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Comment by rgoulter | Hacker News Reader

> One can try to get away with very few keys ... The first thing I added was two columns on the right side that kinda just bring back the punctuation

I'd say if you look at a layout like miryoku https://github.com/manna-harbour/miryoku .. in miryoku, the [] keys are one row up from home row, accessed on a layer. Whereas, putting [] on outer columns, your hand has to move and reach over two rows.

That is, I'd emphasise layering brings more keys to within easy access of the fingers (at the cost of added complexity to use the keyboard, - which not everyone has the taste for).

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This idea falls apart in games that use complex key combinations, or a lot of different keys (like in case of StarCraft 2). I have an ErgoDox and I wish it had an extra dedicated row for F-keys; my current use of the bottom row for camera hotkeys is a very poor compromise.

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/8b8dcd36c0abcc... https://gist.github.com/rollcat/8b8dcd36c0abccf430b4160ad899...

I pity the poor soul who needs to use multiple key layers in a game, especially SC2. But if you got past Silver League, then you're better than I was in Wings of Liberty.

I remember using AutoHotKey back then to swap caps lock and CTRL (or was Backspace in there somewhere?) to cycle through my hatcheries and spam larvae injects, since they weren't queue-able at that time.

I have a single, dedicated layer for SC2. I didn't play WoL, non-queuing injects sounds like a nightmare!

Backspace (next base cam) inject is still a thing, but it's not really recommended: it tends to send different queens towards different hatcheries, delaying the injects. Again I didn't play WoL so I don't know which keys were re-bindable in the client at the time, but currently you can use almost anything for anything (except you can't change the modifiers like ctrl, shift, alt); those who use base cam inject will sometimes bind it to space.

Yeah.

For two-hands-on-keyboard tasks, relying on layering is good.

For gaming, I make use of a number row.

Aside: Anyone know of a thoughtful ~36 key layout similar to Miryoku but with less reliance on home row mods?

For those not familiar, to get down to this low number of keys, some layouts will place modifiers (ctrl, shift, alt, meta) as secondary actions (when the key is held down vs. tapped) on home row keys (asdf, jkl; on QWERTY). The problem is to distinguish a tap from a hold, there's a minimum delay before the key is sent, making it very annoying for fast typists as there may be visible input lag when hitting one of the home row keys.

Are you familiar with the Ignore Mod Interrupt option of qmk? That solved that issue for me, depending on your typing style it might solve for you too.

Another option is moving those keys to bottom row, or moving layers to combos to free thumb keys to for mods or move mods to combos as one shots.

I just flashed one of my keyboards with the "official" ZMK layout and it's so much better. I must have missed quite a few settings when I tried replicating it myself. I can't notice the delay at all.

My strategy on my Let's Split and now Iris is that I select layers by holding down left hand Homerow keys, then type with my right hand. Holding f turns my right side into Vim style arrows. Holding s turns it into a number pad, and holding s turns it into a symbol pad. Modifiers are where you'd expect but holding them types my most commonly used symbols {} under Options, Esc and Enter under Commands, <> under Hypers. Control is where you'd expect caps lock and ' but tapping those are " and ' respectively.

So what I'm saying is use home row hold/tap just for layer selects that will only affect the other hand, and use hold/tap modifiers for programming symbols.

Maybe you'll find my post https://arathunku.com/b/2023/moonlander-keyboard-layers-tour... helpful with oneshot modifiers across layers but also keeping Shift and Ctrl accessible. I really hated any timers / held vs tapped on home rows, it prevented me from fast typing and rollovers. Now I really only have space bar on hold/tap that's used in usual writing but it's on my right thumb and have never been a problem.

Layering can be great. I have arrow keys on a layer under my right hand, which I constantly use. I have mostly forgotten what the rest of my layers do at this point because I never really needed them. My keyboard has a lot more keys than that one though.

Another great thing is combos where you press two or more keys at the same time to produce another key.

So you can have keys like escape, enter, ctrl or similar right on the home-row.

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