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QMK and Keyboards

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61–70 of 102 posts

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#61

Post by stavros »

rgoulter wrote: post #3

The most common misconception I see about QMK keyboards (especially keyboards which stray far from the traditional form, like in OP's) is about small keyboards. The most common kind of small keyboards are just like laptop keyboards, and try and fit a keyboard into a smaller space (and the omitted keys get relegated to being behind Fn key). These tend to retain the impractically big spacebar of a typical keyboard, out…

I made one with four thumb keys and I love it:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/george-i-made-a-keyboard/finish...

I should write up how I did it, it's now years I've been sitting on that post.

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#62

Post by stavros »

mynegation wrote: post #16

I considered using something like that, but my concern that it is going to ruin my muscle memory for the situations when I cannot use it - eg locked down environments at work. So I stick to whatever can be done with standard OS capabilities.

It doesn't, I use a standard laptop keyboard and my weird-ass custom keyboard very interchangeably with zero trouble. Hell, I'm typing on a MacBook right now.

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#63

Post by bsnnkv »

zvmaz wrote: post #48
bsnnkv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have both an Ergodox and a Ferris which are both now gathering dust. In my experience, columnar layouts are not worth it for me as a developer, because there is nothing that I can gain from a layout that changes the position of the {};' () keys that will ever offset the productivity and familiarity lost by those keys never being where I expect them to be.

So what do you use Kanata for if you don't mind the question?

I have a bunch of home row mods, and I also have layers with dedicated app-specific utility-mappings that I have automatically toggle on when the relevant app window is focused so that I don't have to waste extra keys to toggle/switch between different layers.

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#64

Post by mike986 »

bsnnkv wrote: post #4

Gotta give a shoutout to kanata[1] which I have used daily for years at this point after giving up on QMK-powered keyboards. QMK itself is great, but I was never able to find a non-columnar split ISO keyboard to use it with. Eventually I reluctantly settled on the Logitech K860[2] and I'm now happily using my favourite features from QMK with kanata at the software level. [1]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata [2]: If I…

https://keeb.io/collections/sinc

https://keeb.io/collections/kbo-5000-split-staggered-80-keyb...

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#65

Post by mike986 »

rgoulter wrote: post #3

The most common misconception I see about QMK keyboards (especially keyboards which stray far from the traditional form, like in OP's) is about small keyboards. The most common kind of small keyboards are just like laptop keyboards, and try and fit a keyboard into a smaller space (and the omitted keys get relegated to being behind Fn key). These tend to retain the impractically big spacebar of a typical keyboard, out…

100% agree with having more keys accessible via the thumb, I used to have the KBD75 (with spacebar 3 way splits, so I have shift and ctrl right under the thumb) but they discontinued it.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1473/3902/files/75_v2_c821...

I recently learned that there are these from system76

https://system76.com/accessories/launch

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#66

Post by skidd0 »

When I started getting some RSI from coding all day, I looked for solutions. I ultimately settled on a split keyboard (separating the left and right hand more, less cramped in front at odd wrist angles) with a bunch of thumb keys (to act as modifiers, much easier to use than pinkie based mods) and a folding tripod stand for each so i could "tent" each keyboard out at an angle that matched my natural resting hand posture. That and a wrist pad completely resolved any RSI/tension I had.

With QMK, I was able to setup a nice set of keyboard layers for regular use, gaming, and multimedia control. For any keyboard power users, it's a dream! My hands are always in home row and everything is a simple finger movement/chord away.

Link to the build kit I used: https://splitkb.com/products/kyria-rev3-pcb-kit

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#67

Post by apetrovic »

kkfx wrote: post #27

Personally I have a Keychron V6, witch is just ok for it's price, but my complaint is that QMK have enough power to simply read a text file on a small flash memory even a raw memory flashed via `dd` wrapped by a simple script and made the customization much more comfy, without the need of recompile the fw, downloading ~1.5Gb of stuff simply mapping a physical key or key combination to a set of keycodes. Second RANT t…

> Third RANT please STOP making cherry, OSA etc profiles. Very old IBM keyboards have solved the height issue with a simple parabolic support, there is NO DAMN REASON to make flat support and different height keycaps making limited room to move them on the keyboard.

Some of us like to experiment with various profiles (my favorites are MT3 and Cherry and I rotate them every couple months on my keyboards). You can try XDA and DSA profiles, they're qute flat.

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#68

Post by keyle »

skidd0 wrote: post #66

When I started getting some RSI from coding all day, I looked for solutions. I ultimately settled on a split keyboard (separating the left and right hand more, less cramped in front at odd wrist angles) with a bunch of thumb keys (to act as modifiers, much easier to use than pinkie based mods) and a folding tripod stand for each so i could "tent" each keyboard out at an angle that matched my natural resting hand post…

What language programming gives you RSI? I spend around 50 times the time thinking and navigating than typing code. And with LLM completion I barely type nowadays.

I thought RSI was mostly for documentation writers and emails people.

Ref: programming for 25+ years. I only had problems when my posture was bad. Lucky I guess.

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#69

Post by eightbaskets22 »

nsajko wrote: post #56
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #19

If you're interested in QMK, you might want to give ZMK a shot as well. The big differences are that it's wireless-first (cognizant of power consumption, supports various wireless modes, etc), it's built around ARM (doesn't support Atmel), and is a much newer codebase. But I have to give it to QMK as well, they have been reworking / refactoring a major wart in how you config keyboards, with the move to info.json and…

> it's wireless-first Sounds like a security nightmare. Input devices, and especially keyboards, are something that absolutely needs to be wired-only in my book.

> Input devices […] need to be wired-only.

That's just like, your opinion, man.

Re: QMK and Keyboards

#70

Post by FullyFunctional »

Sakos wrote: post #12

This is surprising to me https://getreuer.info/posts/keyboards/non-english/index.html... I wonder why a better solution hasn't been implemented in QMK. Is it a technical limitation?

Oh neat! I didn't know it could do this. I use U+202F (Narrow No-break Space) all the time to separate numbers from their unit (as in "20 kg" which I'm sure won't display correctly here), but I haven't found a convenient way to enter that on macOS.
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