<story><title>433% Keyboard</title><url>https://relivesight.com/projects/433/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EForEndeavour</author><text>That reminds me, I consider losing arrow keys a dealbreaker. I use them frequently enough to navigate both text and code in various contexts (except in Vim, which I don&amp;#x27;t use exclusively). I already hold modifiers to jump to next&amp;#x2F;prev word boundary, page, start&amp;#x2F;end of continuous data ranges in Excel, etc. Admittedly, I&amp;#x27;d probably adapt, but I&amp;#x27;m held back by the belief that any ergonomic advantages of moving to wasd or hjkl would be wiped out by reduction in speed and muscle memory for me.</text></item><item><author>sascha_sl</author><text>You can keep the normal layout on a 40%, you just wouldn&amp;#x27;t have number&amp;#x2F;function&amp;#x2F;nav keys without layers&lt;p&gt;40% is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; just plank, and I personally find the ergonomics of a plank board to be rather bad compared to staggered, unless it&amp;#x27;s split.</text></item><item><author>EForEndeavour</author><text>What sort of WPM did you have on normal keyboards, and whta have you been able to train up to on your current one? I plateaued at roughly 35 WPM on Dvorak as a teenager and have been hesitant to commit to major layout changes since then, despite the ergonomic promises that a lot of them make.</text></item><item><author>readingnews</author><text>I am not OP, but I moved to a 40% (44 key minivan) about a year ago, and I am using it as my daily driver at home and work. I find that the fact that I can reach every key on the board and barely move my hands has helped a lot. The other interesting notation is that I can put the mouse really, really close by. So the motion going from keyboard to mouse is greatly reduced. I find that my wrists are much better off with this.</text></item><item><author>codezero</author><text>Is it an Atreus? How do you like that size of keyboard? I&amp;#x27;m not too bothered about adopting some chords, but more interested in the general ergonomics &amp;#x2F; RSI risks.</text></item><item><author>autocorr</author><text>For some context, this project was basically made to one up someone else, so it&amp;#x27;s not fully serious. Part of what makes the keyboard funny though is that (a niche of) the custom mechanical keyboard scene has been moving to many fewer keys and programming the firmware to compensate. So it&amp;#x27;s pretty funny going from seeing several Planck ~49 key layouts to seeing this gargantuan &lt;i&gt;450&lt;/i&gt; key absolute unit.&lt;p&gt;Sincerely typed by someone on a 44 key layout :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Symbiote</author><text>I had similar misgivings, so I chose an ErgoDash, which has a few more keys than some of the minimalist offerings.  I have the arrow keys in a horizontal row (which took some time to adapt to), but I can still use them with Alt&amp;#x2F;Ctrl&amp;#x2F;Shift modifiers fairly easily.&lt;p&gt;However, I&amp;#x27;m planning on making something like this[1] &amp;quot;trackball Dactyl Manuform&amp;quot;, where the trackball under the thumb can be configured to use different modes -- e.g. a key toggles it between being a mouse and being arrow keys, and another locks it to vertical&amp;#x2F;horizontal. It could be combined with holding Alt&amp;#x2F;Ctrl&amp;#x2F;Shift.&lt;p&gt;I made a gallery of split&amp;#x2F;ergonomic mechanical keyboards if you&amp;#x27;d like a quick overview of other options. [2]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@kincade&amp;#x2F;track-beast-build-log-a-trackball-dactyl-manuform-19eaa0880222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@kincade&amp;#x2F;track-beast-build-log-a-trackbal...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aposymbiont.github.io&amp;#x2F;split-keyboards&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aposymbiont.github.io&amp;#x2F;split-keyboards&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>433% Keyboard</title><url>https://relivesight.com/projects/433/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EForEndeavour</author><text>That reminds me, I consider losing arrow keys a dealbreaker. I use them frequently enough to navigate both text and code in various contexts (except in Vim, which I don&amp;#x27;t use exclusively). I already hold modifiers to jump to next&amp;#x2F;prev word boundary, page, start&amp;#x2F;end of continuous data ranges in Excel, etc. Admittedly, I&amp;#x27;d probably adapt, but I&amp;#x27;m held back by the belief that any ergonomic advantages of moving to wasd or hjkl would be wiped out by reduction in speed and muscle memory for me.</text></item><item><author>sascha_sl</author><text>You can keep the normal layout on a 40%, you just wouldn&amp;#x27;t have number&amp;#x2F;function&amp;#x2F;nav keys without layers&lt;p&gt;40% is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; just plank, and I personally find the ergonomics of a plank board to be rather bad compared to staggered, unless it&amp;#x27;s split.</text></item><item><author>EForEndeavour</author><text>What sort of WPM did you have on normal keyboards, and whta have you been able to train up to on your current one? I plateaued at roughly 35 WPM on Dvorak as a teenager and have been hesitant to commit to major layout changes since then, despite the ergonomic promises that a lot of them make.</text></item><item><author>readingnews</author><text>I am not OP, but I moved to a 40% (44 key minivan) about a year ago, and I am using it as my daily driver at home and work. I find that the fact that I can reach every key on the board and barely move my hands has helped a lot. The other interesting notation is that I can put the mouse really, really close by. So the motion going from keyboard to mouse is greatly reduced. I find that my wrists are much better off with this.</text></item><item><author>codezero</author><text>Is it an Atreus? How do you like that size of keyboard? I&amp;#x27;m not too bothered about adopting some chords, but more interested in the general ergonomics &amp;#x2F; RSI risks.</text></item><item><author>autocorr</author><text>For some context, this project was basically made to one up someone else, so it&amp;#x27;s not fully serious. Part of what makes the keyboard funny though is that (a niche of) the custom mechanical keyboard scene has been moving to many fewer keys and programming the firmware to compensate. So it&amp;#x27;s pretty funny going from seeing several Planck ~49 key layouts to seeing this gargantuan &lt;i&gt;450&lt;/i&gt; key absolute unit.&lt;p&gt;Sincerely typed by someone on a 44 key layout :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SuperPaintMan</author><text>With light switches and a compact layout it&amp;#x27;s not too bad for navigation. My default for arrows is LeftThumb+HJKL, so it&amp;#x27;s quicker and more natural then diving for the arrow keys. I also have overloaded alphas (Ctrl on a or ;, Shift on Z&amp;#x2F;?, etc) so Ctrl-Shift-Up maps to A+Z+LeftThumb+K. Seems a little bonkers but it only took a few days to adjust to my GergoPlex [0][1]&lt;p&gt;The bigger issue with adding more keys to the mix is that with heavier switches (35g+) the amount of work&amp;#x2F;stress done by the hand can be more then a traditional keyboard. But even with heavier switches it&amp;#x27;s often faster then having to move your hands around the physical board. And once you factor in things like combos you can just map End to something like QW or whatever works for you. Programmable input devices are _really_ weird!&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;1.bp.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;-rRS_TOYuIQQ&amp;#x2F;XhRERox3moI&amp;#x2F;AAAAAAABEB0&amp;#x2F;uTThutO8H9o8HK-sdNgzOKC1-gIdyEFoACLcBGAsYHQ&amp;#x2F;s1600&amp;#x2F;Capture.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;1.bp.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;-rRS_TOYuIQQ&amp;#x2F;XhRERox3moI&amp;#x2F;AAAAAAABE...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gboards.ca&amp;#x2F;product&amp;#x2F;gergoplex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gboards.ca&amp;#x2F;product&amp;#x2F;gergoplex&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>