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Comment by bsnnkv | Hacker News Reader

Gotta give a shoutout to kanata[1] which I have used daily for years at this point after giving up on QMK-powered keyboards.

QMK itself is great, but I was never able to find a non-columnar split ISO keyboard to use it with. Eventually I reluctantly settled on the Logitech K860[2] and I'm now happily using my favourite features from QMK with kanata at the software level.

[1]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata

[2]: If I'm behind the times and there is now a QMK-compatible keyboard that looks like this, please let me know!

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> QMK itself is great, but I was never able to find a non-columnar split ISO keyboard to use it with.

https://keychron.de/products/keychron-q11-qmk-custom-mechani...

This looks excellent! I have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole and I'm considering once of the Alice ISO keyboards[1], perhaps even waiting until the low-profile Alice variants are available in ISO layouts[2].

[1]: https://keychron.de/products/keychron-v10-alice-layout-qmk-c...

[2]: https://keychron.de/products/keychron-k15-pro-alice-layout-q...

Both Q10 and Q11 are good. I have one of each in their respective uses.

Q11 may possibly be even better for someone prone to RSI, because you can set the halves up angled even wider apart. Just make sure to get a good wrist support to go with the keyboards, no matter which you go with: they are thick, and that makes them positionally elevated from the surface they are on.

With two more things they would be pretty much perfect. An embedded USB port on both sides, so you could slot a YubiKey nano on your chosen edge. And a double-sized Esc-key. The latter is the single thing I miss from Kinesis Freestyle's form factor.

or https://nullbits.co/snap/ if you don't mind a more DIY approach

I have also used the K860 and I like it. I stumbled across Chad Austin’s Microsoft Sculpt wired conversion [1] and I have been using it for some time now. Apart from the abysmal function keys it’s a decent keyboard, and with QMK you can make it do whatever you want.

[1]: https://chadaustin.me/2021/02/wired-sculpt/

I use a Keychron Q11, a split row staggered keyboard. On the laptop, I use Kmonad on linux with home row mods but I think I will switch to Kanata because it seems more compatible with Windows (work OS). I have been using home row mods for a few days now and I feel that it has greatly alleviated the pain I have on the left pinky finger (remapping caps lock to control and using Emacs keybindings for years did that I think). I am tempted to switch to a columnar staggered keyboard, specifically ZSA's voyager, but I don't know if I will adapt to the layout. Maybe someone with more experience can give advice here...

I tried to change the keyboard layout to a more "ergonomic" layout (optimot), but after months of training, I could never gain the proficiency I have in AZERTY. I think it's not worth it to switch.

I have both an Ergodox and a Ferris which are both now gathering dust. In my experience, columnar layouts are not worth it for me as a developer, because there is nothing that I can gain from a layout that changes the position of the {};'<>() keys that will ever offset the productivity and familiarity lost by those keys never being where I expect them to be.

Designing a symbol specific layer[1] that includes all the symbols without needing to shift the keys made programming much more pleasant for me. It took a bit of getting used to but since programming and typing symbols is something we do quite frequently during the day, the brain gets used to it rather quickly.

[1] https://configure.zsa.io/ergodox-ez/layouts/v56OO/latest/10

I feel like it took a month to get fully used to and then I haven’t looked back. I did have an RSI motivation.

Are you able to switch back and forth between staggered and columnar?

Yes. Without even thinking about it.

So what do you use Kanata for if you don't mind the question?

I have a bunch of home row mods, and I also have layers with dedicated app-specific utility-mappings that I have automatically toggle on when the relevant app window is focused so that I don't have to waste extra keys to toggle/switch between different layers.

https://keeb.io/collections/sinc

https://keeb.io/collections/kbo-5000-split-staggered-80-keyb...

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