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Comment by panick21_ | Hacker News Reader

One of my favorite things for keyboards is the ThinkPad feature where the Page Up and Page Down is above the Left and Right key. I don't understand why others don't do this, its so practical.

Specially in cases like this, there is just an empty space there. Why not put 2 more keys?

ThinkPad also makes them full sized keys, that would be even better. But just having empty space? Why?

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Because it's easier to touch empty space and adjust fingers. Back when I worked on Thinkpad, I really hated these keys, whenever I accidentally pressed them. I don't say you're wrong, just it's a matter of taste.

It's the same with mechanical keyboards - I can't use these compact 75% keyboards where arrows/Pg Up/Pg Down/Home/End are flush with other keys; but a bit "exploded" layout, with just a bit of space between arrows and the right column keys is perfectly ok with me

What I really hate is that combination of full size/half size arrows on modern laptops, put there just because some designer hate empty space.

IIRC on ThinkPad keyboards, the 6-key navigation block (arrow keys + pgup & pgdn) has a lower baseline -- the bottom of the block is lower than the bottom of the rest of the keys on the keyboard. So it is still easy to find the arrow keys by touch, even without blank space above the left and the right arrow keys.

There is also a tactile nub on the Down key, so it's trivial to find it wiith your middle finger and go to town.

Those Thinkpad quadrants have a ridged key to index where to place your up/down finger.

Spacing is heavily underrated in current laptop keyboard design. Consider another part of the keyboard: the function key row. On traditional keyboards, it was grouped with gaps between the groups: Esc, F1–F4, F5–F8, F9–F12. (Laptop keyboards will commonly have an extra key or two at the right end, such as Delete and Insert, which historically were part of other clusters.) This grouping is excellent for spatial memory, whether visual or blind. If anything, it’s more valuable than it used to be, with the other functionality of the keys (e.g. brightness and volume adjustments). But somewhere along the way, this gap has been removed from most laptops, in favour of an unproductive uniformity.

(I have an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15, 2021 model, GA503QM. It has a larger-than-necessary gap between Esc and F1, slightly-smaller-than-ideal gaps between F4 and F5 and F8 and F9, and sadly no gap between F12 and Delete. It also has another row of four keys higher still: XF86AudioRaiseVolume, XF86AudioLowerVolume, XF86AudioMicMute and XF86Launch1. Kinda funny how XF86AudioMute is relegated to Fn+F1. I’m really not looking forward to whenever I switch to a laptop without a dedicated mic mute button, it’s wonderful. I honestly wish they’d added another couple of buttons on this top row.)

Thinkpads still have the F row spacing, though it is small. Their layout is truly the best in laptops.

Absolutely agree. I have those keys remapped to an additional left and right arrow on my T480 because I was constantly pressing them while navigating on the command line and it would erase my entire command.

My company laptop is from HP, which has a large-left-right small-up-down setup (basically equivalent to what you describe, except the up-down arrows are even wider than usual).

I cannot possibly convey how much I hate this setup, I find it very uncomfortable. And even though there is a separate row of Home-PgUp-PgDn-End to the right, I can never find the correct key.

Compared to this, the Thinkpad's six-block cursor setup is vastly superior in my opinion. The down arrow has a notch, so it is easy to find as an origo, and the cursor keys are lower / slanted slightly compared to PgUp/PgDn, so it is virtually impossible to not know which is which! This is on a Thinkpad X1C.

All this goes to show that everyone has different preferences, so good luck if you are a laptop maker - you will inevitably make someone very unhappy with your keyboard. Possible solution - replaceable keyboard?...

> Back when I worked on Thinkpad, I really hated these keys, whenever I accidentally pressed them.

A key can be disabled.

An empty space can't be filled with a key.

Disabling a key does not help with the spacial issues having a key there in the first place adds for some folks.

Folks having spatial issues should consider learning touch typing and use the raised plastic helpers on top of the keys like f, j and down

The thing is, in every application, if you touch one of them by accidents, you can instantly hit the other one and you are right back where you were. On ThinkPad the page key have a different shape then the arrow key, its easy to feel what key your finger is on.

ThinkPads has slightly enlarged arrow and page keys that I think are perfectly usable.

Ha, that's an interesting take. My Dell work laptop has these (not full-sized) and I don't like them at all. There's nothing fun about trying to use the arrows and accidentally slipping onto a key that isn't usually there, which might scroll my cursor/window by a huge amount. My fingers expect no space there, so it makes the whole area less distinct to touch to have the spaces filled.

On my OS you can use CTRL+PgUp/PgDown to cycle through tabs, which makes the dedicated keys by the arrows really useful for single-handed tab cycling. Most other ways require a chord with both hands, so it’s just a lot slower.

Ctrl-tab can be pressed with one hand, no?

And Ctrl+shift+tab with the same exact hand to go the opposite direction.

Ctrl-Tab serves a different function on my browser: go to last-used tab. Like Alt-Tab, but for browser tabs.

> One of my favorite things for keyboards is the ThinkPad feature where the Page Up and Page Down is above the Left and Right key. I don't understand why others don't do this, its so practical.

Same. After falling in love with this layout, I just refuse to buy a keyboard that doesn't have them. These 2 keys alone are at least 50% of my decision to refuse to even bother with Apple hardware (the lack of OLED being another good 30%)

I fail to understand how people can accidentally hit a Page key instead of a arrow key, if they know touch typing and use the little bump on the Down key (like the F ahd J key) to reposition their finger.

In the worst case, they could disable these keys. Meanwhile, I have to suffer their non existance, or even worse: a ridiculously large left and right key, with a minuscule up and down key.

The exciting thing to me is that if there is enough demand, someone can make a keyboard module without having to make a whole laptop.

Thinkpad-style? Sure! Ortholinear? Why not!

This was already true with the smaller Framework laptop, someone could make an alternative keyboard module.

This makes it easier to make a "DIY hack on the side", not needing to manufacture a complete keyboard.

I find it far more frustrating the shift to half-sized arrow keys - when the space is also clearly already there. The r-shift key could be chopped up, or removed entirely, to accommodate a full-sized up-arrow.

For some (myself) the right shift key is the main shift key; so doing away with it would be terrible. Typically holding it down with the right pinky while typing full speed ahead, as well as single movement stroke patterns for <>{}?"+_ and so on, so heavy on all caps C snake case type use (if that makes sense.)

I also use the right shift a lot (though it's not my "main" one) and would hate to see it go away.

But there's no reason for it to be so freaking huge! On the two keyboards I have on my desk (HP EliteBook laptop and a "normal layout" desktop keyboard) the right shift is the second-biggest key after the space bar!

My favorite layout, by far, has to be the "75%" some mechanical keyboards have, like this: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0059/0630/1017/t/5/assets/...

Sure, this particular one is not perfect (useless dedicated light button on the top right...) by the idea is there.

Hadn't really thought about it... kind of gotten used to Fn+up/down on most laptops. Though I rarely use a laptop except while traveling and that's usually on vacation, so limited use. At home, laptop for work is docked, and my personal doesn't get used much.

Vimium and vim (or even xmodmap if you like) are even more useful for this, since you don't have to have a special keyboard, and you can set it to whatever you like.

Same, I refuse to get any laptop without a sensible home, end, page up, page down key layout.

This means all of my laptops are usually Lenovos.

Hm, I still re-map those to forwards and backwards like old ThinkPads.

I should try the Page Up / Page Down config.

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