How am I supposed to write code or even play a game on this?
And tbh... people who would be interested in this have multiple monitors, or one very large monitor. There should be plenty of space in front of it for a full size keyboard.
As for writing code and playing games, I use vim keybinds everywhere and play games with WASD controls. So nav keys aren't particularly critical either.
Helped to eliminate some elbow pain I was getting from having my elbow cocked sideways.
You write code... using the numpad?
> There should be plenty of space in front of it for a full size keyboard.
That's not the reason. Most people are right handed and most keyboard have the numpad at the left. Most people also put their mouse at the right of their keyboard. This makes reaching for the mouse a major nuisance. Without a numpad or with a numpad on the side where you don't have your mouse, that problem disappears.
Now of course there are other pointing devices (trackpoint, trackpad, etc.) and some are located in the middle.
But the undisputable fact is this: most people are right handed and most people have a regular mouse and that mouse is located at the right of the keyboard.
Numpad sucks in that case.
Back in the days I didn't know about keyboards with numpads on the left of the keyboard and 60% keyboards weren't really a thing yet so although I'm right-handed I started using my mouse as a leftie (and still do to this day).
60% keyboard like the HHKB (one of the "OG" 60%) aren't about the lack of space in front of the monitor. It's about grabbing the mouse and coming back to the keyboard with less hand travel.
I’m kidding. I use VSCodium on the desktop and heavily modded vim on VMs.
[0]: https://jblevins.org/log/kbd [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220217071143/https://www.hcs.h...
I can live without the numpad, but the lack of function rows, and the introduction of forced, convoluted "chords" or whatever (what kind of "ergonomics" is that?), kill all the options I know.
BTW mine is: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/9wjpg0...
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Another way to say this is that ergonomics is personal, and it is hard to find something universal. For me, ergonomics is: not need to do maneuvers with the fingers, so I even added more keys to my keyboard stuff like "Ctrl + B" and others with a single press.
But yes, is kind of obvious that there are not enough options in this niche market and the "let's do this as small as possible, all people like to do gymnastics with fingers!" are THE majority of the options... !
For a large segment of people, a keyboard like this has everything they need on it: WASD, numrow, arrows.
Personally, I will never buy a TKL keyboard. I may rarely use the numeric pad, but rarely is not never, and I can think of a few specific use cases aside from typing in numbers quickly that require one. I wouldn't mind a keyboard with even more keys to provide better coverage of legacy layouts.
I also love my Nuphy 96, but it's knobless
What I would really love is a keyboard with this sort of scroll wheel embedded just on the edge of the keys. All the keyboards I see with knobs / rotary encoders look cool but I can't see myself using a vertical knob for scrolling a document. Do any custom keyboard builds feature a mousewheel?
You can buy a preassembled split keyboard with this from https://ergomech.store (I've been looking at purchasing one from them). There's also a seller on etsy who offers split keyboards with the horizontal encoder.
[EDIT: After a bit of research, I found the model: Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard]
Simplicity and portability have their uses, but I've always had a fondness for the aesthetics of those complicated-looking industrial control consoles. (The ergonomics are much better, too!)
In practice, every time I experiment with "big" control surfaces with a lot of buttons and macros, it doesn't end up being used. The apps where it comes up, I generally move towards a written script, and then I am just doing regular typing again. When you go large there's a penalty in that your arm is moving farther to access things. So, as with GUI vs CLI you end up moving faster with the stenographer's approach of rote sequences with intensive chording.
I think there is something underexplored in the idea of adding visible modality to the controls though. We can have more than caps lock, num lock, scroll lock. There should be a genuine "Unicode keyboard" that can emit the codepoints directly without the help of the OS it's talking to.
https://keeb.io/products/bfo-9000-keyboard-customizable-full...
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37203616/how-do-i-direct...
[2] https://hackaday.io/project/192644-unicode-binary-input-term...
Personally I also prefer to have a numpad.
[1] https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39555544
All are configured via QMK, although I only custom compile a firmware for the mouse. For the keyboards I just use VIA, which is plenty capable.
For the numberpad, I have the macro keys and the numlock key assigned to A through F, so I have a hexadecimal keypad when I want it. On the Q10 main keyboard, I have macro keys assigned to ctrl-r and ctrl-t for fzf, plus alt-x, ctrl-g, and ctrl-x ctrl-s for Emacs.
The ploopy mouse is a marvel, although I wish its wheel was sticky/stepped and not freely-rotating. I wish I had the skills to design a vertical version of the mouse and transfer the guts to that, but I'm a complete idiot when it comes to 3D stuff. Having QMK on a mouse is game-changer though; you can use one button as a layer switcher, and expand the number of functions each button performs. Being able to do a plain text paste in macOS, or use the side buttons for page up/down and home/end, is really useful.
I highly recommend customizing your macro keys! Especially if you use something like Emacs or work in the terminal a lot.
[1] https://www.keychron.com/pages/keychron-q10-customizable-mec...
[2] https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q0-plus-qmk-custo...
So strange that it includes a Home key but not a End key (and there's space for it)
> macro keys assigned to alt-x, ctrl-g, and ctrl-x ctrl-s for Emacs
Wouldn't it slow you down a lot if you have to reach the far left for these?
I just have Shift, Ctrl, Alt all in the split spacebar cluster and sticky key enabled so I'm very comfortable with any key chords (plus I use leader key).
BTW I know you use VIA, and IIRC it doesn't enable the QMK macro recorder/playback keys. I used that a lot outside of Emacs.
Thanks!
I actually swapped out and moved the upper right keys such that I have a home and end key as well as page up/down and delete.
It's still my end game keyboard. It sounds and feels great!
(I'll check out the macro recorder too)
The keyboard here looks like it adds a screen but will have worse ergonomics.
Then I think that if you made the knob and screen as separate thing you'd likely sell more of those.. and you might as well make a 10 key add on thing too. (similar to the /keychron-q0-plus-qmk-custom-number-pad someone else mentioned)
More I think of it, I'd not mind keeping my ergonmoic keyboard and adding a couple of each the knob/screen and knob/keys.. could make video editing and music making interesting.. maybe I just need a streamdeck and Traktor X1 or PreSonus ioStation + PreSonus ATOM Production & Performance Midi Pad Controller or something.. maybe Traktor Kontrol F1.. now I'm thinking I like the smaller size of knob.design thing first..
I like the idea of experimenting with easier slide and spin/turn to control things.
https://monokei.co/systems https://electronicmaterialsoffice.com/
But I'd trade the useless screen and slightly-less-useless knobs for home/end/pgup/pgdn/del/ins any day of the week
And the keycaps seem like bad ergonomics but I can't really bash them without trying
But they also say "the year of the knob is upon us" and it's got two knobs (weird for keyboards) and took the domain "knob.design"?
This all seems quite confusing lol
For those that don't need/use tenkey, it might be a cool toy.
I for one am sick and tired of these conspicuous consumption status symbol products that offer no real improvements in utility, but are just expensive so people can say the spent more money.
