Muirium wrote:It was the style of the time. The space bar I use is 5 units wide.
Congrats, this is way more sane than the standard layout. Though as you might have guessed by now, I'd take issue with not having my Right Ctrl
and Menu.
Muirium wrote:The menu key is plain daft, you're quite right about that.
Oh, I did not mean to imply that. While its position seems complete nonsense to me, the function itself is nice to have when navigating GUI menus (which to my dismay still happens quite frequently, the internet be damned).
Muirium wrote:It's an honest question by the way: why isn't Control in that prime position on PC keyboards? I used them for my first decade of computing, and when I got a Mac it was the first thing I noticed about the keyboard: my pinkies didn't cringe from doing shortcuts all day long.
And I think it's a fine question, that brings me to the second complaint I have about your keyboard (and flat laptop style boards in general). You see, I too played around with Ctrl key positions for a long time, until I discovered the ancient secret art of
Palm-Pressing. dondy already mentioned it, it's explained over
here.
Xha Lee wrote:How to Press the Control Key
Use Your Palm or Semi-Fist
Do not use your pinky to press the Control key.
Try it out on a regular sized board, I think it's magical. It's even possible to press Win/Super this way, though it works best for Left Ctrl and Menu, which is why I swapped Menu with Right Ctrl and never looked back.
kbdfr wrote:1CC wrote:kbdfr wrote:I use Right Ctrl all the time together with the arrow keys.
What? How? Do you move your thumb all the way up? I've never even attempted this before.
Like dondy said: right thumb on right Ctrl and three fingers on the arrows.
This way I can scroll the text I'm editing and exactly target any text spot, and at the same time turn the pages of the printed manuscript with my left hand. Anything else would imply constantly moving at least one of my hands between the printed text and the keyboard and my eyes between the screen and the keyboard.
That sounds like a very specific use case to me, but fair enough.
kbdfr wrote:1x1 of Keyboard ergonomics: if you have to type a key together with a modifier, use both hands.
Excuse my crude words, but that's absolute bullshit.
Don't ask for excuses and go right ahead, we're not on geekhack and I can handle it.
kbdfr wrote:Right, when quick touch-typing, using both hands allows typing in a flow because you can keep your hands in the "basic" position. But that's true only for the Shift key when you want capitals.
Says who? What makes Ctrl, Win, Alt, Super, Meta or Command different? You have to hold one key, while pressing another. The concept is the same.
kbdfr wrote:But why should it be more ergonomic to type, say, Ctrl+F10 with both hands than with only the right hand? Muscle memory allows you to find the correct right hand position without looking at your keyboard, which I doubt you can do if using both hands.
The F-keys are a special case because they aren't reachable from home row. That is why I use them as sparingly as possible.
kbdfr wrote:On older keyboards, the function keys were not arranged in one row above the alpha cluster, but in two columns left of it. This allowed typing almost any combination of up to two modifiers + a function key with the left hand only, intuitively and without having to look.
I like the idea of balancing out the number cluster to the right and giving the left hand more to do.
kbdfr wrote:If I had to use both hands everytime I use a shortcut (which as a professional user I do a lot), that would noticeably reduce my work speed.
That's what I call bullshit. As a professional keyboard abuser, I have my frequently used shortcuts mapped to keys that I can reach from home row position.
kbdfr wrote:By the way, don't tell me you use both hands for Alt+Tab (assuming you know what it's for).
Yeah, I better not tell anyone that I use both hands to operate my keyboard lol.
Anyway, talking in absolutes always provokes such fun. Of course there are people who use the right Ctrl key without remapping it, and of course there are people who frequently operate their keyboard one-handed. Let them have their cake, I do not want to steal it from them. Quite the contrary, I want to give them something to chew on. This thread is doing even better than I expected. I like you, deskthority!