433% Keyboard • Hacker News Board

Re: 433% Keyboard

#111

Post by rgoulter » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

arvinsim wrote: post #100

I am more interested in the workflow of using one separate keyboard for each hand. That is probably trivial to setup on conventional keyboards but I wonder if it is ergonomically better.

Splitting a keyboard has ergonomic benefits. I don't see that "full keyboard for each hand" would be an advantage. One of the more popular split keyboards is the Corne Keyboard. https://github.com/foostan/crkbd

There are split keyboards with more keys than the Corne, such as the Lily58. https://github.com/kata0510/Lily58

Re: 433% Keyboard

#112

Post by autocorr » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

wyclif wrote: post #103

autocorr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A DIY custom actually![1] It's a split with 3 x 6 alphas, 3 thumb keys, and a palm key. I really like it but I was already moving in the direction on layout-minimalism on my ErgoDox. You can find a pic of my layout here[2]. Happy to answer any questions about it. On ergonomics and RSI, tough to say whether some of these things make a difference or not. There's no data. The single biggest difference to me is having mu…

In Vim, I would love to be able to map Ctrl-[ (which is what I use instead of Esc to change modes) to Ctrl-thumbkey just to relieve the right pinky. I'm using a standard mechanical TKL layout now. Or maybe just map Esc to a single thumb key.

Yeah as a heavy vimmer I also used Ctrl-[ with Caps-as-Ctrl for the longest time on a regular full-sized keyboard. Esc is great to have on a thumb key though. I used it on one of the outer ones on my ErgoDox and it worked well. A nice vim quality of life improvement was programming keyboard macros for `Esc : w Enter` and for quit.

It's not new in the vim world, but now what I use is `jk` pressed at the same time. Adjacent finger pairs are pretty easy to coordinate fast combos with -- just sort of jab your hand. Since it's in the keyboard firmware (QMK) it works in all contexts and not just vim, but the `jk` combo is also something that I can configure in the vimrc to use on my laptop.

Re: 433% Keyboard

#113

Post by rixtox » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

It's obviously for emacs users.

Re: 433% Keyboard

#114

Post by afandian » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #47

afandian wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipro keyboards, designed for POS systems are similar. E.g. this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Digipos-Tipro-Black-Keyboard-MID-... Look out for PS2 and a hard requirement to program them via a real PS2 (not a USB emulated port). I've bought one (cherry switches sans keycaps), filled it with blank keycaps and now I need to put together some electronics to make it useful (it looks like it uses something like SPI int…

Yesssss, I'm waiting for one of these to show up: https://www.ebay.com/itm/264811664552 Point-of-sale hardware is so much fun to play with, and there's so much of it out there!

At least that hybrid model with QWERTY has aplausable use case. But mine is just a grid. As for mine, there's only so many shortcuts you can assign to 128 anonymous keys...

Re: 433% Keyboard

#115

Post by slim » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:48 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #60

slim wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Tunisian (north africa) I write mixed texts containing both arabic and latin scripts. I have an azerty/arabic keyboard, arabic letters are on the same keys as latin letters so I constantly need to switch layout when I'm typing. A ~200ish keys keyboard would be Ideal for me. And i suppose it's the same for all non-latin keyboards

Have you considered having two keyboards plugged in at the same time, and switching between them according to your needs?

yes, I've done that. I did not find a reliable way to make the layout stick to a particular keyboard. but the main problem is it takes too much space

Re: 433% Keyboard

#116

Post by Symbiote » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 7:37 AM UTC

EForEndeavour wrote: post #57

sascha_sl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can keep the normal layout on a 40%, you just wouldn't have number/function/nav keys without layers 40% is not just plank, and I personally find the ergonomics of a plank board to be rather bad compared to staggered, unless it's split.

That reminds me, I consider losing arrow keys a dealbreaker. I use them frequently enough to navigate both text and code in various contexts (except in Vim, which I don't use exclusively). I already hold modifiers to jump to next/prev word boundary, page, start/end of continuous data ranges in Excel, etc. Admittedly, I'd probably adapt, but I'm held back by the belief that any ergonomic advantages of moving to wasd o…

I had similar misgivings, so I chose an ErgoDash, which has a few more keys than some of the minimalist offerings. I have the arrow keys in a horizontal row (which took some time to adapt to), but I can still use them with Alt/Ctrl/Shift modifiers fairly easily.

However, I'm planning on making something like this[1] "trackball Dactyl Manuform", where the trackball under the thumb can be configured to use different modes -- e.g. a key toggles it between being a mouse and being arrow keys, and another locks it to vertical/horizontal. It could be combined with holding Alt/Ctrl/Shift.

I made a gallery of split/ergonomic mechanical keyboards if you'd like a quick overview of other options. [2]

[1] https://medium.com/@kincade/track-beast-build-log-a-trackbal...

[2] https://aposymbiont.github.io/split-keyboards/

Re: 433% Keyboard

#117

Post by simias » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 10:04 AM UTC

alpaca128 wrote: post #82

simias wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree with you here, I like split ortho a lot (I'm typing this on an ergodox) but I'm super doubtful of any benefit for non-split orthos. My arms don't sprout from the center of my chest!

I actually prefer non-split orthos but with a split layout. What I mean with that is something similar to split keyboards but angled and within one case. This is still very ergonomic but more portable. Combined with columnar stagger and reduced to about 42 keys I find it extremely comfortable to type on.

Oh yeah, when I say non-split I mean fully rectangular layouts where the left and right hands are perfectly parallel. If you have clearly separated left and right sides that counts as split for me, even if they're within the same case.

That being said obviously you have more flexibility if you have fully separated sides, but it does tend to make the keyboard harder to carry around.

Re: 433% Keyboard

#118

Post by Markoff » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

notRobot wrote: post #42

Is it just me or is the text on the webpage completely unreadable with that font and shadow effect?

agreed, immediately closed, not sure why they bother with writing something if obviously they don't care if anyone reads it with choosing font/effect like this

Re: 433% Keyboard

#119

Post by kortex » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 12:03 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #26

autocorr wrote: post #21

For some context, this project was basically made to one up someone else, so it's not fully serious. Part of what makes the keyboard funny though is that (a niche of) the custom mechanical keyboard scene has been moving to many fewer keys and programming the firmware to compensate. So it's pretty funny going from seeing several Planck ~49 key layouts to seeing this gargantuan 450 key absolute unit. Sincerely typed by…

Is it an Atreus? How do you like that size of keyboard? I'm not too bothered about adopting some chords, but more interested in the general ergonomics / RSI risks.

Also not autocorr but I've had tons of fun with my Ergodox EZ. The layout relies on using the thumbs to chord layers, right now there's 6 (I actually started running out of useful codes/actions to put into slots, need to get into macros next). the 30 keys in the home row and above/below plus thumbs see heavy usage.

Thumbs do L3, space, L1, escape, L2, L4, control.

L0: dvorak

L1: programmer, left hand symbols (all 4 braces paired under middle and index), right hand arrow keys, nav, pgup/pgdn. Vimlike navigation at the keyboard level!

L2: left hand function keys, right hand numpad

L3: qwerty layout but with command so I get natural one-hand undo/cut/copy/paste

L4: mouse keys. Not a big fan of mouse nav, but keyboard issuing scroll up/down is handy

L1+L2: macros live here, I use this to eg. flip between iterm tabs. I desperately need more bucky/control bits though - It's hard to know which hotkeys are mapped across various applications. Give me a real Meta key, dangit!

This lets me rarely move from home position and it's great for ergonomics. Still trying to figure out what to about the mouse, as that makes my hand cramp. I keep a magic trackpad between the ergodox halves for gestures which is neat. But the dang mouse. Maybe it's the way my brain works, but I'm rarely in a single context, flipping between Pycharm and chrome and terminal constantly. Controlling application focus is a pain point.

I can't do the vim thing. I've tried for years. I'm a fast yet inaccurate typer, and the lack of any insight into the state (other than mode), and the heavy chording setup means spooky action constantly happens. I also hate having to hit a key for mode changes, chording is so much more efficient.

I use bettertouchtool and alfred, and don't have a lot of customization in there, so if anyone has any tips for utilizing this sort of setup to reduce mouse reliance, I'm all ears.

Re: 433% Keyboard

#120

Post by majewsky » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 12:19 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #97

jrockway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a limited number of scancodes; defined by the USB standard. The annoying thing for keyboards is that the OS controls what scancode maps to what character and that makes it impossible to have certain keys. For example, you can't have an ! key. That is always Shift+1 (with a US layout, that is). QMK and other firmwares will let you make an ! key, but it's implemented by pressing shift, then pressing 1. So you…

Stepping back, why would you actually want the keyboard firmware to have configurable settings and runtime state? xkbcomp (Linux/Xorg) is buggy as hell, but I'd say it's still fundamentally the right abstraction to do this on the host. Configuring a layout on the keyboard is itself the hack, really only encouraged by the recent innovation happening there.

If the logic is in the keyboard, I can have keybindings or input macros that work on every PC that I plug the keyboard into.