That's my keyboard, but it doesn't look like that anymore. Attached are pictures of what it looks like now.
Amusing idea from Snarfangel about the two keys in the middle being a binary number pad, but they're just my win and ctrl keys. By putting them in the center, I only need one of each but can still reach them from both hands, rather than needing two of each like on a traditional keyboard.
Stephen Hobday at Maltron did an excellent job making this keyboard, and was able to do almost all of the customizations I wanted. There's another customization which isn't obvious in the pictures: the palmrests are keys. Each palmrest has a keycap on it which is the size of the entire palmrest, hinged by the thumb keywell and with the keyswitch near the edge of the keyboard, so when I rest my palm, the key is pressed. This eliminates the need for many of the dedicated keys of a traditional keyboard, since I type with my palms not rested, but press command keys with my palm rested, and all of the keys except the mod keys (ctrl, alt, etc) are interpreted differently depending on whether a palm key is pressed, like a laptop Fn key. For example, I have the arrow keys on the Qwerty IJKL positions (though I use a custom letter layout, not Qwerty), and I have home/end, page up/down, and other navigation keys on other letter keys, F1-F10 on the number keys, and F11-F24 and other special functions on all the rest of the keys. After I got the keyboard and tried out Stephen's handiwork, I told him I recommend Maltron add palm keys to all their hand-operated keyboards. Once you try this feature, going back to a regular keyboard feels like riding a bike with no handlebars.
Mapping both palm keys as Fn keys, so you can use either one (like the pair of shift keys or ctrl keys on traditional keyboards), is easy to get used to; it felt natural to me almost immediately. But that's a waste of a valuable key, so later I remapped the left palm key to shift. Now I'd never go back to wasting it as a second Fn key, but the first few days were really frustrating, I imagine like learning the Maltron letter layout if you're used to using both thumbs for space on Qwerty.
Another customization not visible is that it has Cherry browns instead of blacks.
Although he made the customizations I requested, after I got the keyboard I discovered that the thumb keywells, which are oriented relative to the main keywells in the same way as on a standard Maltron, were uncomfortable to use. I tried to get used to them, but couldn't. They're very different from Kinesis thumb keys (which are too high), but no more comfortable. Another problem is that the keyboard didn't have n-key rollover, which is ironic because the only reason to not have it is to save the cost of diodes, yet every keyswitch in the keyboard actually has a diode, but he just left them disconnected.
To fix the thumb keywell and key rollover problems, and some other minor problems, I had to remove the wiring, cut the keyboard in half, reduce the width by 3/4 inch by trimming the inner edges of the two halves, cut out the thumb keywells and reshape them, eliminate some keys and reposition some others, then epoxy everything back together, and rewire and resolder everything, and replace the controller. I also installed a touchpad that I scavenged from an old laptop.
Overall the key positions on the Maltron are slightly better than on the Kinesis, but it's slightly harder to find the home row by feel on the Maltron; I found myself frequently putting my fingers one row down. A small drop of epoxy on the S and T keys (Qwerty F and J) for tactile feedback solved this problem, similar to standard keyboards.
I can't imagine why the regular Kinesis and Maltron keyboards have the two main keywells parallel yet only 10 inches apart center-to-center (Qwerty D to K). That's a suitable configuration if you're five years old, but as an adult, if you want your fingers to be parallel to the key columns, you have to either bend your wrists or hold your elbows in front of your stomach. That's why I got a custom Maltron with the keywells angled in at 30 degrees. I took my (unmodified) Kinesis off the shelf just now to measure it, and tried it again while I had it out. It's hard now to believe that I ever thought it was comfortable.
If anybody else is considering buying a custom ergonomic keyboard, I encourage you to buy one from Maltron. Stephen does good work, and agreed to do major customizations. Had I known in advance that I wanted the additional changes that I made, I think he would have made most of them too. The only ones I requested but he couldn't do were the touchpad (though he did make a pedestal for me to mount one on), and a bad idea I had of squeezing a pair of Datahand-style vertical keys into the thumb keywells, and he gave up on the latter only after spending a long time trying. The Maltron website says they're doing a programmable controller now, so hopefully they've fixed it to support n-key rollover too.
Their email servers had some problems, and I don't know whether they fixed them, so if you want to talk to them, don't rely on email. Call them. They told me a couple of my emails to Stephen were lost before I placed my order, and I never received a response to feedback I sent after I got the keyboard.
The custom layout I started with was based on Malt's layout:
86419 70235
_/pucb kdlyxq
=anisw gthorz
“-.,f( )mv'j”
[?;* +:\]
I called it Dlyx. In case you're reading this with a variable-width font and the layout is visually misaligned, note that the parentheses are on Qwerty's B and N key positions. Space and the letter E are on the right and left thumb home keys, the same as on Malt's layout, and adjacent to space and E are enter and tab.
Dlyx is more comfortable to type on than Malt's layout. Unfortunately, Dlyx has more same-finger digraphs (including UI, and most annoyingly YO), but also has more laterally adjacent digraphs, more comfortable diagonals (Malt's worst is LO), less index finger stretches to the center columns, and better finger loading.
I've been using that layout, with minor variations, for the past nine months. Currently it's:
43218 90567
=-pucb kdlyz+
(anisw gthor)
“'.,f_ qmv/x”
[?;* j:\]
I call it Dlyz. I'm pleased to say I no longer remember how to touch type on Qwerty, which gives me a good excuse for making other people type when we're at their computers.
One more idea for those of you making laptop keyboards, this keyboard design is 9 inches front to back (including the touchpad), 11 inches left to right for the regular keys, and 13.5 inches left to right including full-size palm keys, which is small enough that a flat version of it would fit on a 15 inch laptop. That would be more comfortable to use than the traditional laptop keyboard with horizontal rows of keys. On a 14 inch laptop, it would almost fit, except that the palm rests would be too narrow, so your palms would extend a little over the left and right edges of the laptop case, which would be uncomfortable.
My contoured version is 11 inches front to back, and 14.5 inches left to right, but that's including some unnecessary plastic, because that was the simplest way to make it using a modification of the standard Maltron L90.
