just bugs me (Alps what?), considering the nuisance involved in moving to something less specific than what we started with.

Of course, you also forget that Findecanor all but accused me of just going around fixing his pages — yes I've spent plenty of time fixing mistakes, reordering, recategorising, correcting page name capitalisation, sometimes rewriting pages as necessary to make them tidy and readable, and even posting things nobody cares about just for completeness. I've got plenty to do on the wiki, and most people aren't doing anything at all. If anything, it gives them a chance to play with MediaWiki. At the same time, I wasn't even being entirely serious, but sadly my sense of humour is incomprehensible in written form, and pretty screwed up at the best of times.

Besides, it's Soarer who's got it stuck in his head that I expect everything to be perfect and complete. Not me. I expect people to be ordered, thorough and dedicated (instead of random and haphazard), but I know that we'll still have a ton of problems. I know you picked up on me putting ''lead term'' instead of '''lead term''' (italic instead of bold) — for some reason I kept getting that wrong and not noticing. (Despite me going around and fixing other articles that lacked bold lead terms! I even managed earlier to put an external link that wasn't even a link. Just the caption of what would have been a link if I'd remembered to put one in. Perfection isn't possible. And I'm now irritated at my own naming convention for switch recognition diagrams because, while it works fine in my Deskthority folder in Explorer, it makes a wretched mess out of the category as all the image captions are the same truncated fragment. I will fix that one day, once I know how. Hell, I'm finding a ton of faults with my images (inconsistent grey shading, inconsistent use of 2px borders, not all are 175 px wide, and some switches are just plain wrong) — but since MediaWiki forces the image page to show all the previous versions, I won't fix them until I can do one re-upload per image, to prevent having rows and rows of previous versions, as MediaWiki is so absolutely AWFUL with the way it handles image pages.)

Besides, I don't see this is an an overnight fix, and I just got annoyed with you suggesting absurd terms that were a lot worse than what we have now — it wasn't helping at all.

Strangely enough, diagramming switches actually leads me down interesting routes that all end up with more switch knowledge that I can write up.

[webwit]

You say my terms are absurd (which they aren't) and worse than what we have now (which they aren't), yet you failed so far to suggest any better or improve in any way over those terms, while championing two random letters which turned out to be exactly that: random. Happy accident my ass. Calling a cross shaped stem "U mount" is bad because no one knows what it means unless it's explained. If we do that, it's better to call it something like Type 1, Type 2 etc. or forever people will wonder what the U and Z stand for. Calling them Cherry/Alps type mount or cross/rectangle mount is better because everyone knows what it means, while you can write a page about the finer details.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Now you see why "perfect" is not my expectation. We will disagree on this forever, and as with pretty much any topic here, you'll never get feedback from 99.9% of forum members. (Though "cross mount" is definitely patently absurd, as it means nothing.) You're expecting me to rewrite everything when I don't even agree on a better alternative — why do you imagine I would ever do that? What sort of mindset would I need to randomly select something I disagree with, and waste hours applying it, when someone here might post a better suggestion the day after? Feel free to scream at me for not being premature. Maybe it's cathartic for you. It just doesn't make sense.

The question is, if you feel this strongly about it, is it likely that you actually would change it all? Or anyone else for that matter?