Comment by vehemenz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vehemenz | Hacker News Reader

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Topre switches are great! But can someone explain the draw of HHKBs? Aside from nerd street cred, that is. A lot of programmers swear by them, but I don't understand why.

Let's talk about the layout. As a Vim user, I need my CapsLock->Esc. Fine, so I'll remap Ctrl—but inexplicably, there are huge gaps where the regular Ctrl keys would be. There are no arrow keys or nav cluster, which means you need to use layers or key combinations to access them. I have no problem relearning how to use my keyboard, but dedicated keys are still faster and easier.

This is the part where an HHKB user says I'm doing it wrong. But that doesn't explain the inexcusable absence of Ctrl keys. And that doesn't explain the $300+ price tag when there are better keyboards for half the price.

The one nice thing about the layout is that it keeps the keyboard small. I'd gladly trade a little size for more keys though.

There are other Topre keyboards and Topre clones, as well as good linear switches out there. The switches are not really special anymore. Ten years ago, maybe, but not anymore. If I had to have Topre-like switches, I'd get clones with a better layout and Cherry-compatible stems. This isn't the mid 2000s anymore; there is actual competition in the mechanical keyboard market now.

> As a Vim user, I need my CapsLock->Esc. Fine, so I'll remap Ctrl

I think typically vim users will map caps lock to ctrl and use ctrl+[ when escape is needed.

I've been a happy HHKB user for almost 10 years and a Vim user slightly longer, and this is exactly what I do (though ctrl is already in the right place on the HHKB). I believe it was one of the first things I figured out in Vim, because it was so annoying to me to have to go all the way up to the escape key all the time. Ctrl+[ is such a pleasant little chord to hit.

Map caps lock to ctrl and then set it to trigger escape when tapped, ctrl wehn held down.

This is the most important thing I have ever learned about using vim. For the past 15 years it is the first thing I do on any computer I use.

I agree it's too minimalist, but it's fine for vi. Just use fast pressed double letters to escape insert mode like evil-escape does. The control position is horrifying as an emacs user, though, there's no way to palm press. Terrible fn position as well.

> There are no arrow keys or nav cluster, which means you need to use layers or key combinations to access them. I have no problem relearning how to use my keyboard, but dedicated keys are still faster and easier.

"Easier" is subjective and so I won't address it. As to "faster", I have ♢+{🄸,🄹,🄺,🄻} mapped to {up,left,down,right} making them much quicker to access than reaching for a dedicated cluster of arrow keys.

The ♢ key is to the immediate left of the spacebar and is quickly reachable by my left thumb. 🄹,🄺,🄻 are under the fingers of my right hand in its default home row position and 🄸 is only a very short distance away.

Is typing speed really a limiting factor for our job?

I could put my toilet in my bedroom, would make waking up to piss much quicker, but each room has a purpose and a mood.

The ijkl keys are for typing. The navigation cluster is for navigating. Why mix

Typing is constantly interspersed with navigation. Splitting them apart is more like deciding you don't want to keep your soap next to your sink.

IJKL instead of HJKL? Charlatan!

Before I got my Happy Hacking I had both control and escape on caps lock, but with HH, I have no problem using the default escape, which is closer there than on regular keyboards.

Yeah, the Japanese layout seems more useful: https://imgur.com/0yOTDx8

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