Author Topic: Looking for a specific arrow keys layout (but I can't find it anywhere, help)  (Read 2733 times)

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Offline fsncps

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Hello, I'm a beginner when it comes to keyboards, but I bought an IQUNIX F97 and I like it, a bit of extra money and attention dedicated to the keyboard cannot be wrong, escpecially when you type around the terminal or unfinished novels the entire day, like me.
So I started looking, when I buy one again, might want to build a hybrid between an ANSI and my native Swiss one, so I have the basic ANSI setting which is much better for coding and commands, but will replace a few keys so the umlauts and some other important keys are in the spot I'm used to.

Now my actual question which I would be very glad for help... Apart from the above, I started to pay more attention to key playcement in general, started some remapping etc. and I realized that I absolutely love my laptop keyboards. I have a T400 Thinkpad and a Dell business laptop... and both have an amazing setup with the arrow keys where you have a small key directly above the right and left arrows -- on the thinkpad they are home/end and on the dell they are pgup/pgdown. I absolutely need that in my mechanical keyboard too, but I can't find any model which would be compatible with such a setup, not barebone either.
Now that I got used to having two arrows in each direction, basically, and started comining them with various modifier combinations in terminals, tmus annd vim, I navigate and move around buffer and tabs and windowe speedy gonzales style, it's amazing and I really miss these keys on my desktop now... who knows any mechanical keyboard which has this? can be 65% to 100%, I don't care.. The closest I find videly available is the layout with the pgup/down to the right of the arrow block -- but where is the other layout?

thanks for any help!

Offline Trackpoint

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Check out the Shinobi, a Thinkpad-inspired board from TEX (https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi). Even has a beautiful trackpoint. It's based on the older seven-row Thinkpads (which were the ideal laptop keyboards in my opinion), and does have back/forward buttons next to the arrow key cluster which can be reprogrammed. Been wanting to try one out but lack of QMK support has made me hesitant, plus since it's such a non-standard layout normal keycap sets won't work with it.

Offline fsncps

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Aha, interesting, really almost looks like it's ripped from a thinkpad, including the left ctrl, which drives me crazy on the other hand I must admit. But the 6-key arrow block is precisely what I'm looking for -- but, then, so "back" and "forward" they are? Thanks a lot, did not know that, you're right, my T400 also has separate pgdown and pgup. I'll have to look into that and these two keys. Back and forward, that should win a nobel prize in my opinion.

Does anybody know any similar layouts? I don't care about the mapping of these keys, just the positioning.

Here is the Dell version:


Thanks a lot!

Offline fohat.digs

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I have a T440p and I hated that lower left corner until somebody told me that it can be changed in BIOS.
"However, even though I was born in the Mesozoic, I do know what anyone who wants to reach out to young people should say: Billionaires took your money. They took your chance to buy a home. They took your chance at a good education. They stole your opportunities. Billionaires took the things you want in life. If you really want those things, you have to take them back.
That's the message. That's the whole message. Say that every day, not just to reach America's frustrated young white men, but people of every age, race, and gender.
Late-stage capitalism is a wealth-concentration engine, focused on vacuuming up every dollar and putting it in as few hands as possible. Republicans are helping that vacuum suck.
How does a tiny fraction of the population get away with this? They do it by dividing the other 99% of Americans against themselves."
- Marc Sumner 2025-05-30

Offline fsncps

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I have a T440p and I hated that lower left corner until somebody told me that it can be changed in BIOS.

Me too!
I got one a few years ago and did not use it much because of that, muscle memory was just no compatible... but then somebody told me what legendary piece of hardware it is, I did not even know, so I remapped the keys and started using, started to play with the bootloader and everything... I mean, you can change that in the OS too, but with the thinkpad you can change the bios itself and you can change everything... I think the 440p does have the IME, but you can switch it off, it was may the absolute last model which let you do that, take care of that gem!

Offline ed_avis

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You can buy a standalone Thinkpad keyboard that looks almost exactly like that picture.