A Modern Space Cadet • Hacker News Board

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#21

Post by moonboots » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

I'm hoping the split spacebar that Microsoft introduced[1] starts catching on with mechanical keyboard makers. The left side of the spacebar currently wastes valuable real estate. Putting another backspace key would move the most typed key into easy reach instead of forcing the right pinky to leap on every error.

On the topic of keyboard ergonomics, I also believe that all keyboards should be tenkeyless. It's another case of prioritizing an infrequent action (typing on the numpad) over a frequent action (moving the right hand to the mouse). Users who need a numpad can always get a standalone usb unit.

[1] http://reviews.cnet.com/keyboards/microsoft-sculpt-comfort-k...

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#22

Post by kevinhamer » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

I spend an abnormal amount of time research keyboards and never understood the US HHKB layout because of the diamond arrow keys. A better alternative in my opinion is the KBC Poker: http://deskthority.net/news-reviews-f4/kbc-poker-sixty-s-tak...

I'd say a far better layout than HHKB is the KBC Poker.

By holding the Fn key, it changes WASD into the arrow keys; a much more familiar layout to anyone who has ever played a game on a computer. There's also a hotkey to switch right shift, right alt, right menu, and right ctrl into up/left/down/right respectively. This again, I think makes perfect sense for the few situations you might want to be able to single press arrow keys. It also supports this sort of toggle for switching escape and tilde, which is very friendly for anyone who hits escape more often than tilde (probably almost everyone.) It also has things like volume control media keys via the Fn key that I don't believe any HHKB has.

Direct link to its layout: http://i.imgur.com/lGsld.gif Direct link to its layout w/ FN pressed: http://i.imgur.com/3fvcV.gif

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#23

Post by ScottBurson » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 4:59 PM UTC

EchoAbstract wrote: post #15

Oddly enough the ctrl key in the home row is a Unix thing (I think it's a Sun invention, but I don't recall). On the original space cadet keyboard (and all the Symbolics keyboards), Rub Out is located where modern day Caps Lock is found (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard ). Ctrl is still located on the bottom row. Has anyone tried remapping a delete key to where the Caps Lock key is found? Is the…

CTRL next to A was, I believe, its original location. That's where it was on the Teletype Model 33, which dates back to 1963, and I'm not aware of an earlier keyboard that had a CTRL key.

In the 1970s, most terminals continued with this placement. I believe the modern practice of putting Caps Lock there came in with the first IBM PC -- copied, of course, from their typewriter keyboards.

Being a longtime Lisp Machine user, I had that key mapped to Backspace on my Unix workstations into the late 1990s, but I couldn't do that remapping on my PowerBook, so I gave up -- it was too confusing to have Backspace in different places on different machines. (I think the remapping is actually possible with OS X, but I've never bothered. It's certainly possible with Linux.)

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#24

Post by thiderman » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

I'm almost ashamed of how excited I was while reading this. Default layouts of keyboards are incredibly ineffective for programming, and I find customization of layouts to be very important.

The best thing I ever did was adopting something I found on some dvorak layouts; using AltGr to make any special symbols. Now, AltGr+qwerasdfzxcv makes ()[]^${};/&! for me, which covers 90% of the special characters I write. Not leaving the alphabetical keys for any of these does wonders; It's the little things, really.

I'll also try to implement the shift-key training through xmodmap. I'll post the results if I manage!

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#25

Post by zellyn » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 5:10 PM UTC

Anyone have a simple way to achieve the Caps-lock training wheels in linux?

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#26

Post by rprimus » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 5:17 PM UTC

EchoAbstract wrote: post #15

Oddly enough the ctrl key in the home row is a Unix thing (I think it's a Sun invention, but I don't recall). On the original space cadet keyboard (and all the Symbolics keyboards), Rub Out is located where modern day Caps Lock is found (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard ). Ctrl is still located on the bottom row. Has anyone tried remapping a delete key to where the Caps Lock key is found? Is the…

Here is the xmodmap I use in Linux:

  remove Lock = Caps_Lock
  clear Lock
  keysym  Caps_Lock =    Control_L  BackSpace  Escape  BackSpace
  add Control = Control_L

I've been playing with KR4MB and set Control_L to Control_L (+ When you type Control_L only, send Delete) + [KeyRepeat]

This is causing some angst, as I've discovered I sometimes tend to hold down the CapsLock key before hitting another key. It's long enough for multiple deletes to be sent to an application (eg using Vrome in Chrome).

Shift_R has been remapped to .

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#27

Post by zellyn » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 5:19 PM UTC

zellyn wrote: post #25

Anyone have a simple way to achieve the Caps-lock training wheels in linux?

I believe this stackoverflow question, asked today, would give us the answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12704366

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#28

Post by smacktoward » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

moonboots wrote: post #21

I'm hoping the split spacebar that Microsoft introduced[1] starts catching on with mechanical keyboard makers. The left side of the spacebar currently wastes valuable real estate. Putting another backspace key would move the most typed key into easy reach instead of forcing the right pinky to leap on every error. On the topic of keyboard ergonomics, I also believe that all keyboards should be tenkeyless. It's another…

Definitely. I'd just be happy if you could get a mechanical keyboard that uses the layout that MS uses for its ergonomic keyboards, with the split keys and the height gently swelling in the center where the split is. (Look at the Natural Keyboard 4000 to see what I'm talking about: http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/natural-ergonomic-...)

Once you get used to typing on a keyboard that uses this layout, going back to a standard flat and un-split layout feels slow and painful. I love mechanical switches, but not enough to give up the much better layout of the Natural keyboards to get them.

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#29

Post by lri » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 5:37 PM UTC

There's at least one shortcut that uses control, option, shift, and command, ⌃⌥⇧⌘., which saves a sysdiagnose report to /var/tmp/.

The reason why key combinations like ⌥← don't work with Unicode Hex Input is probably because they aren't assigned to control characters. I got ⌥← to work after adding this to keymap 3 in the Unicode Hex Input.keylayout that comes with Ukelele:

You could also use DefaultKeyBinding.dict for inserting Greek characters, but it wouldn't work in Xcode or shell views. (See http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/KeyBindings/Greek%20Bi...) Another option would be to add keymaps to a keylayout file:

...

To assign another key to a holdable caps lock, check "Pass-Through CapsLock LED status" and add something like this to private.xml:

    
    --KeyToKey--
    KeyCode::N,
    Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN,
    KeyCode::CAPSLOCK,
    Option::KEYTOKEY_AFTER_KEYUP,
    KeyCode::CAPSLOCK

I thought something like this might also work:

    
    --KeyToKey--
    KeyCode::A,
    ModifierFlag::OPTION_R,
    KeyCode::A,
    Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN,
    KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_RUSSIAN,
    KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
    Option::KEYTOKEY_AFTER_KEYUP,
    KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
    KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_FINNISH

Unicode Hex Input or Greek is not included in inputsourcedef.xml though.

Re: A Modern Space Cadet

#30

Post by EchoAbstract » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 5:40 PM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #23

EchoAbstract wrote: post #15

Oddly enough the ctrl key in the home row is a Unix thing (I think it's a Sun invention, but I don't recall). On the original space cadet keyboard (and all the Symbolics keyboards), Rub Out is located where modern day Caps Lock is found (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard ). Ctrl is still located on the bottom row. Has anyone tried remapping a delete key to where the Caps Lock key is found? Is the…

CTRL next to A was, I believe, its original location. That's where it was on the Teletype Model 33, which dates back to 1963, and I'm not aware of an earlier keyboard that had a CTRL key. In the 1970s, most terminals continued with this placement. I believe the modern practice of putting Caps Lock there came in with the first IBM PC -- copied, of course, from their typewriter keyboards. Being a longtime Lisp Machine…

I didn't know that about the ASR-33 (haven't actually seen one), all my experience has been with unix and PC keyboards (plus some WYSE terminals).

I agree with it being confusing to have the same key jump around while you type, which is why I gave up re-mapping altogether (at my last job I was using 5 different systems that each would have required a remap, and I wasn't able to remap on each system). To much dissonance when trying to figure out why a key is not doing what you think it should be doing.