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Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

My Ducky One 2 keyboard has a built-in mouse emulation mode than can be activated with an obscure key sequence. That'll make the kb register as regular USB hid mouse device and should work pretty much anywhere.

You control the mouse with the numpad direction keys. Never used it but I guess it may come in handy someday.

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I think the Linux desktop (at least when running under an xserver) does have an obscure keyboard-mouse function, see e.g. here [1].

This seems to be enabled by default when running the german-centric 'neo' keyboard layout ('setxkbmap de neo'), see here [2]. It is usable on the desktop that I'm typing this from (Devuan GNU/Linux with xfce4 desktop), tested it this moment (no numeric keypad on my keyboard, but with the neo layout Mod4 + right hand keys can be substituted for the numeric keypad)

[1] https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_use_the_numeric_keyboard_keys...

[2] https://www.neo-layout.org/Benutzerhandbuch/Tastaturmaus/

Windows and MacOS also have that. I think they both call it mouse keys. It's an accessibility setting.

I use the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard (https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/) which provides this natively too.

I really liked it, but still after about 2 months of only using this as my mouse, it couldn't fully replace a handheld mouse in speed in accuracy.

I'm a pretty shortcut driven guy, but not terminal bound (intellij, browser, slack are 90% of my day). I couldn't configure the speeds/acceleration/speed modifier key/etc to balance both getting across the screen and being able to click something as small as the window close button on a MacOS window.

Maybe played too many FPSs when i was teenager but I'm significantly better with a mouse to the point of frustration with keyboard mice.

Yeah, its the same with a trackpoint or trackpad. It isn't meant to replace a mouse or keyboard. Its meant to compliment it. A gamepad ('controller'?) has the same issue. Even a trackball. There are going to be use cases where one or the other is going to be better, and there's a very good reason the mouse is the default pointer device (although I heard a vertical mouse is good to avoid RSI, and I heard the same about trackballs).

I'm very happy with the Apple Magic Trackpad 2 on my Macbook Pro. I used to be very happy with a nub on my ThinkPad (trackpoint), but the trackpad on it was terrible compared to the Apple one. Right now, on my gaming desktop I use a wireless Logitech Hero mouse and a wireless headset (Logitech G933) and I'm well aware they deliver worse latency than wired (I do use a wired keyboard, by Wooting). To me, that's OK.

I'm also an outlier when it comes to touchscreen keyboards. I'm slow with it compared to youngsters. So I bought a 10 EUR 'air mouse' (I don't even use the mouse part right now) which has a physical keyboard. Its also very light. Not the best quality though, and not standard qwerty (but almost). I use it for my Nvidia Shield because I hate the manual typing on it.

With regards to this tool, I wonder if it would be useful to have region keybinds together with a trackpoint or the thingy on a GPD Pocket 2.

I think in an ideal world, I'd have my split keyboard sit in a custom fixture with an apple trackpad placed where my thumbs rest as per my MacBook pro.

On mbp i never feel need for a mouse.

I think a lot of QMK-enabled keyboards have this feature too, and can have the key combo that turns it on changed. I haven’t used it personally but I can definitely see it being useful in some circumstances.

It's a nice-to-have feature if you've got a Bluetooth mouse, and are working with a desktop. (Otherwise, your laptop's trackpad will be better).

It's easier to drive a cursor with keys on the keyboard compared to fiddling around with shortcuts to add a Bluetooth mouse e.g. on a Linux live USB, or a fresh Linux installation.

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