Why are so many keyboards tiny like this? If I want a small keyboard, I will just use a laptop.
I have a huge desk, I don't want a 12" keyboard with 2 weird small space keys, and the arrow keys smashed into the right side.
I have a huge desk, I don't want a 12" keyboard with 2 weird small space keys, and the arrow keys smashed into the right side.
Unless my right hand (mouse) is very close to my left one, I get RSI.
I started using keyboards without a numpad first, then without the nav cluster. Nowadays I choose keyboard which are taller but narrower, so that I can get the most functionality but without needing to force my right arm too far away: https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi?variant=16969883648090
It gives my right hand a much better position, it's quick to switch between mouse and keyboard, and it gives my elbows room to rest on the table.
The only downside is that it requires a slightly deeper desk than having the mouse next to the keyboard, but you probably want space on the desk for your arms anyway.
I would also highly recommend getting a trackball, personally I'm a programmer and have to rely on my hands despite having RSI and CTS.
The Scuplt was about halfway to a vertical mouse; the MX Vertical is like, all the way there. It was disorienting at first, but I stuck it out for the first weird day or two and I can't say I've ever been happier with a mouse.
My suspicion is that the market for TKL keyboards or even full keyboards is already served by the big brands so the custom vendors have a harder time.
For instance, I made a "nav" layer and put the arrowkeys under hjkl because I'm a vim person, and then I put Home, PgUp, PgDn, End under "nm,." because it made sense to me geometrically, and now I use those keys all the time.
Or another one: I brought "Insert" to mirror "Tab" and configured my zsh to do bash-style tab completion on "tab" and to autocomplete from history on "insert". Who the hell uses insert regularly? Me apparently.
Rewiring my brain took some doing, but I'm quite happy with the results.
Me for Shift+Inserting my X Primary selection (eg. HN block quotes. Virtually every single time I ever try to use any non-free OS I end up highlighting something, (Control|Alt|Command)+Tabbing, Shift+Inserting or middle-clicking, and hating my painful life when I realize I have to tab back and manually copy the text with a keyboard chord or dragging down a menu).
The feeling of inserting the primary buffer is so natural that I forgot it exists.
And the feeling of trying to use it and not having it--it's so bad I guess I blocked out.
Shift insert aside, a raw insert is a rare thing--until you tie it to zsh-autosuggestions
Us old-schoolers (veterans of Windows 3.x) reared on the IBM CUA who never really took to those newfangled [Ctrl]-[C|V|X] Macintosh editing keys, that's who.
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/eb0696806831fc...
That layout is a bit outdated, i moved super to the outer corner so I can palm press±hold it to manipulate windows in i3 with hjkl. Palm+tap is still enter.
The left hand uses fdsa to move the mouse and vcxz to send mouse scroll wheel events--so it's mirrored hjkl action.
I've done away with the number row in favor of a 10 key, and then mapped the symbols to their finger on the opposite hand, so '@' still goes with 2, but in a different kind of way.
Any symbol with a mate ()[]{} is similarly mirrored (index fingers do these). The idea is that if I ever hurt a hand (which is likely, since I'm a rock climber) I can map a foot pedal to activate a "switch sides" macro and I'll be able to exploit the symmetry to learn to do without whichever hand faster. This hypothesis is untested.
I originally designed it to give my right pinky finger a break, so the hands are further apart to give the index fingers more options and enter is a right palm-press.
Another nice thing about warping your mind to fit inside a tiny keyboard is that you can easily "embed" those neural mappings to a larger keyboard. I have an ergodox ez as well--which has plenty of keys, but I've just ported my planck layout inside of the ergodox and I really just ignore the other keys. I still like it because I can tent either side at different angles, which you can't do with the planck.
Disclaimer: this is not a hobby for those unwilling to burn a lot of time tinkering. Also, "maybe it's a bug in my keyboard firmware" is a new and unwelcome thought that must be made peace with. But it's fun for me, and pinky doesn't hurt anymore, so that's something.
In fact I only have two complaints about the default layout, both pretty minor. One is that {}[]\| are on the Fn layer which took some adjustment for programming. The other is that with alt and space side by side, I sometimes hit alt+space which on macOS becomes some non-ASCII space character that looks just like ASCII space. A find and replace for that works wonders.
After that it's basically a cultural thing.
For my keyboard: fn + jkli (or fn + wsad) for arrow keys. fn + uo for page up/down. fn + hn for home/end. fn + <number> for f1-12.
I rarely used insert/delete. I never used the number pad. I have my capslock set to be fn.
I was tired of a full sized monster keyboard taking so much space on my desk. At first I tried TKL but enter key placement turned out to be awkward for me, so I switched it out for a 60% since there was going to be a learning curve regardless.
I buy 15in or larger laptops specifically to get the 10key num pad built in.....
That would make the ctrl+ pg up/down shortcut that I use to switch between tabs in Firefox (or Kate) much harder. I'd suddenly have to press 3 keys at once instead of two.
It's a change of mindset.
Instead of reaching with your fingers to far-away keys, you will press a function key, and another key that is closer to your hands. This results in keys that are normally further away on 100% keyboards to become easier to press, because you don‘t have to move your whole hand just to reach that key.
You’re right that it takes muscle memory and time to learn, but in reality it’s not that long. Layers take maybe a day or two to get used to and then you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them!
Seriously, give QMK and layers a shot. You will probably find it much easier to get used to than you think!
I initially though I wanted more keys, but as I went I found out I wouldn't use them. It made a lot more sense to have a couple of layers on the thumbs and place all I needed around the rest position. In the end I had nothing important to put on extra keys.
Rationale: I used a mouse only for (a very few) games in the last 20 years and moving the hand to reach the mouse loses time. The touchpad is good enough to select and click stuff on screen (and a touchscreen would improve the experience for a few buttons here and there.) Furthermore the mouse has literally more friction than a finger on the touchpad (the ball ages ago, the laser now, the cord, the batteries, etc)
Or configure certain keys to do something different with a double or triple tap. Double tap lshift = [ Double tap rshift = ], etc.
They are highly configurable.
There's a ton of rethinking what a keyboard is that is going on in the ergo space right now as to what a keyboard _should_ be and how they should function. From physical layouts, curvature, keymaps, layering and combos it's interesting to see the experimentation going on. These devices are going to be used for the rest of our lives, they should at least be non-harmful over time.
Right now I'm using a GergoPlex, but my holy grail is a QMK'd DataHand. (And if you know who has one, please send them my way)
That being said, if someone wants to miniturise the LalBoard and rework it, I could design a PCB/firmware :)
1. Repeatedly/repetitively using small/weak/fine-motor muscles
2. Contorting your hands (like holding multiple modifirs with the same hand and also pressing whatever non-modifier)
Moving your whole hand from the venerable home row to for example the nav cluster doesn’t fall under any of the above, since you can move your arm with your shoulder. I have never had problems with using larger muscles like my shoulders all day for simple, non-strenuous tasks, and I haven’t heard of people who have reported problems with it yet. I have however heard of people who have gotten in trouble because they repeatedly do tiny motions with their fingers or hands. Which is tempting since it can feel easier to use those muscles for precise control -- I certainly pen-write with my wrist too much when I should be using my shoulder more -- but can easily lead to fatigue or worse.
I have had more problems with Emacs’ modifier-heavy default keybindings than I’ve ever had with modifier-less peasant software like word processors, ergonomics-wise.
It isn’t a problem for me ergonomically to move to the arrow keys if I want to do a bunch of “meta” keys like move word right or left,[1] which is harder to do on som fn-keyboard where you both have to hold down the shift key and the fn key. I also am able to use the arrow keys from the somewhat overrated home row, but that is on a non-configurable keyboard (remapped in software).
I would say that people have a minor point when they say that moving your hands wastes time. Kind of like me going for a five minute walk every so often wastes time compared to sitting at my desk for eight hours straight. Now I’m putting a fine point on it, but I actually think that even a little bit of gross movement like that can be more beneficial than hurtful.
I’ve used a cheap 60% keyboard for a while and it was never really my thing (just got it for the n-key rollover):
1. You can’t reprogram the fn key on the keyboard (again if cheap)
2. You can’t reprogram the fn key in software since it is effectively “blessed” (your OS can’t see it)
3. Now you’re stuck with whatever fn layout that they made, which is often subpar (example: my 60% has some fn-whatever combos that turn off keys or lock them which just causes problems whenever I accidentally press them (always accidentally))
4. Big Brand keyboards are customizable but their software is likely to be too limited, which means that you have to buy somewhat boutique keyboards in order to truly map the fn layer business the way you want
5. I already alluded to how multi-modifier keybindings can be a pain: a lot of software assume that you use a regular keyboard so they will throw keybindings like Ctrl+Shift+PageUp at you, which might translate to something unwieldy like Fn+Ctrl+Shift+P. That’s too much hassle. (Intellij is a real sinner in this regard.)
I currently use a tenkeyless keyboard which gives me the only less-than-fullsize keyboard advantage that I care about: my mouse is closer.
[1]: Yes, sometimes I use built-in/embedded editors or textfields (like Firefox’s address bar) that are not Vim or Emacs; No, I don’t want to configure every last software that I use that contain mini-editors to use some kind of Vim-like plugin so that I can e.g. move word-right with `w`.
I am not aware of real studies and conclusions on this matter. If you are subject to this problem, even finding professional expertise is difficult and eventually expensive. Investing 100-200 usd to experiment doesn’t sound absurd. In my experience, enthusiast keyboard hold their value pretty well if you are not satisfied.
Anyway, I like the small ortholinear keyboards with thumb keys because the whole keyboard is accessible with very little movements and combos do not require stretching.
I have experimented myself. That was what that whole post was about. I am quite picky when it comes to keyboards so I have bought a few of them over the last year. But my experiments won’t lead to “real studies”, nor will anyone else’s, so that point seems misplaced since you open your post by dismissing my anecdotes.
Somewhat expensive keyboards is a particular hobby for people with disposable income. Programmers don’t have some special need for typing speed or ergonomics compared to other office workers. If we did have a need for speed, for example, we would learn something like Plover since that would make us write at least twice as fast (at least for prose, but I type that quite often.) It also allows us to buy regular keyboards and not crazy expensive steno machines. But we don’t: instead we do some minor “optimizations” with one-key-per-letter keyboards like use the home row 25% more and gain 200% more subjective empowerement (I’ve customized my keyboard in software to do the same thing).
> Anyway, I like the small ortholinear keyboards with thumb keys because the whole keyboard is accessible with very little movements and combos do not require stretching.
No modifier combos require stretching on a regular keyboard as well; notice how all the modifier keys are close together in case you need to press multiple ones at the same time, and at least a few of them (like control and shift, maybe “Windows” and Alt) should be on both sides of the keyboard. Regular keyboards don’t have a stretching problem as long as you touch type.
not sure I can take that for granted; the need for typing speed could come from having to grind through a ton of boilerplate - you can see the desire coming through as intellisense/autocomplete, and from abbreviations like "str", "std", "int", "fn", "<T>", etc. instead of full names. Assume other office workers are writing English to communicate an idea, English doesn't start with public static void main implements EmailMessage, IMemo, getter, setter, whatever whatever. So maybe programmers do have a need for typing speed, because of using such inexpressive languages (APL/J/K programmers need not apply).
> "If we did have a need for speed, for example, we would learn something like Plover since that would make us write at least twice as fast (at least for prose, but I type that quite often.)"
Again, not sure I can take this for granted - Steno is used for transcription, it's basically another way of spelling every word, phonetically. My suspicion is that it's more mental work to use it than it is to write normally. Is it still as fast, as useful, if you also have to come up with what to write? Take this video of record holding court reporter Mark Kislingbury taking transcription:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61c0bEdVtX4
His fingers move slowly to capture fast speech, but he is only writing the sounds down, he goes on to read back from the Steno phonetic transcript which you can see is not fleshed out English prose. That excuses him from any need for capturing homonyms, clashes between multi-syllable words vs separate words, punctuation, spelling, parentheses, caps on abbreviations, commas in numbers, etc.
Now take some person who came up in the search results for Plover videos, writing after ~6 months practise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28v3cm21uAA
The words appear quite quickly, but there are lots of pauses and corrections which means I can approximately keep up with it on a QWERTY keyboard, losing ground when they are in flow and catching up when they pause. Impressive though it is, and maybe a little faster but it's still going to take them a lot more effort to get from here to anything like double this speed. The pauses and corrections suggest to me that it takes a lot more thought to do it - and the corrections of Steno mistakes aren't typos of individual letters in words, they're whole sound and word changes like REGOURDLESS instead of REGARDLESS and "Steno is much more ergonomic than questionnaire" instead of "than QWERTY". That is, a typo left in a normal typing document is usually understandable, a miskey with Steno is more jarring like an autocorrect substitution. And you can see slow parts, e.g. where they write numbers like 225, the farther you deviate from prose the harder it gets to go fast - and I do tend to write names of programs, names of servers, IP addresses, customer company name abbreviations, made up words and spellings for emphasis (like "customer says yoooooouuuuuuuuu broke it"), project and software and product and vendor names, and etc. AFAIK, a lot of the real speed boosts come from adding custom short briefs for long words you write a lot - e.g. specialising in legal, medical, or technical subjects and adding shortcuts for those, which you can potentially do with snippets and hotkeys to help normal typing overall. And of course, two full hands, a custom keyboard, and custom software.
That's not to say I don't like it, or don't respect it, or don't think it's faster, but it is more nuanced than simply being "learn it and write at least twice as fast". Mark Kislingbury is world class good, it is literally his job and his career and his record is 360 wpm. If everything you typed took you 1/3rd of the time, how much would that change your life? George R. R. Martin surely isn't holding off the last books of Game of Thrones because of typing speed. Typing speed probably isn't the limit of how many emails you can get through in your inbox, or how long you spend in meetings, or how clearly you can write documentation, or etc. I suggest if not using it as a career transcriber, considering it as hobby, or procrastination like people overly focused on their note taking systems instead of what the notes were supposed to be helping with. Almost every book or document or program ever written was written on qwerty or typewriter or pen and paper, and got on fine with it; good enough is good enough.
On another side of it, like the quote "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.", life and office life is overburdened by prose, it's already too easy to write paragraphs of guff that never gets to the point, who doesn't have an overflowing email inbox these days? Being able to churn it out faster possibly shouldn't be the goal - anyone wonder what it would be like if we all had to write like Stephen Hawking? Think as much as you like but turning it into text for someone else to read will cost you; making writers suffer, to make readers lives easier with less to read. Use a horrible painful keyboard, write less, your audience won't thank you because they won't be thinking of you, but good because the point should be to get out of their way not to take their attention for as long as you can.
(Author, condense thyself; yes I should)
FINALLY an advantage to my "handicap": I use the numeric keypad somewhat frequently, and the additional size of the keyboard doesn't bother me at all. The number pad could be as large as another full-size keyboard, and my mouse wouldn't be a nanometre further away. And ever since I bought my left-handed mouse, it's comfortable and ergonomic and whatnot, too.
This is a more efficient way to use the arrow keys compared to a standard keyboard where you have to move your hand out of the home row.
My current Keychron fits the bill nicely, and I think this System76 is right in the same vein, except with some improved flexibility. I don't need a full-sized keyboard, I just want a comfortable keyboard with dedicated PageUp/Down + Home/End keys. Plus, for whatever it's worth, I'm digging my Pop!_OS distro, so knowing that their keyboard will play nice with it is an extra bonus.
It's the same, except with keyboards: if you grew up with a laptop, you want a 60% keyboard because it's "natural".
If you don't believe it, just look at /r/MechanicalKeyboards on reddit: 9/10 posts are about 60% keyboards.
I don't use a 60% keyboard, but I do use a tenkeyless keyboard because I do love my F keys.
My choice has zero to do with laptop keyboard. In fact, I hate laptop keyboards. Laptop keyboards are the result of severe design constraints imposed by the laptop's form factor, and most of them are pure crap to begin with.
Tenkeyless and 60% keyboards don't take over half your desk for no good reason, and provide you with everything you want or need. And they are symmetric too.
To put it differently, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever a regular user going about their regular day would need a standard keyboard. The tenkey section is one of those oddities that barely anyone touches ever, and more often than not only serve as indicators of when you need to clean your keyboard.
I do like smaller keyboards though, easier to switch with laptop, less finger travel, less travel to the mouse and so on
1. Small means the mouse is closer to the keyboard 2. Games often rely on wasd instead of arrows 3. 40% cheaper for alternative switches and keycaps, or higher margins for the producers 4. Style and look may feel like more exclusive, competitive, make hands look bigger. Fashion is important in this community.
Thanks to their firmware, they are very usable but it is really a matter of personal preferences.
No USB connection of course as those keyboards predate the standard, but any cheapo PS/2-USB converter will work.
Beware that the Model M draws more power than USB is allowed to supply. I've never heard of this being a problem in the real world, but I always plug my model M into a powered hub to ensure there is plenty of power available.
True converters do. Those that don't work are just connector adapters relying on the mainboard to recognize that a PS/2 device is connected although on a USB port. To be sure you get a working adapter, never buy single port ones as they often contain just connection wires. All converters I tried with dual PS2 port, to be used with mouse and keyboard together, contained a real protocol converter and worked flawlessly on all PCs. An image search for "ps/2 usb" returns may examples of the two converters types.
The main reason I moved my hands around before was to use the arrow keys, and now they are mapped to [right spacebar] + [IJKL]. I have also expanded a little to use U and O as backspace and delete on that same layer. I don't think I could ever memorize 3+ layers, but this small use of a second layer that is very easy to access has been great for me.
My model is old, looks like the most similar current model is the Coolermaster "Masterkeys Pro M" (RGB or white LEDs available):
https://www.coolermaster.com/us/en-us/catalog/peripheral/key...
Picture of the layout:
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/cdn.coolermaster.com/asse...
I did a bit of blog series as I went through the design and build process after my Model M died after a coffee accident. https://www.ibbotson.co.uk/tag/keyboards/
I'm mulling over doing a custom design with a ISO/US layout so I can kill the function key row but keep both ~` and the escape key. Basically the "Vortex Vibe" but with an ISO layout.
That makes absolutely no sense. Your choice of keyboard should not come attached to a monitor.
Furthermore, laptop keyboards are notoriously unmaintainable and uncleanable.
If all you want is to be able to use a nice keyboard that doesn't take over half your desk space, specially if it's already cramped, then this is the stuff you crave.
Personally my numpad is indispensable and I never understood the desire to have a tiny keyboard.
But I think this video is an excellent introduction on the reasoning why tiny keyboards are popular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGXZ1ReU54
I've been using a HHKB for the past 3 years and have gotten used to not having to stretch my right arm to reach the trackpad. You get used to the arrow keys being in a different place as well, especially with the HHKB which requires you to press a function key to use them.
1) More space for my mouse when playing games. I prefer a low sens and full sized keyboards are a legitimate problem for this
2) Desk space. If I'm not playing games it's also helpful to have space for a notebook next to my keyboard when working, or my MIDI controller while making music.
I use a kinesis advantage which is not small.
Someday I want to find a Northgate omni-key from that era which people tell me is the best.