How do you guys not miss F keys? I can press e.g. Ctrl+F5 with one hand but I would have to use both hands to press Ctrl+Fn+5.

> The traditional full sized layout was designed prior to mice being common, which immediately becomes evident when you try to center the alpha cluster of such boards with how doing so pushes the mousing area uncomfortably far off to the right.

I developed tendonitis on my right elbow because of this. I fixed it by moving the mouse to the left. It took a few months to get used to it, but now my brain doesn't recognize the difference anymore.

One of my favorite keyboards for a very long time was made by Cirque (the inventors of the Glidepoint trackpad) and was called, as near as I can tell, simply the "Cirque Glidepint Keyboard."[0]

It was a pretty normal 101-key layout, with mechanical clicky-switches[1]. Except, in place of the inverted T arrows was a small-ish Glidepoint. The three buttons for the touch pad were near the front edge of the keyboard, on the far left -- near Ctrl and Alt.

It lived clamped into an example of one of the old-school sliding, articulated, heavy steel keyboard-holder-widgets under my desk, and I almost never saw it.

Instead, I'd be typing and using GUIs with my desk completely free of input devices and ready for every other manner of thing that desks are useful for, with my hands under my desk just above my lap. My right hand barely had to move to reach for the pointer (I even got good at using it with my pinky finker), and it felt completely natural to use my left hand for the pointer-buttons (rather than the hateful contortions required by more-modern touchpad implementations).

It was very, very quick to use in those fairly early days of useful GUIs on desktop PCs, and the lack of inverted-T arrow keys was never problematic for me at all since I grew up with a near-clone of the IBM Model F's layout -- the Chicony KB-5160.

And man, that arrangement sure was comfortable.

[0]: I cannot find a photo of of the old Glidepoint Keyboard, and I strongly suspect that very few of these were ever made. I did find a review, though: https://www.chicagotribune.com/1995/09/08/cirque-glidepoint-...

[1]: I do not know who made the switches. Sorry, mech keyboard fans.

you're correct there about the southpaws. I wish they would break in! I have two SP111's and they are truly my endgame boards. Had them for years and haven't once had a desire to go look for anything different. Truly perfect for exactly what I want. I feel like a lot of other people as well would love it, if only they could try it. But .... this was a VERY expensive board, and was only available in a limited time group buy. I have no idea if it's even available for purchase right now.

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'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.

They are small and thus take less space on the desk, or in your bag (perfect for traveling and on-site-work). And not all keys are necessary for everyone. Numpad is a big part with little use for many people. And the newer generation of keyboards is often programmable, so you can remap them on very sophisticated levels on the keyboard itself. This reduces the demand for more keys even more.

For example, on my keyboard I have no dedicated cursor-keys, but they are mapped to hjkl and wasd with a thumb-key. Function-keys are similar mapped to number-keys with the same thumb-key. This makes writing from homerow much faster, and I need to move my hands not so often. I basically just must my fingers, instead of the whole hand.

Decent fractional keyboards have buttons that change the meaning of every other key, they're called "layers". You get less keys but you get more options, and 100% less wrist moving.

Before I swapped to a split keyboard I liked the numpad-less/fractional keyboards because it allowed my mouse to be in a better spot on my desk as it required me to keep the keyboard centered without having to reach so far to the right to use the mouse.

75% is basically everything except the numpad, so if one isn't a big numpad user it's nice to have your mouse a bit closer.

A subset of those is gamers that want the mouse closer to the center, rather than off to the right when using a full keyboard. Especially competitive gamers, because it helps reduce RSI

Size matters; I like the extra real estate for my mouse hand more than I need the numpad. Allows me to take a better posture and I'm no longer banging my mouse into the keyboard from time to time.

If the "tenkey" cluster was on the left hand side of the keyboard in the same way the Sidewinder X8 allowed you to configure it (keypad was detachable), that would be perfect, but nobody makes that for some reason.

And before you ask, I can't use 60% boards specifically because I need F2, F5, PageUp/PageDn, and Delete, none of which are actual buttons on that kind of keyboard. The only place a right-handed computer user is in need of desk real estate is to the right of the text-entry part of the keyboard (and where your hands go at the bottom, obviously); keyboards are free to expand upwards with function keys and leftwards with the non-text-entry part.

I used to travel a lot. I limited myself to one backpack. A lot easier to pack a small keyboard. Since I used vim and tmux for years I was already used to modifier keys.

That and I prefer the modifier key approach, you move and contort your hands less. Faster and more ergonomic.

Personally I wanted an ergonomic mechanical keyboard I could shove in my bag and take to the office, and that meant something not-full-size. Once I'd made the decision that it wasn't going to be a full-size keyboard, that meant learning layers on a fractional layout, and it was the need to hammer the layering into my muscle memory that meant my fractional keyboard became my daily driver at home as well.

I only swap it out now if I want to do things in Blender, because that's very keyboard-heavy in a way that really assumes all the keys are laid out in front of you, including the keypad.

I use a keyboard with 34 keys. Except for being split, the lower number of keys has fixed my RSI as I never have to move my fingers too far.

Why couldn't I use a larger keyboard then? I could, and that's how I started, but having unused keys is just a waste and occupies precious table space.

Of course, they're much easier to travel with too (although I haven't done that yet).

For me, I just have an external num pad.

I was finding I was getting elbow pain by having to cock my arm a bit to use my mouse.

It is nice for a laptop to have real keys but still small enough to fit in a backpack, which is why I hake a 60%. It does most of what I want.

i have a full size keyboard but it takes up so much desk space I don't use it.

For me it allows me to input whatever I need to input, without leaving home row.

Since you use CTRL and SHIFT without problem, basically just imagine having a few more modifier keys. That's all.

The ergonomics of a full-size keyboard are atrocious, because they weren't designed with mice in mind. You've got a relatively unimportant set of keys occupying the exact piece of desk space that a mouse should be. Unless your shoulders are three feet wide, you'll either end up with your QWERTY keys too far to the left, your mouse too far to the right, or some awkward compromise.

If you really need a num pad - most people don't - then you can get a separate one and position it to the left of your keyboard.

Do you mean the thing that looks like a tiny piano or the thing that looks more squarish with 8x8 buttons that light up?

Some project in this space https://github.com/michd/mmpd

What do you use to map midi commands to keystrokes?

There's always some truth to a joke and I wouldn't mind heated/cooled keys.

If you're not aware, such a thing already exists!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B87H383N

Just use any thin and light gaming laptop made in the past 5 years in clamshell mode with the exhaust pointed at your keyboard. That’ll keep one’s hands toasty even doing mundane tasks, those things somehow manage to be space heaters even at moderate load levels.

I bought a electric desk pad from Aliexpress for this reason... helps a bit. But heating the whole room feels better ofc..

How about putting an electric terrarium heater mat under your keyboard? Might that help?

Fingerless gloves are my go-to.

The mouse hand seems to get coldest. Might want to look into that.

I don't see any missing essentials on this keyboard (even pg up is there), but some of the even smaller form factors actually remove the arrow keys, and using fn for those gets irritating super quickly.

+1! I also own the Logitech MX Keys and would buy a TKL right away. I love the low profile keys

I do wish the keys were labeled for Mac or Windows only rather than "opt | start", "cmd | alt" but beggars can't be choosers

That volume key next to F12 is annoying AF too... It makes my OCD flare up had

I'd wish someday HID standard would include a way for an input device to send arbitrary Unicode codepoints (with a few codes reserved for modifiers) rather than scan codes. The design made sense in PC/XT era, but it feels super dated today.

> …even if you almost never use the special keys they're missing, it will still be annoying the .1% of the time you need that key. I guess at that point you just grab another keyboard…

Unnecessary with layers, e.g. FN + 1 = F1, which covers the 0.1% use case well enough.

I'm afraid to try keywell keyboards since that would drastically limit layout options.

For a split column-stagger kb I can just order a PCB, MCUs, switches, keycaps and after minor soldering it's ready to go.

With concave boards you need a case of non-trivial design.

For pointing devices.. I've really loved using a trackball. I got an Elecom Huge.

I always feel the first thing I would do with a split keyboard is 3D print a baseplate to keep the two halves aligned. Which.might.just.work.

that you make a lot of mistakes isn't a good compliment for a keyboard :-)

Which trackball do you use?

I also had similar concerns. Their voyager keyboard should solve that concern and I’m strongly considering using it. I’ve had their Planck EZ for maybe 2 years now (on Dvorak) and later got their Moonlander but I think it was too much for me and went back to the Planck shortly after.

Ben Vallack has a good video on the voyager[^0] and many other setups and workflows

[0]: https://youtu.be/dg2TT1OJlQs?si=vNM6fOK7ua9KCIky

I personally find the two large buttons in the thumb clusters to be easy to access. I don't think the entire thumb cluster is designed to be used commonly while touch typing. There are plenty of pinky reachable buttons you can map needed keys to.

My favorite is Mitosis, which has large thumb clusters very close to the alphas.

I came really close to buying the Moonlander, but I couldn't get over the fact that they limit macro length because otherwise, they claim, people would put their password in. I'm not going to, but I have lots of other reasons for long macro outputs.

I will add having very wide shoulders makes a split that much more ergonomic for someone of similar body type. Cool project btw

What are gas arms? Any pics of this?

Typically with split keyboards like this, you'd put the arrow keys on home row (or ijkl or esdf etc.), and access the arrow keys by holding a Fn key.

On a traditional keyboard, you can't access the arrow keys with your hands rested on home row. You have to move your hands to reach those keys.

Holding a Fn key brings more of the keyboard's functionality to within easy reach of the hands, at the cost that the keyboard is somewhat more complicated to use.

I get that, I've practiced with my ergo board for like a year and still don't use it exclusively bc of one-handing stuff (though learning a new layout at the same time cert. didn't help).

There's a layout based on multi-key chords called Taipo that has this really interesting "reversable" property, in that each half is a mirrored copy of the other, so you can type any letter (or eg. tab or return) with either hand. I think that's super cool, but don't think chording is for me, so I'm trying to imagine what a compromise might look like.

It's a percentage of the 'total number of keys,' insofar that a 'normal' keyboard is a 100% keyboard.

Oh okay, I guess I want 65% then in terms of the keys it has! Thanks.

Thanks, it's interesting but I use shell scripting on Android and need to type the pipe characters and so on fairly quickly.