[IC] it is coming... SA RETRO!

Eszett · 19 Apr 2015, 18:37

Well, if you want less kits why all those color variants (burgundy, lime, orange)? IMHO they are overdoing it. Please add more flexibility, that is blank modifiers.

matt3o · 19 Apr 2015, 18:58

7bit wrote: ↑What do you mean by "easy for logistics"?

easier to sort/manage/ship. logistics.

Eszett wrote: ↑Well, if you want less kits why all those color variants (burgundy, lime, orange)? IMHO they are overdoing it. Please add more flexibility, that is blank modifiers.

because DSA Retro originally had those two colors.

Cherry1990 · 19 Apr 2015, 20:26

Lovely set, thank you.
Hope someone set up a proxy (or a teleportation) for our poor Europeans with trashy currency and vampire customs...

7bit · 19 Apr 2015, 20:30

Vampire costumes?

matt3o · 19 Apr 2015, 20:36

BunnyLake seems interested in handling this through CTRLALT store, but I believe he ships from US anyway (even if he is from UK). I may act as proxy for some friends and Italians (not sure yet, sorry).

Eszett · 19 Apr 2015, 20:40

Alright matt3o. Another topic: you said something about all-row3, have you discarded this idea now?

matt3o · 19 Apr 2015, 20:45

here's the catch. If bunnylake handles payment and shipment I have to keep it simple for his mental sanity. 7bit gave his availability which is great but there would be some issues to solve such as payments (I have a company of my own and it's hard to justify $100k of keycaps).

If instead we go with PMK or MD, I have no problem at adding as many options as we want.

scottc · 19 Apr 2015, 20:48

I'd be inclined to just go with PMK in that case. MD don't seem to offer great price tiers, so even on hugely successful sets there's a very minor price drop. Still, PMK is far from perfect...

If 7bit handles the order, maybe I'll cancel my Round 5a order and get this instead since it will probably arrive at my house in 2018.

7bit · 19 Apr 2015, 21:55

Even if you add a few more options, it would be plain sailing for me to do it.*

BTW: What about splitting the order, letting Bunny Lake do the US and international shipping and me the (more complicated) EU(+Norway and Switzerland) shipping?

-----------------------------------------------
*) compared to Round 5, not mentioning Round 4, where those flimsy DCS keys drove me almost crazy!

matt3o · 19 Apr 2015, 23:50

7bit wrote: ↑BTW: What about splitting the order, letting Bunny Lake do the US and international shipping and me the (more complicated) EU(+Norway and Switzerland) shipping?

that would be great! I'll talk with Bunny tomorrow!

SL89 · 19 Apr 2015, 23:58

7bit, matt3o and CTRLalt... Quite the dream team!

usopia · 20 Apr 2015, 03:03

Ichigo87 wrote: ↑[...]
Extra ISO ENTER color could be nice as an extra kit even if it's expensive (like the granite one).

It need no extra kit but a burgundy J-RET (into ISO Kit) would be fine.

trauring · 20 Apr 2015, 06:16

matt3o wrote: ↑Can you make a proposal? A very quick sketch with all the keys you'd want in an ergodox kit

I'm not so great at quick I guess. I wanted to do a bit of research first. First, I decided on looking at the history of the layout. I created an illustration of the default QWERTY layout that MassDrop Configurator provides (a horrible layout in my opinion). I then added the Kinesis Advantage layout, from which part of the basic design - the thumb cluster in particular - was derived. If I was adding the Advantage, then it seemed only fair to add in the Maltron. Maltron has an older Series 89 layout which I skipped, so I put in their Series 90 layout. Truthfully, it was hard to lock down their layout, as it seemed every photo or diagram I found was slightly different. It's my best approximation of the layout.

: ErgoDox (MassDrop default), Kinesis Advantage and Maltron Series 90 QWERTY layouts; ErgoDox Layout History.jpg (269.56 KiB) Viewed 5060 times

The color-scheme, by the way, is from an earlier set of diagrams I did to illustrate the different keyboard sections here:

http://trauring.org/how-many-keys-are-t ... -keyboard/

The colors correspond to the key block that the key sits in on a standard Full-Size keyboard (red are letters, pink are punctuation, light blue the number row, purple are modifiers, green are the function keys, orange is the navigation block, and yellow is the number pad).

That done, I figured there must be plenty of people who have shared their ErgoDox layouts, and I came upon this thread from last year:

http://deskthority.net/keyboards-f2/erg ... t7580.html

The goal was actually to generate a most-common key list specifically for group buys, although it doesn't look like it was ever completed. There is also this thread on geekhack which was set up to share layouts:

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=42463.0

There are some very interesting layouts. I like one that inserted a 4-way arrow cluster correctly. Anyways, I need a bit more time to digest this all, and I'll have something to show soon. I won't be doing anything scientific like the earlier thread wanted to do, although that's still a good idea for the future.

As an aside, if you look closely at the diagram above, I've tried to accurately show the layout of the keys. The Maltron pretty much a true matrix, the Kinesis shifts the key columns a bit at the sides, and the ErgoDox is more consistent in how the columns are staggered (this doesn't mean it's better as our fingers are not consistent like the ErgoDox). The Maltron and Kinesis of course have key bowls where the distance to the key is increased in a third dimension compared to the ErgoDox, so the distance of the column stagger isn't necessary as important where they have the ability to create space by lowering keys different distances.

Cafeine · 20 Apr 2015, 06:41

matt3o is a saint to put up with all the crazy demands... #rolleyes.

farinasa_ · 20 Apr 2015, 07:02

How about 1.25u 'Control' keys?

usopia · 20 Apr 2015, 07:16

...look at the two Main Kits for 1.25 CTRL.

matt3o · 20 Apr 2015, 08:46

okay. regarding the ergodox.

First of all, we can't have 90° legends. That would be too expensive.

Secondly, 2u keys are expensive.

That being said this is the "common denominator" we found during the development of granite

Like I said it merely covers 70% of the layouts of the people who participated at the survey, but it was the best we could do AND it was for a row-less family keycaps (DSA).

Looking at it and at the layouts @trauring submitted, I could probably add:

4x 1u arrows red R4
2x 1.5u shift red R4
|\ {[ }] ~` all in brown R4
2x FN red in R3
2x 1u GUI R4 red
2x 1u GUI R2 red
1x 2u Return green
2x 1u Alt R2 red
2x 1u Ctrl R2 red

These probably are the safest, but it's not that you can cover the full layout and you'd need blanks anyway.

beltet · 20 Apr 2015, 09:45

Why is there a 7u space in the "Big Space" kit?
Aren't the included in the regular kits?

matt3o · 20 Apr 2015, 09:46

beltet wrote: ↑Why is there a 7u space in the "Big Space" kit?
Aren't the included in the regular kits?

this is ABS, you may want some anti-shine kit

matt3o · 20 Apr 2015, 09:51

I spent some time on the ergodox but I really couldn't come up with a sane layout.

Maybe I can add some legends here and there, definitely I can't dress it all up

maybe I can add a green return.

trauring · 20 Apr 2015, 13:17

Whoah. Wait a sec. You just changed the bottom row from R3 to R4. I had a bunch of combinations based on that being R3. Is it officially now R4? I was about to upload my layout, but if that's R4 I need to make a bunch of changes.

matt3o · 20 Apr 2015, 13:53

no worries! post it now! I have to send everything to SP for a quote ASAP

trauring · 20 Apr 2015, 14:08

Okay, here we go. The R3/R4 thing threw me for a loop, but in the end it wasn't that big of a deal. In fact I had put in keys to allow you to make a 4-way arrow cluster (which required swapping an R3 up arrow with a R4 key above it), but now that's not necessary since they're both R4.

In any case, I designed it to allow someone to add it to the ErgoDox set, but also use it without it if they want (although some blanks might be useful from the ErgoDox set). I specifically don't have any blank keys (except one space bar) to allow more options for the labels, and figure if people want blanks they'll get the ErgoDox set.

The set allows a bunch of options such as media keys in the middle, moving the arrow keys from the main section into one of the thumb clusters, etc.

matt3o · 20 Apr 2015, 14:16

like I said, we cannot have rotated legends. that would be too expensive. The only key I could add is "return" for which we have the tooling.

with that in mind I could add some 1u keys and probably some 1.5 but you'd end up with some blanks anyway. My question would be: better a full blank ergodox (except for alphas) or a semi-blank ergodox (with some legends+some blanks)?

trauring · 20 Apr 2015, 14:24

A few more comments on it. I don't have the list of possible keys, so it's a bit of a guessing game as to what I could do. I hope I didn't use anything I can't. ErgoDox uses layers which some people use a bunch of keys to control. As I didn't know of specific Layer-oriented keys, I assumed there were none. I figure people with use Fn or something similar. I did put in the 1 and 2 in the left thumb cluster (can I have a plain 1 and 2 in R2? - if not I can come up with something else for those spots) which can be used for switching between Layer 1 and 2 if people only use two layers.

From what you showed, it seems like the ErgoDox set comes with all the letter and number keys, making the base set unnecessary. Assuming that is the case (unlike many group buys that require the base set) I added the 1u R1 lime-colored Esc key from the base set as an option.

trauring · 20 Apr 2015, 14:28

I wasn't clear about the rotation. I thought you meant we couldn't write it vertically (i.e. one letter below the next).

The other option is to have some keys with sideways legends. Lots of people have done that for their own keyboards (since it's so hard to find keycaps that are properly labeled). I think it's an okay solution, primarily because it's the only solution that will allow a fully-labeled keyboard.

trauring · 20 Apr 2015, 14:33

Although if you have the tooling for the Return key, I'd still use that...

matt3o · 20 Apr 2015, 14:39

I really don't know how to deal with Ergodox, realistically it's impossible to have a fully legended Ergodox (for everybody), unless you make a group buy specifically for ergodox with as many options as possible. I could simply remove the alphas and let ergodox people buy as many kits as they can to cover some of the legends, base kit and pro modifiers have some 1.5u and 1u in various rows.

being impossible to cover all scenarios, wouldn't be better to simply go all blank?

Khers · 20 Apr 2015, 14:43

I'd say it's probably better to go with blanks. I don't think that it makes much sense going for a legended ErgoDox kit for a contoured set. I think that what you made for the ErgoDox with Granite is amazing, but as has been stated previously, it sort of only makes sense with a flat keyset. If you covered approximately 70% with Granite ErgoDox, I guess you'd cater to the needs of very few here, potentially putting more people off since the set wouldn't fit their needs...

trauring · 20 Apr 2015, 14:48

Of course, I'm advocating for a printed keycap set, primarily because there haven't really been any printed sets available. In fact I'm not aware of any fully-labeled sets for the ErgoDox. Not everyone wants blank keys, no matter how skilled a touch typist they may be.