pinchord-16 Alt Layouts

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There are plenty of boards with NKRO and 5 or 4 column that should work with Pinchord, rather than only the 23-24 key keyboards.

This would require a 5 and maybe a 4 column version of the Plover plugin, as I imagine this isn't really needed with Javelin (if a board has enough memory for Javelin it probably has enough columns for Pinchord, unless it's a custom made board then idk you're on your own lol, for now anyway)

Implementation

The Plover plugin currently has one system, which is the 6 columns version, so I think a 5 and a 4 column layout could just be added as separate systems to the plugin that you can choose from in the Systems tab.

The standard 24 key layout has the following keys: s#+TSPWHR&AOIU^LRPKFST*e.

For steno boards without the key(s) left of S, you can drop the suffix s key and just use /+-S, leaving #+TSPWHR&AOIU^LRPKFST*e.

If the board is also missing the far right key, you can drop # and use & as a caps stroke either before or after any word, and just add that to your user dictionary, so that's +TSPWHR&AOIU^LRPKFST*e.

Going from that 5 column layout to 4, you have to drop some pretty essential keys, but you can get rid of e, and then have to find another key which probably comes from squishing all the starters into 6 keys, leaving +TSPWHRAOIU^LRPKFST*e. With this, you'd have to use ^ as the retro caps key.

I don't think there's any reason to go below this, at 19 keys you have to drop +, and at 18 you have to somehow fit all the vowels into 5 keys, or all the finals into 7 keys, neither of which I can see.

Of course, dropping down to 20 keys isn't fun, but the layout honestly looks fine enough for real use. The only unfortunate part is that you'd be learning different starters, so you couldn't carry that muscle memory over if you decided to later switch to a 24 key keyboard. I don't think there's anything wrong with just using 23 keys and sticking to the 6 starter keys, though. Would leave you with an extra key to do what you want with which is pretty sweet.

I'm not sure the maintenance burden this would place on me, as managing 2, 3, and 4 systems is of course more work than managing 1, so I'd have to think about this.

I suppose with 23, 22, and 21 keys, the chords don't have to be changed at all, so another system isn't really required. You can just drop the -s key, remove # and add a user dictionary entry, and get rid of -e. But 20 keys requires a change to the chords, so it's definitely another thing to maintain...

The plover plugin has never really been the pain point of developing Pinchord, that has definitely always been the Javelin implementation, so maybe it wouldn't be a huge deal.

I think if anyone from the community wants to learn Pinchord on a 5 or 4 column keyboard (wink wink), let me know and I will probably make it.