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I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

danq.me

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Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#71

Post by mhandley »

CarVac wrote: post #8

Speaking 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's not just the ergonomics - in my head I'm moving the cursor (and with it my view) down through the document, not moving the document up. Which is mentally different from a touchscreen, though I expect people who grew up with touchscreens never built that mental association that we're moving the cursor. Fortunately Apple allows be to change it.

Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#72

Post by bee_rider »

The F1-F12 keys have always felt like one of those things where… it’s like, people who enjoy oldschool interfaces seem very attached to. And I love the terminal, so I feel like I ought to have strong opinions in their favor.

But the only time I need to use them is… what is it, ctrl-alt-F3 to switch to a console if my window manager has fallen apart. This is a very rare event, so I can’t find any strong feeling here.

What do people use these keys for? The volume/brightness keys seem much more useful. Maybe I’ll map the corresponding F-keys to brightness as well, so I can just never care about Fn.

Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#73

Post by taeric »

__s wrote: post #12

I'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…

Aren't layers a form of stateful control?

Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#74

Post by ilaksh »

I have a mechanical keyboard also and like tactile feedback. But I think what we really want is just a touch screen with some kind of next level programmable haptics. Then we can have whatever keys we want

Products like Tactus or Tanvas were going in the right direction.

Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#75

Post by dabluecaboose »

kijin wrote: post #52
dabluecaboose wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Das keyboard commits the sin of having a sleep button (why is it even on the keyboard??) right next to the media controls. I've accidentally hit that multiple times when trying to change my music.

Try borrowing my laptop, it has the power button right next to Delete. You never know what exactly is going to be deleted!

Hah, my work-issued laptop has that one as well. Power button should never be inline with normal keys, IMO.

Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#78

Post by Crestwave »

x187463 wrote: post #39
CarVac wrote: post #8

Speaking 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.

On a Macbook, natural scrolling feels right on the touchpad. The real crime is not having a separate setting for a mouse. I had to use applescript tied to a keybind so I can use natural scrolling on the touchpad and toggle to regular scrolling when using a mouse wheel.

Check out Scroll Reverser; it's a tiny, open source app that solves exactly this.

There are some other alternatives like BetterTouchTool if you want some other changes like gestures, but as far as this specific problem goes you can just `brew install scroll-reverser`, set up the settings you want and forget about it. Life is too short to deal with this nonsense which is clearly designed to sell the Magic Mouse.

https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#79

Post by projektfu »

bee_rider wrote: post #72

The F1-F12 keys have always felt like one of those things where… it’s like, people who enjoy oldschool interfaces seem very attached to. And I love the terminal, so I feel like I ought to have strong opinions in their favor. But the only time I need to use them is… what is it, ctrl-alt-F3 to switch to a console if my window manager has fallen apart. This is a very rare event, so I can’t find any strong feeling here.…

I guess you never use Excel, or never learned to use it effectively.

Re: I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys

#80

Post by cl3misch »

bee_rider wrote: post #72

The F1-F12 keys have always felt like one of those things where… it’s like, people who enjoy oldschool interfaces seem very attached to. And I love the terminal, so I feel like I ought to have strong opinions in their favor. But the only time I need to use them is… what is it, ctrl-alt-F3 to switch to a console if my window manager has fallen apart. This is a very rare event, so I can’t find any strong feeling here.…

Alt-F4 is the canonical shortcut for closing a window

F2 is the canonical key for renaming

F5 is refresh

F11 is fullscreen

F1 is for help but admittedly I don't use that a lot

I can't think of a very frequent, standard use for the other keys. So I can't really disagree with having so many F keys being kinda unnecessary. But I'm happy to have them and they never bothered me.

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