Hell yeah! I love seeing weird stuff like this!
I'd be very interested in hearing about your design philosophy. The thumb cluster and the pinky arc are particularly unique.
Okay, I'll proceed with a write-up.
Just a little more evolution and you'd be making a DataHand keyboard.
I'd love to try DataHand to feel its glory someday. That design seems to get some many things right.
Cool! I can see your thinking. Are the brown things in the middle polymer clay, wood or potatoes?
the split pinky column looked so wrong until I looked and my hand, at which point I wondered why it's not been done before...
The original B-TRON keyboards did do it.. and stuck a single key in-between the columns.
But I wouldn't blame you for not knowing about them. The TRON platform was made for Japan and Japanese first and was not very popular even in Japan.
Palm rests are constructed out of wood, closest thing to a petrified potato that I can lay my hands on.
Yes, natural flexion of pinky is the reason for the split column. One of the iterations did have compact columns, but requiring an effort to keep fingers in neutral key positions seemed so ludicrous. It was especially noticeable when tenting was introduced.
The empty space in between columns is still jarring to me, but in the end it's an infertile real estate that'll generate an awkward and useless key. (Weeell, I could try placing a scroll wheel, If I ever get to incorporating a tracking device.)