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Drop + OLKB Planck Mechanical Keyboard Kit V7

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Drop + OLKB Planck Mechanical Keyboard Kit V7

JohnHind

Nov 10, 2019

This is my experimental ortholinear layout made with this kit. The UK layout is shown, it also works with the US key mapping. The concept is aimed at inveterate two-fingered typists and it is guaranteed to drive those who hit the space bar with their thumbs to distraction! The red keys are symmetrical left to right and carry all the non-typing functions. Tapped, they produce space, return, tab and destructive backspace as shown on the face. Held down while another key is tapped they act as the four modifier keys. Chords of two or more red keys act as layer-shift, for example the characters on the front edge of the green keys are accessed by holding down the 'space' and 'return' red keys simultaneously (on either side). So far I am finding this very ergonomic for my typing style, but there are issues, for example multiple modifiers (ctrl+alt+del) require complex work-arounds which are not easy either to type or to remember. I do have these keys duplicated on my mouse which strikes me as a better solution anyway (although such mice are sadly rare). This does require some firmware modifications and I've not yet got my head around how to publish them on GitHub, but if there is any interest I'll put some more effort into that.

pott

145

Feb 7, 2020

JohnHindH is not assigned to any dual function; why not set it to a temporary layer, and have your special chorded keys (e.g. alt + F4, ctrl + alt + del etc...) mapped there?

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JohnHind

Feb 8, 2020

pottNot sure I get you @pott. There are plenty of layers available (15 total, I've only actually used 1) for mapping specific key combinations. The issue is the generality of shortcuts mapped to modifier combinations of which there is a very large set. However, it would make sense to map 'Del' to one of the free keys on the primary modifier layer - I missed that! At the moment I allow a combination of modifier keys to be held down on one side while 'shift' is tapped on the other side. Then you can release all the keys and type another key as normal, which will be wrapped in the modifier combination. But I find it easier to use the modifier keys on my mouse. One thing I learned from this exercise is that design of alternative keyboards is heavily constrained by bad design of the USB-HID specification. For example you cannot change the pairings of shifted and unshifted characters because there is one code for the pair with the shift operation mapped in the driver at the computer end. Also if there was a range of unassigned codes that a keyboard could send and which would be mapped by the PC this would give extra flexibility especially if the mapping software were application sensitive. The problem is you have to assign macros in the keyboard and there is no way of telling the keyboard about state at the computer (for example which application has the keyboard focus).

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