The 40% Keyboard

Most of them would be of little value to the average end user, but I can't imagine that something like the article's charm table wouldn't be of use to developers - and the people that define the languages they use.

Completely tangentially, I think all keyboard caps should come with braille bumps by default, it would make learning to type easier and come with the added benefit of learning braille by osmosis (which I've always thought would be a bad-ass way to deliver a speech).

I've changed from the default map and restored the esc key and it doubles as a vim like 'leave layer'. It feels very natural.

As for tilde, I dropped the caps lock key and moved tab downwards to place tilde under esc.

Another option is to layer the key (ie, you have a special modifier key that changes the keys) so mod+tilde = esc. I do this to map my square brackets onto one key.

Overall I'm very happy with it. I've had a steeper than expected learning curve because I used to type with an over dominant wasd centric left hand (FPS gaming), which will apply to some but not most people.

Holding / on the right side and hitting z gets the equivalent of Ctrl+Z.

Or you could just move the mouse with your fingers. Other positives include requiring much less space and not looking silly flailing around. (My preference is maybe 1–2 cm corner-to-corner, with no wrist related issues a couple decades in; and obviously, mouse acceleration is a great idea.)

I've been a hardcore vim user for 20+ years and this is the least of all potential problems, so if this is what you're worried about, don't be.

Function keys - it took me a while to get the keycombos into my muscle memory, basically it takes the extra modifier that the UHK has to access them. What I used to use them most often for was in Visual Studio (start debugger, run, build, that sort of thing), but what I ended up doing was basically hard-coding all those commands into a custom 'layer' of the UHK, so that (even with standard key bindings in the software) I have more logical (less chording) keys to do all those things. The main advantage is that I no longer have to contort my hands to do things like shift ctrl f5. I haven't had to re-learn bindings or manually remap keys in software for years.

For things like 'rename' in explorer.exe (F2), so things that I do really a lot, it only took a couple of days of practice to get used to the extra modifier. I did spend the time to set up AutoHotKey to do some other types of global hotkeys (open keypass or other often used software, some accented characters, that sort of thing) but that wasn't too bad.

Still, if they'd make a version with an additional function key row, I'd buy it in a heartbeat; not having them I consider a trade off for all the other good stuff (split, solid build quality, printed caps, tiltable, mechanical keys)

In terms of build quality, I like it as much as the ErgodoxEZ; I hope they'll finally come through with the extensions (only 4 years delayed...) because the thing I miss most from the Ergodox are the thumb clusters. The wooden hand rests are getting stained after 2+ years of use, but for the rest they're nice. I had firmware problems at the very beginning but that seems to be OK now. I wasn't very impressed with the support I got with those issues, it was basically first 'try unplugging and plugging back in' and then 'it works for me'. But it got there in the end after a few new versions of the firmware. The 'use the keyboard as a mouse' is a gimmick, I don't understand why they make that a core selling point in the UHK marketing. All in all, it's the best keyboard I can find that still uses somewhat standard keycaps (my reason for never trying a keyboardio; I've tried many others apart from that one).