I am planning on doing something better on my next build. I am planning on using a split-0 on the numpad for "End" and 0 and putting "Home" in place of NumLock and just having the Numpad be active all the time (thank you QMK) I'll know more in a couple of weeks once I have had a chance to play with it for a bit.
Have you also noticed that the Pause key has lost its Break side legend recently?
I am planning on doing something better on my next build. I am planning on using a split-0 on the numpad for "End" and 0 and putting "Home" in place of NumLock and just having the Numpad be active all the time (thank you QMK) I'll know more in a couple of weeks once I have had a chance to play with it for a bit.
Do remember that the lock statuses (statii?) can be set programmatically by the programs running on the computer, so you'll still need to be able to access Num Lock if some program decides to turn it off. To this effect, what I do on my mappings is to place Num Lock on Shift-Scroll Lock out of the way, and in an easy to remember assignment.
I use a terminal emulator at work to interface with our '70s era COBOL mainframe, so every key on my full-size keyboard, and then some, are used. The people in our office who have been given more modern Dell keyboards that require multiple key presses to use Print Screen or Pause/Break, are usually not too happy. Scroll lock isn't used with the terminal emulator, but I've used it in Excel on occasion. Our data entry people make heavy use of the insert/delete/home/end/page up/page down cluster to navigate around fields.
I use a terminal emulator at work to interface with our '70s era COBOL mainframe, so every key on my full-size keyboard, and then some, are used. The people in our office who have been given more modern Dell keyboards that require multiple key presses to use Print Screen or Pause/Break, are usually not too happy. Scroll lock isn't used with the terminal emulator, but I've used it in Excel on occasion. Our data entry people make heavy use of the insert/delete/home/end/page up/page down cluster to navigate around fields.Time for M-122 :)
The survivors of a long-gone era.
Have you ever wonder why those keys at the top of the navigation pad are still there? Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause / Break. With the arrival of full graphical interfaces, these humble system's switches appear like a landmark of a keyboard layout. All known them, nobody is interested in them anymore.
1) Should they have to be removed?
2) Do you have any use for them? Please clarify if you are a windows, mac or linux user.
Share your thoughts.Show Image(https://i.imgur.com/dJUYTE9.jpg)
*stares blankly in HHKB.
I think the whole nav cluster plus those three keys are redundant when you have a fully programmable keyboard. I personally turned caps lock into Fn and with that key pressed with the pinkie finger WASD turn into arrow keys, Q turns into Home, E turns into End and R/F are PgUp/PgDn. From a functionality point of view I find this optimal as now I can sip coffee with the right hand whilst navigating with my left hand.
...on some of the more ubiquitous keys in that category:
And now, the elephant in the room... why is not Num Lock in this list? EACH of the supranav keys has more legitimate uses than this ACTUAL relic of a bygone era, and yet it is Num Lock that remains present in any keyboard with a numpad, and in the base layer, too. It is high time Num Lock disappears and frees up the key for better uses. And if not, do as the IBM Model M SSK did, and move it to Shift-Scroll Lock still available but out of the way.
Half a century is a long time for a mainframe to survive. Which industry is that?We do union health insurance administration. We actually just got a new IBM mainframe, but it still runs the old software. It's the software that's '70s era more than the server itself. :) There was also a Data General mainframe here when I started, 20 years ago, but it died not long after, and was replaced by a small rack mount UNIX server.
Half a century is a long time for a mainframe to survive. Which industry is that?We do union health insurance administration. We actually just got a new IBM mainframe, but it still runs the old software. It's the software that's '70s era more than the server itself. :) There was also a Data General mainframe here when I started, 20 years ago, but it died not long after, and was replaced by a small rack mount UNIX server.
Hvontres, the M-122 looks exactly like the terminal keyboards that two people here were still using when I started. If I didn't think a Model M of some sort would drive my coworkers nuts, I'd have one in a heartbeat, especially if all of those function keys could be mapped properly.
I think the whole nav cluster plus those three keys are redundant when you have a fully programmable keyboard. I personally turned caps lock into Fn and with that key pressed with the pinkie finger WASD turn into arrow keys, Q turns into Home, E turns into End and R/F are PgUp/PgDn. From a functionality point of view I find this optimal as now I can sip coffee with the right hand whilst navigating with my left hand.
Weeeeeeeeelllll... it may be optimal for casual use, but ain't so when you start adding other modifiers. Fn+A as left arrow and Fn+D as right arrow are fine for going to the left or to the right on character at a time, but Fn+Ctrl+{A,D} for moving one word at a time isn't comfortable. Add to that using Shift as a text selector... and soon your hand contorts and cramps in ways one thought were not possible. And that's not taking into account the further complication if the keyboard lacks RCTRL "because no one uses it".
In essence, having to use TWO modifiers at the same time (Ctrl, Shift, Alt, and Fn as well to this effect) should be reserved for stuff that is used infrequently AND/OR that requires taking explicit attention to it; a good example of the former would be Ctrl-Shift-T to reopen a closed tab in Firefox and Chrome. OTOH, an example of the contortion problem would be needing to press Fn-Ctrl-5 to obtain Ctrl-F5. YMMV, of course.
Half a century is a long time for a mainframe to survive. Which industry is that?We do union health insurance administration. We actually just got a new IBM mainframe, but it still runs the old software. It's the software that's '70s era more than the server itself. :) There was also a Data General mainframe here when I started, 20 years ago, but it died not long after, and was replaced by a small rack mount UNIX server.
Hvontres, the M-122 looks exactly like the terminal keyboards that two people here were still using when I started. If I didn't think a Model M of some sort would drive my coworkers nuts, I'd have one in a heartbeat, especially if all of those function keys could be mapped properly.
I am planning on doing something better on my next build. I am planning on using a split-0 on the numpad for "End" and 0 and putting "Home" in place of NumLock and just having the Numpad be active all the time (thank you QMK) I'll know more in a couple of weeks once I have had a chance to play with it for a bit.
Do remember that the lock statuses (statii?) can be set programmatically by the programs running on the computer, so you'll still need to be able to access Num Lock if some program decides to turn it off. To this effect, what I do on my mappings is to place Num Lock on Shift-Scroll Lock out of the way, and in an easy to remember assignment.
I'll keep that in mind. I think that QMK actually has a feature that lets you turn NumLock back on automatically whenever a program tries to change it, but the shift-ScLock is a good idea if that doesn't work.
I use Pause to send the mouse click using AHK and it's soooo useful.
#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
#Warn ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.
; SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
; Only allow one instance of this script to run. If this script is run again,
; replace the old instance with the new one.
#SingleInstance Force
; Only use those hotkeys if Firefox is the current window
#IfWinActive ahk_class MozillaWindowClass
; go to previous tab on F1 or if you hold the right mouse button and scroll down
~RButton & WheelDown::
F1::
Send, ^{PgUp}
return
; go to next tab on F2 or if you hold the right mouse button and scroll up
~RButton & WheelUp::
F2::
Send, ^{PgDn}
return
; move tab left
+F1::
Send, +^{PgUp}
return
; move tab right
+F2::
Send, +^{PgDn}
return
; search backwards
F3::
Send, +^g
return
; search forward
F4::
Send, ^g
return
; click mouse button
Pause::
MouseClick
return
#IfWinActive
I use Scroll Lock near-daily at work, where I spend a lot of time in Excel, and my partner uses Pause/Break for something related to her work's VPN software.
The survivors of a long-gone era.
Have you ever wonder why those keys at the top of the navigation pad are still there? Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause / Break. With the arrival of full graphical interfaces, these humble system's switches appear like a landmark of a keyboard layout. All known them, nobody is interested in them anymore.
1) Should they have to be removed?
2) Do you have any use for them? Please clarify if you are a windows, mac or linux user.
Share your thoughts.