Place - and _ next to each other on the symbols page

[MiMoHo]

What

Swap the & and - keys in the second row of the symbols layout so the hyphen and underscore sit side by side:

• before: @ # $ _ & - + ( ) /
• after: @ # $ _ - & + ( ) /

The same swap is applied to the Arabic symbols layout (symbols_arabic.txt), which mirrors the default one.

Why

- and _ are two closely related characters (both are horizontal-line glyphs, both are common in identifiers, filenames, handles, etc.). Having them next to each other makes the second one reachable without hunting across the row; previously & sat between them.

Notes

• Only the key order changes; popups are unchanged (- keeps – ⁻ — ·, _ keeps % ‰).
• No effect on other symbol pages (the shifted symbols page has neither key as a main key).
• ./gradlew :app:testRunTestsUnitTest --tests "helium314.keyboard.ParserTest" passes (42/0/0); parseExistingLayouts reads and validates the modified files and canLoadKeyboard builds a keyboard from them.

[Helium314]

Did anyone actually request this change or have issues with the current default layout?
Asking because this messes with what people are used to, e.g. on qwerty you need to get used to long-press g instead of h, which will result in typos until users get used to the new layout.

[MiMoHo]

Fair point — it was a concrete user request (having - and _ next to each other), but you're right that swapping & and - in the shared default trades one group's muscle memory for another's, and that's not a good deal.

I've come to think the underlying problem isn't the order of two keys but that the symbols page is US-shaped for everyone. On a German physical keyboard, - and _ literally share one key (_ is Shift+-), which is why this felt wrong to the user in the first place. So I'm closing this in favour of #2681, which gives each region the symbols arrangement its users already know from their physical keyboard — including _ next to - in the regional rows — while leaving the default page exactly as it is for everyone else.