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Comment by mondalaci | Hacker News Reader

Even though you can use Autohotkey and similar software to remap your layout but it's limited in various aspects so as it turns out hardware-level remapping has no substitute. It's also nice to create keymaps, save it to the onboard EEPROM and be able to move your UHK across different computers without ever dealing with (OS-specific) remapping again.

The staggered columns are indeed offset to create an angle but it's more comfortable to be able to adjust the angle and the distance between the keyboard halves.

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It is still almost always worse. Storing the mapping on a large device doesn't make sense, when you can store a script online or in a small storage device if internet access is a problem somehow, and it works with every computer that has a standard keyboard. Just like the drivers, script has to be written only once, but has the benefit of sharing with any other user for free without requiring special hardware.

The benefit seems to be low level systems where it is hard to script the key mappings (assuming drivers work). But do you really write your code, i.e. spend a significant percentage of time in them, or in moderns OSs?

As for comfort, buy a ergonomic keyboard that is cheaper and static and will force you to adapt the correct posture. Especially if the problem is the small additional angle required to touch type, those keyboard solve it.

"Storing the mapping on a large device doesn't make sense" - I agree about this, the large device being a bulky host computer. Various OSes have various (sometimes quite severe) limitations regarding remapping and the "script" that you mention is also OS-specific which is a pain if you use multiple OSes.

>"Storing the mapping on a large device doesn't make sense" - I agree about this, the large device being a bulky host computer.

Strawman. The large device is the keyboard you need to lug around. Tell me, is your keyboard designed for use with a computer?

>Various OSes have various (sometimes quite severe) limitations regarding remapping and the "script" that you mention is also OS-specific which is a pain if you use multiple OSes.

No. It isn't a pain, it called hacking and you only need to do it once and it is free and shareable. So in this sense only one person has to do it once and it just works for everyone else from then on.

> Tell me, is your keyboard designed for use with a computer?

Of course it is.

> No. It isn't a pain, it called hacking and you only need to do it once and it is free and shareable.

It's not a pain for some who have the skills and are willing to spend enough time. The big difference is that we enable users to make this work in an intiutive, platform-independent way.

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