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Comment by dyingkneepad | Hacker News Reader

I have a keyboard that's "missing" essential keys, but I have a special key that I can press with my thumb that changes that every single key does (it's called a Layer). So I never need to move my wrist to press the arrow keys: just hold the thumb button and press hjkl. Page up is layer+t, page down is layer+g. And so on. It's great, my wrists thank me. I can even program a macro that will trigger an OS shortcut that will send a packet to my Smart Coffee Grinder or tell Alexa to call 911. Or have the F479001600 key you mentioned.

There are a bunch of keyboards with this functionality. I personally use a Dygma Raise.

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I like keyboards with layers support, but layers aren't a replacement for sufficient keys. Holding down the layer button means another finger unavailable for hotkeys. For instance, on my keyboard (ZSA Moonlander) I have the function keys in an alternate layer. This isn't a problem for a normal press (layer shift + 2 => F2), but it makes pressing something like Ctrl+Shift+F2 rather painful.

Yes, for such shortcuts that I use frequently I can create special custom keys in layers, but when using new apps or particularly complicated apps with lots of hotkeys (IntelliJ) that doesn't scale.

I eventually went with home-row mods and a miryoku based layout. I've found home-row mods to be quite finicky with respect to timing, but I think overall they are better than not.

https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/b7yOD/latest/0

You should try to use OSL instead of MO (or TT) as the layer key action: https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/blob/master/docs/one_sho...

I have a ZSA Moonlander but it makes me want to make a Dactyl Manuform of some of the larger sizes just for those extra keys.

https://wylderbuilds.com/all-sizes

I have a Moonlander and regret listening to all of the enthusiast reviews about it. It feels great to type on, but the missing keys and blank keycaps for a lot of keys is slowly driving me crazy. I dabble in a lot of things but don't really code anymore for my job. So it's not worth it for me to customize my keyboard and layers for whatever IDE today that I won't use for long. And I switch from PC to Mac to Linux a lot, so the having to keep all the keyboard shortcuts straight in my head while using a minimal, somewhat unlabeled keyboard is impossible.

Sounds like it ain’t worth much at all. Wanna trade?

I got a dell media keyboard I bought at Goodwill. No lie it has a lot of pointless keys dating back to the dinosaurs and comes with extra skin cells. You can tap Scroll Lock until ya ded.

Crazy idea I've always wanted to try: somehow hack a USB foot-pedal to act as a layer key.

(Hard, because usually the layers are implemented inside the keyboard's firmware, rather than being processed by the OS. Maybe the foot-pedal would need to plug into the keyboard.)

Layers in software are thing with eg. kmonad or kanata

Doesn't work for keys that don't send keysyms by default but instead act as e.g. media keys if you're not holding a modifier. (Media keys are their own USB HID usage page; the OS keyboard driver doesn't see them.)

I'm familiar with layers; in fact, I have an extensive layer setup in KDE. But then the problem becomes that I can never remember which key under what layer does what action. So, I basically use four keys from my other layers and have given up on all the others I set up.

My poor memory is my unique problem. Layering won't help. Having dedicated keys that I can see, though, helps me remember what those do. As someone else suggested, I can put custom labels on the extra keys.

You have it configured in KDE. The cool keyboards allow configuring layers in the keyboard firmware.

Yeah it took me a while to get used to my layers, but now it's all muscle memory and I don't even remember which key does what.

Layouts being configurable in firmware is a must for keyboards for me at this point. Having to rely on OS/DE configuration or especially crappy third party software sucks.

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