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.
> 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.
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!
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.