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I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
41–50 of 212 posts
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#42One of my favorite things about my custom mechanical keyboard, is being able to remap the entire key set in the firmware with VIA. I have fn+arrow keys for media, fn+space for play/pause fn+end for calculator, and a bunch of random others. It is so useful I could never get another keyboard that doesn’t have a similar functionality.
> It is so useful I could never get another keyboard that doesn’t have a similar functionality.
I do it at the software level (Linux / Xorg): complete remapping, with an "hyper" key modifier etc.
The reason I do it at the software level is that you can pry my Topre switches from my cold dead hands and the HHKB Pro JP I'm using doesn't have, by default, a programmable controller. Now I know some people mod their Topre keyboards to add a programmable controller but I never got to that point.
Doing so in hardware using .xkb files is... Something. I know way more about .xkb files than I should but, thankfully, so far I've just been able to brink my .xkb file to every new Linux version (supporting Xorg, I'm not on Wayland).
I take at some point I'll look more into how to mod my HHKB keyboards with programmable controller.
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#43Speaking of "natural scrolling" it is horrible because most scrolling is downward and "natural" is an ergonomically inferior pushing action instead of pulling. It's only natural on the actual display itself. Anothe affront to nature by Apple, along with killing the headphone jack.
Reasonable-sounding arguments always come up in these debates, but in reality it all comes down to what you’re used to. Disabling natural scrolling used to be the first thing I did on a new system. Until I once was too lazy to do it, got used to it, and now I can’t imagine ever going back.
So I was a Mac user for years and accepted and adapted to natural scrolling after it appeared as the default in 2011. When I switched back to a Windows laptop for work around 2018, I kept it on natural mode.
But then two years ago I got a desktop computer with an external mouse again and.... natural scrolling doesn't work for me on a physical wheel. With a trackpad, the metaphor is direct, that the page or document is being moved by the motion of your fingers; but with a wheel, I still want to pull it toward me to scroll down, because that feels like rolling the little wheel along the document, or turning it to advance the document beneath, like a printer finishing a page.
Maybe that's all silly, but for me it's natural scrolling on trackpads and conventional scrolling on mice with scrollwheels.
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#44Thinkpad laptops thankfully have a BIOS option to revert the behaviour to normal, where F1-F12 perform their nominal functions. I'd probably pay an extra €50 for a laptop that didn't come with a stupid Fn button at all. Might want to throw some more money at a few more keyboard modifications: my bottom row is Fn CTRL Win Alt Space AltGr PrtSc Ctrl; that PrtSc button clearly has no business being there. Arrows & PgUp/…
Thinkpad laptops thankfully have the option to switch Fn and Ctrl Key in the bios, because that Fn in the bottem left is reserved by my muscle memory to ctrl and I won't change that.
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#45Speaking of "natural scrolling" it is horrible because most scrolling is downward and "natural" is an ergonomically inferior pushing action instead of pulling. It's only natural on the actual display itself. Anothe affront to nature by Apple, along with killing the headphone jack.
Apple's just doing what's on the agenda, plugging the analog hole. Your TV doesn't have a headphone jack any more either. TVs haven't had this in decades.
I don't think I've ever owned any headphones with a long enough cable to plug into my tv when I'm sitting at a comfortable viewing position
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#46Speaking of "natural scrolling" it is horrible because most scrolling is downward and "natural" is an ergonomically inferior pushing action instead of pulling. It's only natural on the actual display itself. Anothe affront to nature by Apple, along with killing the headphone jack.
It makes sense on a trackpad too which is what the majority of sold Macs come with. You’re “pushing” the document, not moving the scroll bars. Seems perfectly natural to me. My fingers move up, the document moves up; just like what would happen to a piece of paper being slid up a table. Yes, it’s less direct than touching the screen, but it makes more sense for the model of UI they’ve been going for over the last 20…
On any non-apple system it has the "natural" scroll on the touchpad AND sane scrolling behavior.
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#47A missed opportunity to say you 'Fn' hate the Fn key :)
Thanks for the idea! Now I'm going to mash the Fn key whenever I feel the urge to strongly emphasize something but can't actually type it out because, well, it would be Fn NSFW.
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#48Traditional keyboards are dead to me, get something programmable with zmk or qmk and a bunch of extra thumb buttons so they can do something more than just the spacebar. I have ctrl and alt in the outer column inline with letters so they're super easy to press without reaching, and shift, return, backspace on thumbs as well as layer switch for function keys, symbols, numpad, and arrows all accessible from the home po…
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Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#49The builtin keyboard on Asus StudioBook laptops also gets this right.
When holding Alt, the F4 key always acts as that rather than its special action (backlight brightness down).
Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys
#50I've switched to programmable ergo keyboards where there's a whole slew of options ( https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods just covers home row mods) I've always hated stateful control. Always ripped out caps lock key from my boards (or later figured out remapping), same for insert mode That's carried over, even with options like one shot mods, & cutting down to under 40 keys (& playing with 28, yesterday rece…
You sound like you would prefer Emacs over Vim.
Emacs key sequences are similarly stateful, and GP may hate that just as much, even if the state is temporary.
For my part, in emacs I would often try ctrl-x-s to save, but miss the x. When I repeat the attempt, emacs register the complete but unknown key sequence ctrl-s-x followed by the start of a new key sequence with ctrl-s. I consider this similarly stateful because the behavior of "ctrl-s" changes entirely depending on what keystroke (if any) preceded it.