Why stop there? Do you really need K, Q, Z, or X? H's are mostly silent and E/I are basically the same letter!
28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
81–90 of 149 posts
Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#82iwouldneverbeabletopracticallyusethiskeyboard
ithasnospacebarorpunctuationcharacters
notevenashiftkey
itonlyhasanenterkey
Edit: the button with the red dot on it (which I thought was Enter) is a Fn key that you use to access different "layers" - https://github.com/PyrooL/Alpha/tree/master/keymap
Nope. I prefer CISC keyboards over RISC keyboards: they require fewer discrete mnemonics to accomplish real-world goals (in this case typing a single character).
Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#83Hi all! I'm the one who designed Alpha. Not sure if I need to do anything to verify my identity, but in the meanwhile feel free to ask me anything about this project! :)
Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#84Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a fan of 60% or tenkeyless (TKL) keyboards personally. I get this weird feeling of my desk being cramped that I really don't like sometimes. A TKL keyboard solved that for me. And don't miss the numpad because I don't enter long strings of numbers much anyway.
I'm right there with you. It feels much better to me to be able to have the mouse more in-front of me than off to the side, especially when gaming. I tried to go 60%(?) with a Pok3r but I like having the arrow keys available without having to use a modifier key.
My regular home board is a GK64, which has the same layout as the Pok3r, but includes an arrow key cluster (at the cost of smaller modifiers on the right side and a 1U Rshift).
Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#86How expensive is it to manufacture the PCB in 1x quantity? It's about 192x60mm, and it has 2 layers.
JLCPCB.com will get a 5-pack to your door for about 20 USD
Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#87Hi all! I'm the one who designed Alpha. Not sure if I need to do anything to verify my identity, but in the meanwhile feel free to ask me anything about this project! :)
I just realized I still have your Alpha! I should pop that in the post.
What's next on your list of weird designs?
Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#88Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#89I don't get the obsession with custom keyboard with ever fewer keys. If I designed one, if anything it would have at least a few more modifier keys that a standard keyboard.
I don't get why most keyboards available in stores have a numpad. I never use it, and it takes up valuable space on my desk. I wonder how many people actually use the numpad section of a keyboard on a daily basis.
On non-qwerty layouts such as azerty (french) you gave to press shift to type a number on the top row so a numeric keypad is quickly useful. (And those are not very friendly for coding either...)
Re: 28-Key Mechanical Keyboard
#90I don't get the obsession with custom keyboard with ever fewer keys. If I designed one, if anything it would have at least a few more modifier keys that a standard keyboard.
I built a 107 key ergonomic keyboard last week. Still writing up the details, but trust me, you are not the only one that wants a lot of keys ;) This is the layout: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/f903ee27a11bcb... (The legends as shown are not what the keys actually do; when I was designing the layout I was trying very carefully to use keycaps that come with a default GMK group buy set... this was how I kept track.)
I think the obsession with small keyboards is manyfold:
1) Large keyboards get in the way of the mouse.
2) People have noticed that they have to move strangely to press keys the farther away they are from home row. 1 is a stretch for most people, F5 is probably impossible. So why include them?
3) It's easier. After laying out 107 keys in CAD, waiting for an 18"x9" keyboard to print in three pieces, soldering 107 diodes, soldering 27 wires to my microcontroller, and reading the entire STM32F103 reference manual to figure out why one row didn't work... I can tell you that a 28 key keyboard seems a lot easier to build ;)
4) They use the same keyboard for home and work, and want something easier to carry around. When I switched to an Ergodox a couple years ago, I managed this for about 3 days before buying another one. To me $600 on keyboards is nothing, but to a lot of people, that's unimaginable.
Personally, I see the advantages with both approaches. I don't actually have ({}) keys on my keyboard; they're on a layer and under the jkl; fingers, because that's easier to type than moving my pinky to some weird place to jab them with my weakest finger hundreds of times a day. So using a Planck or a 28 key keyboard wouldn't feel all that different to me when programming or writing prose.
But what people don't consider are all the cases where you aren't touch typing but are instead issuing high-level commands to the computer. Some people frequently use mouse-driven software (CAD, video editing, etc.) and have the option to either pick a command out of the menu, or press a key on the keyboard. With a 28 key keyboard, the typing route means taking your hands off the mouse and pressing at least three keys at the same time. So you pick it out of the menu. With a full keyboard, you can use the "wrong hand" to press F12 or something, and not break your flow by navigating through 8 layers of menus.
(Even with all this in mind, a split 107 key keyboard doesn't help every use case. Some games really want you to type right hand keys with your left hand, and a split keyboard makes that difficult. I don't play any of those games, though ;)