But this, this kind of keyboards, that's masochistic! :-)
I honestly doubt that these make your life easier. Please explain if you have one of these what drew you to this?
And while I don't like this particular layout in the link I do have a very similar 42-key keyboard and after a couple days of practice it was the most natural and smoothest typing experience I've ever had.
Terrible for any one-handed use (e.g. gaming), though, and it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea.
I do have another keyboard - a 61 key that I use for gaming, but for day-to-day productivity the corne is absolutely glorious.
I personally use auto-shift (long press for shift) on my 34 key layout, but I think most would prefer the one-shot shift.
I also liked QMK's "caps word" feature. It's like CapsLock, but only for UNDERSCORED_WORDS. (i.e. the keyboard returns to non-CapsLock after typing a non-word letter, like space/esc/tab/etc.).
I also have one-shot combos for ctrl on the home-row, so to do Ctrl-N for instance I can just tap ring + middle finger on the home-row followed by N. Super convenient. (You can hold one-shot modifiers to act like a regular one too.)
On my Corne, I hold the S key and then hit H to type {
Both on the home row along with my other “surrounds” I use while programming a lot.
Holding S + …
H = {
J = (
K = [
L = <
Obviously there’s a learning curve but it feels much better. Would be silly to lose sections of my career to injured hands from poorly designed keyboards!
> 100% of the functionality without hand movement.
Yeah, this is the key point.
These keyboards ultimately trade-off "benefit of reduced hand movement, at the expense of a more complex layout".
A standard keyboard has some bad design flaws that these keyboards fix: the spacebar is impractically large, asymmetric row-stagger is bad. -- On a standard keyboard, you'll end up using your (weak) pinky fingers much more than your (strong) thumb. Ideally, it would be the other way around!
With these keyboards, the thumbs get to reach 2-3 keys each. This allows bringing all the keys on a standard keyboard to within reach of the hand, without having to move the hands.
e.g. Without having to move my hands, my thumbs can press space, esc, tab, backspace, and enter.
With 'tap-hold functionality' (key acts as normal when tapped, acts as a different key when held), I can put Shift/Ctrl/Gui/Alt underneath asdf (and mirrored on the right hand side), so that I can use the modifiers without having to use my pinkies as much. -- And the other complexity is putting all the other keys (like numbers and symbols) on layers.
Overall, I think it's the same power-user trade-off as vim/emacs make: more complex to use, but allows for more concise usage.
This is fine and dandy for simple usage, but I happen to do do a bunch of more complicated stuff: ctrl + arrow to go to start/end of line, ctrl + alt for words, all of this + shift for selection. ctrl+shift+mod+arrow gets really tricky to operate for me, I haven't been able to reach a level of proficiency that was anywhere near equivalent to what I had without the modifier key.
Moving to a custom 34 key layout fixed my RSI, which has been an amazing benefit for me.
Of course, the tradeoff is that my layout is far more complex than a standard layout, and it has required a lot of time to tweak it to where it is now.
For me, it's been one of the best decisions of my programming career (together with learning Vim).
Wrist pain posed me to research other keyboards than the Apple Magic Keyboard and Microsoft sculpt. Within a brief amount of time I tried a Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB, Kyria, and Ferris Sweep. I found the Kyria and Sweep pretty awkward (for different reasons) and caused other pains. Then I got a Kinesis Advantage2 and that really changed things for me, my hand/wrist health improved a lot. I did replace the controller with a KinT to get QMK though.
I am also using a Model 100, since it also allows me to experiment with different switches. But the Advantage2 is my main work keyboard.
I also have an Advantage360, but I don't use it much, because I don't like the switches. Review:
I added o-rings to the keys and think that made it a little nicer to use.
The Miryoku layout is a popular choice: https://github.com/manna-harbour/miryoku
As a Dvorak user, here's mine: https://github.com/1MachineElf/qmk_firmware/tree/_sb4dv/keyb...
Maybe it was because I started getting old, but I started feeling it was a waste of time. Still miss it a bit though, but when I could spend an hour on a huntsman v2 and have it feel better than any of my other linear keyboards I just felt it wasn't worth it.
The only one making keyboard for typists these days seems to be Matias, and they DO feel like a snappy rubber dome.
Debilitating neck spasms, I was willing to try anything. I can reach any key with minimal movement of my hands. Though my keyboard is 50 keys, which I find the closest compromise, by keeping the layout somewhat more compatible to normal keyboards.
Column stagger is theorised to better match finger 'layout' and therefore be better/easier/more even to type.
Both are debated.
The history of spltting and tenting go way back. If you look at Microsofts somewhat popular "Natural" and "Sculpt" keyboards, they are semi-split and slightly tented already since late 90s.
Apart from also having tried a lot of different varieties and figuring out what works for me (it's not always what you think):
Full typing range with no hand-movement. Call me old-fashioned but I'd like to have access to the upsides of soon-ubiquitous immersive VR but keep typing with my fingers and maintain tactile feedback. At the desk or on the train. Not interested in neurolinks, voice or AI-camera-hand-gesture stuff for the foreseeable future. FLOSS purist.
This seems like the best direction if one has a similar inclination and wants to make it a progression.
I have a bastardKB Charybdis Nano as my daily, and I'm developing my own low profile board too. My next iteration of both will be 34 key only, that's plenty for me.
You can see my layout/firmware here https://github.com/pixelbreaker/qmk_userspace (layout is in layout.h)