nubbinator wrote:
> but those shift keys are awfulTry it and see! It’s actually extremely nice. (In comparison to ISO/ANSI, which is admittedly a very low bar.)
> and any chained Ctrl+whatever command would be pretty clunky to do.Also really nice!
Much easier than control keys in the corners of the board, and about the same as a board with a control key to the left of the A key. This layout could also work pretty well with shift and control swapped. But using a thumb shift takes a bit more practice than using a 1u-next-to-pinky-home-position shift.
Another nice possibility is to make shifts index-finger keys, replacing e.g. G and H, but then you need a different letter layout, which again has a steeper learning curve.
The final reasonable possibility, as I alluded to upthread, is to use something similar to a standard ISO layout, but shift all the right-hand letter keys over one key to the right, and rotate some other keys into the middle column that opens up. This makes the right shift and ISO enter key no longer impossible to reach, and helps with reaching backslash and backspace. Such a layout still isn’t great, but somewhat better than standard ISO/ANSI.
> One of my more commonly used commands (and common for any IT professional) is Ctrl+Shift+Esc. I do not see a comfortable way to hit that with that board.Yep, you’d use the thumb + ring finger + pinky, or thumb + middle finger + ring finger, or either thumb + right pinky + left pinky if you prefer. All three ways are super duper easy to press, dramatically easier than control + shift + escape on a standard keyboard.
That’s a remarkably stupid shortcut though. I’d recommend just remapping to something more convenient.
Also, nubbs: I don’t plan to pay you, don’t worry, and you can keep using whatever crazy layout you want, no skin off my back.
Again, the primary criterion here was to avoid shaking things up too much, so most keys were left alone, and only the worst offenders were moved (backspace, both shifts, escape, control, backslash, f keys, arrows), with some other keys shifted around to accommodate those changes. This is clearly still not close to optimal.
For someone looking to have a more comfortable overall experience, I’d recommend something split, with a column stagger and a lot of extra thumb keys, along the lines of:
(This comparison has some duplicated blue outlines of the center columns, to better show how the hands line up on it in comparison to a standard board. You can see how much of the terrible reaching from an ANSI layout is avoided, but it has fewer keys overall so requires a custom layered layout.)