One Row of Keys

[quadibloc]

I've used my artistic skills to illustrate a number of unusual keyboard layouts over the last little while.

The new keyboard that Lowpoly is working to bring to market inspired me to thinking about keyboard layouts in a different way. (Of course, it's easy for me to just build castles in the air, rather than trying to realize them)

Many people are willing to give up the numeric keypad for compactness, and, indeed, want a keyboard layout to be as compact as possible. Even so, I still think that the Happy Hacking Keyboard asks too much of people - too much effort to learn and memorize where to find certain keys, too many shifted key combinations.

Here is a layout that adds only one row of keys above the main typing area, and yet achieves the maximum benefit from that extra row:



I make the unloved Caps Lock key into the extra shift key. (Maybe a DIP switch, so that it can be swapped with the left Control key, is required - or an extra button on the keyboard. Making the key that the most people want to reassign the one that can't be reassigned is bad, I admit.)

The most important extra keys on the keyboard - the cursor keys, and the auxilliary cursor keys, Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down - are what are put in the top row. Num Lock - and Caps Lock - are put there too, allowing for exactly 12 keys in addition to the Esc key. So I arrange them like the standard arrangement of the function keys.

In today's GUI environment, the function keys aren't used as much - but now when the Fn key is used to get the function keys, they're almost in their original places. Fn is also used with 1, 2, and 3 to get the less used Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause keys.

All in all, a very simple default arrangement that makes for a very compact keyboard that won't scare people away who don't want to spend money on a new keyboard, and find they end up not using it because of the learning curve.

Also, note that there is one other modification, besides repurposing the Caps Lock key, in the main typing area: the international key is added, while keeping the popular U.S. style layout, so that there is no "missing key" when a different keyboard layout for another language is used.

[DreymaR]

You're dead wrong about the F keys. I use them more and more - only on the number row, HHKB-style. Lots of people may use the mouse too much, but not all people do. For instance, when navigating a folder with arrow keys I'll hit F2 to rename a file/folder. F5 to refresh the view. Then Alt-F4 to close the Explorer. And I've extended my normal F keys to function as multimedia keys which is useful too.

I also think you're wrong about which is more practical of a HHKB-type arrangement and yours.

I don't like the linear arrow block. I much prefer having it as an inverted-T on the home row (with Fn key) for ease of reach and logical placement.

The 102nd key to the left of Z would be a big improvement. I know that some silly Americans fear that the short Shift key will be too short but with the short Shift key the stretches to the left and right shift keys are exactly the same and I don't hear anyone complaining that they're missing the right-hand one! I need the 102nd key.

But to each his own, hmmm?  

[ds26gte]

The 102nd key to the left of Z would be a big improvement. I know that some silly Americans fear that the short Shift key will be too short but with the short Shift key the stretches to the left and right shift keys are exactly the same and I don't hear anyone complaining that they're missing the right-hand one! I need the 102nd key.

What you say would be true only if both wrists were perfectly parallel to the home row, but they aren't, in order to secure comfortable access to all rows.  A touch-typist hits the A key close to its lower edge and the semicolon (Colemak O) close to its upper edge.

Thus, on a standard staggered keyboard, both wrists will be rotated anticlockwise a bit.  So, the left shift needs to be closer and the right shift can afford to be farther.  (The problem is lessened considerably in Colemak since row-jumping is less frequent, so you should be fine with your setup.)

[InSanCen]

You're dead wrong about the F keys. I use them more and more - only on the number row, HHKB-style. Lots of people may use the mouse too much, but not all people do. For instance, when navigating a folder with arrow keys I'll hit F2 to rename a file/folder. F5 to refresh the view. Then Alt-F4 to close the Explorer. And I've extended my normal F keys to function as multimedia keys which is useful too.

I too use the F keys fairly extensively.  While I plan to someday make my own "smaller" keyboard, it *needs* to have the Function keys present. As it is going to be for me alone, and not be a retail product like lowpoly's (Which incidentally, although I am not a fan of Tenkeyless, is a gorgeous brilliant bit of kit), then that's just great. I need my FN keys (F2, F4 and F5 in an OS, F10, F11 and F12 in the BIOS).

[quadibloc]

The 102nd key to the left of Z would be a big improvement.

There could certainly be alternate versions of the keyboard made to match the way the main typing area is arranged for various markets, so a version could be made with a European keyboard and one with a Japanese keyboard.

Essentially, the original PC keyboard, which placed a key between Z and the left shift key, caused screams of outrage, which subsided when the AT keyboard came along. But even the AT keyboard, despite being popular, was flawed: the backspace key was now hard to reach.

Both shift keys, the Enter key, and the Backspace key, all have their expected positions, at least as far as typists in North America are concerned, and requiring people to cope with any variation from those positions would basically doom a keyboard to be unsaleable in that market. I would suspect that there is pent-up demand even in Europe for keyboards that avoid the ISO placement of the left shift key and the Enter key, because even in Europe, typewriter keyboards did not have these altered placements either.

[microsoft windows]

What I don't like about that layout is the Caps Lock placement. I like my CAPS-lock right above the Shift key where it is easy to reach.

[ch_123]

Main issue with that layout is the placement of arrow keys, too out of the way. And as has been said before, F keys are still quite useful.

Also, is that black Meta key the context key? Do we really need one of those?

[kishy]

Context key is very handy to have when going keyboardless...in Windows, the "shortcut" is Shift+F10 if you don't have one of those keys.

Stupid Dell put the context key beside the power button and Print Scrn on the majority of their laptop keyboards, but at least it's there.

[quadibloc]

Initially, I was very happy with this new keyboard arrangement I had come up with. It seemed to be one of my best ideas yet. Almost everything is in its standard positions, and while the function keys do need a shift to access them, at least that shift is in easy reach.

But I quickly saw at least one problem. If I use the Caps Lock position for the Fn key, then since that's a left-hand key, I shouldn't be putting the Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause keys, accessed with that shift, on the right-hand side of the keyboard.

One way to deal with this might be: put the Fn key in the new position on the far side of the left shift, replace Caps Lock/F8 with the international key/F8, and then put Caps Lock back in its traditional position. (Putting the international key up there, though, is something I was trying to avoid, as some of my large Enter key arrangements used to do that with other printable charcter keys, until I found a better way around it.)

Because it isn't clear to me that everyone would prefer this arrangement to the original one, though, this, along with switching Ctrl and Caps Lock, needs to be controlled by something else... i.e. DIP switches, or an extra keyboard configuration button or key.

My goal is: to make something almost as compact as the HHKB or Lowpoly's keyboard, but much easier to learn how to use, much less intimidating.

I felt that Insert/Delete, Home/End, and especially Page Up/Page Down are very often used - and so are the cursor keys. But I agree that the function keys are important; this is why, although they require a shift to be accessed, I laid out the keyboard so that their traditional arrangement would be preserved.

I suppose I could replace Num Lock and Caps Lock in the top row by Print and Scroll Lock, and then put Caps Lock in its traditional place. But then I'll have to figure out where I can put Num Lock and the Fn key.

EDIT: Perhaps Lowpoly has the right idea: use the Windows shift keys as the Fn keys (actually, move the Alt keys to where the Windows shift keys were, and then put the Fn keys in the original Alt key locations, to make them more accessible); that way, they're paired, and easily reachable. Then one can always switch into a mode where the Caps Lock key, say, becomes Windows Shift if it is wanted - or Windows Menu: perhaps use left Windows Shift and Windows Menu on the right for the Fn keys (since Windows Menu, not being a shift key, can be accessed from an Fn-shift if necessary).

[quadibloc]

I have pondered more, and with help from your feedback, I have seen what I can do with the keyboard to make it more satisfying to a wider audience without having to add an extra non-mappable configuration key.

In Num Lock mode, since the keyboard is tenkeyless, the numeric keypad on the regular keyboard is activated. So the keyboard cannot be used for alphabetic typing. So in that mode, the ASD and ZXC keys are available to select which of several pre-programmed configurations to use.

A and Z make the F8 key the Caps Lock key, so that Caps Lock can serve as an Fn key.

S and X make the F8 key the Windows Menu key, so that the original Windows Menu key can serve as an Fn key.

D and C make the F8 key the international key, so that the extra key to the right of the right Shift key can serve as an Fn key.

And if a key on the bottom row, Z, X, or C is pressed, the Windows Shift key on the side of the keyboard opposite the key selected for the Fn key serves as a second Fn key.

[rdjack21]

To give you some ideas here are some compact keyboards I have and the problems with them:

MD01B0/HE0100:

This one is very close to being perfect the trouble spot for me is where the cursor keys are and the small right shift key. Has all the keys you need and is very compact not much bigger than the HHKB Pro 2. Other than the shift key the other problem with this board is that it is a short throw Topre switch with 55g keys. I can live with the short throw nature of the keys but the 55g keys are just a little to stiff. I tend to prefer the 45g keys of say the 87U.

Sun type 5e similar to the one above:

This one fixes the issue with the enter key and back space key from the one above but still has the issue of the placement of the shift key. If the shift key could be fixed and it was 45g keys instead of 55g keys this would be my daily driver.

Rare OKI board:

This one fixes the shift key problem but the arrow keys at the top which I thought I could get used to I have found I don't like. And of course the other problem is that this board uses a Spring over rubber dome design which means it is not all that great to type on.

Plathome space saver II:

This one is as close to perfect as I've been able to find the layout is great but of course finding the layout with a good switch is a different story. About the only thing I would change on this one is to use full size keys for the F keys. Oh and it is not much bigger than the HHKB Pro 2.

Filco 91J sorry not a good picture of the layout but I don't actually have this one yet but I do have one sitting in Japan waiting for me to OK shipping:

Fixes the small shift key issue but the board width was increased by 2 keys. On the plus side this uses Brown cherry switches.

My dream board would be a combination of the Plathome board and the MD01B0/HE0100 board. Take the alpha area of the Plathome board the space bar row from the MD01B0/HE0100 the cursor key cluster from the Plathome and the F key + other keys from the MD01B0/HE0100 and then add good switches.

Any ways maybe some of these boards will give you some ideas on what you want.

[elservo]

I was hoping you had retired from collecting after the HHKB!  I'm getting more and more tempted to buy one of those for my house, because honestly, I despise my laptop keyboard, even this new one!  My old laptop keyboard had a worn-through space bar, so yeah, I type a bit.

[Chao]

Filco 91J
Fixes the small shift key issue but the board width was increased by 2 keys. On the plus side this uses Brown cherry switches.

I'm so used to the Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn block that I normally hate non-standard setups...
But that is beautiful...

[quadibloc]

I have worked out many conventional compact keyboard layouts, like this one:

as part of an extensive dialogue with Shawn Stanford and other participants on this forum a while back.

What I was trying to do with this design was, again with full-sized keys only, to achieve a less-intimidating alternative to the HHKB. That meant that a lot of keys would have to end up as shifted keys, accessible only with the Fn key. So that trade-off was basically a ground rule of the design set in stone from the beginning, since otherwise I would be going around in circles.

With the main part of the keyboard being the standard array from the 101/104-key keyboard, with changes as minimal as possible, and the only additional keys being where the function key row would be (except touching the main area instead of separated from it by an empty row)

That is not to say that in the evolution of the design I didn't first consider some slightly less compact designs, such as this:

which belongs to the class of designs you've given as examples.

[quadibloc]

All right, here we go: make the Control, Alt, and Windows keys narrower, make the Esc key, along with the function keys, reachable with the Fn key, and the complexities of the design go away:

[DreymaR]

What you say would be true only if both wrists were perfectly parallel to the home row, but they aren't, in order to secure comfortable access to all rows.  A touch-typist hits the A key close to its lower edge and the semicolon (Colemak O) close to its upper edge.

Thus, on a standard staggered keyboard, both wrists will be rotated anticlockwise a bit.  So, the left shift needs to be closer and the right shift can afford to be farther.  (The problem is lessened considerably in Colemak since row-jumping is less frequent, so you should be fine with your setup.)

I hit my A and my O pretty much in the middle, but slightly out-and-downwards. I wouldn't want to rotate my wrists. You know well how I avoid that. Thus, I don't understand your point? Unless it be that most people are too stubborn to shift their ZXCVB keys like they ought to?  

[DreymaR]

I would suspect that there is pent-up demand even in Europe for keyboards that avoid the ISO placement of the left shift key and the Enter key, because even in Europe, typewriter keyboards did not have these altered placements either.

From all the Europeans I've listened to about this, not a single one has wanted to lose the VK_102 key for a longer Shift key. We're puzzled that the ANSI folks have such high emotions over the matter.

The Enter key is a truly different matter and those who have thought it through tend to want it closer to their pinky (as I do).

I solve the problem of the Enter by using Caps+Space for Enter so my pinky won't have to stretch (much). The Backspace key is similarly placed under the right pinky's home position (Colemak 'O').

[quadibloc]

From all the Europeans I've listened to about this, not a single one has wanted to lose the VK_102 key for a longer Shift key. We're puzzled that the ANSI folks have such high emotions over the matter.

Well, I certainly agree that to lose the extra key would be bad. Not having a key at all means the characters on it can't be typed. I feel that since even people in the U.S. might want to shift to a foreign-language layout to type the odd item in another language, it is useful to put that key on the layout for them - but in a place unobtrusive to them.

As to the high emotions, it's simple enough. When the original IBM PC was introduced, it was the first thing with a keyboard with an extra key in that position that most of its users had encountered. People were still using typewriters (not all of them even daisywheel) in those days in offices, so they had to switch between their keyboards and those of the PC.

So it makes sense that people would want the shift, backspace, and Enter keys all to be in precisely the same position as the shift, backspace, and carriage return keys of a normal electric typewriter.

I worked with the original PC, and was able to avoid typing \ by mistake when trying to shift too often, but it was a nuisance, and if a nuisance can be avoided, why not do so?

And, of course, since the extra key is now not needed for typing the normal ASCII character repertoire, thanks to the 101-key layout, if a computer manufacturer were to inflict keyboards on people that had this nuisance in order to put a key on the keyboard that is never used, of course people would be very upset.

If the extra key could be put in an acceptable place for the U.S. layout, however, one could imagine an alternate U.S. layout in which | becomes 1/4, \ becomes 1/2, { becomes the British pound sign or superscript 3, } becomes 3/4 or superscript 2, ~ becomes +/-, ` becomes the degree symbol... < and > are changed to be just , and . a second time on the keys - and the extra key has the paragraph and section symbols. This would be a "typewriter" or "word processing" keyboard layout - and the lack of this as a convenient option for the PC is, in my opinion, unfortunate.

Computers are used a lot for word processing, and they might as well be optimized for it.

Unless it be that most people are too stubborn to shift their ZXCVB keys like they ought to?

I shift my ZXCVB keys by holding down the right-hand shift key. But since you were using a smiley, perhaps that isn't what you meant? I know I've seen pictures of keyboards where the keys are not staggered in the standard 1/2 step, 1/4 step, 1/2 step fashion, but yes, with good reason people are much too stubborn to accept such a keyboard - and they have no option to move the keys around on the keyboards they have.

[quadibloc]

I've made another attempt to design a keyboard arrangement that satisfies both my goals an at least some of the comments made by the group: