deskthority

I am used to typing on the flat, generic/normal keycap profile of laptop keyboards and I somehow find it the most comfortable or easiest (not grown up with external keyboards), and I kinda struggle to type on normal/full height, sculptured keycaps (specifically OEM profile) on external keyboards, and I make fewer typos on laptop keyboards. So what do you think would be my preferred profile?

Big Bricced wrote:
So what do you think would be my preferred profile?

If you don't want to re-train your muscle memory, then whatever you are already accustomed to will be your preferred environment.

But if you want to learn something new, the IBM Model M was the standard configuration from which most everything else was derived.

Big Bricced wrote: I am used to typing on the flat, generic/normal keycap profile of laptop keyboards and I somehow find it the most comfortable or easiest (not grown up with external keyboards), and I kinda struggle to type on normal/full height, sculptured keycaps (specifically OEM profile) on external keyboards, and I make fewer typos on laptop keyboards. So what do you think would be my preferred profile?

There are a number of flat profiles available, although they seem less common than sculpted profiles, such as Cherry, OEM, Leopold, DCS, or SA. You might want to stick with a flat profile such as DSA or go with a sculpted profile that is lower than OEM, such as Leopold or Cherry.

By "laptop keyboard", do you mean cylindrical profile, flat chiclet or slightly spherical dished?

If chiclet or dished, then I would suggest you try the XDA profile. Not contoured. Spherical. Quite wide tops.
If cylindrical, not contoured, then maybe the Cherry G80-3000 or G80-3850 might have the best profile for you ... but those won't fit other keyboards and the keycaps are not in high quality IMHO.

I assume plain flat chiclet shape, as found on almost all laptops for years now. So next to no profile at all.

I’d suggest DSA profile, as you’re already used to a single plane across the entire keyboard, and there’s many really nice sets in DSA, like Granite here:



To laptop fingers, DSA will feel really round and cupped. You’ll get used to it, and it’ll even help you as a bridge to the more traditional profiles everyone’s suggesting here.

OEM is quite gnarly. IBM is closer to it than most. And don’t even let anyone get you started on SA! No, DSA is the one to bridge you from chiclet flatland to where the action’s at. As a veteran on all of these, I still like it plenty for myself.

Findecanor wrote: By "laptop keyboard", do you mean cylindrical profile, flat chiclet or slightly spherical dished?

If chiclet or dished, then I would suggest you try the XDA profile. Not contoured. Spherical. Quite wide tops.
If cylindrical, not contoured, then maybe the Cherry G80-3000 or G80-3850 might have the best profile for you ... but those won't fit other keyboards and the keycaps are not in high quality IMHO.

What is "dished" profile? And what is the difference between "cylindrical" and "spherical" caps?

Muirium wrote: I assume plain flat chiclet shape, as found on almost all laptops for years now. So next to no profile at all.

I’d suggest DSA profile, as you’re already used to a single plane across the entire keyboard, and there’s many really nice sets in DSA, like Granite here:



To laptop fingers, DSA will feel really round and cupped. You’ll get used to it, and it’ll even help you as a bridge to the more traditional profiles everyone’s suggesting here.

OEM is quite gnarly. IBM is closer to it than most. And don’t even let anyone get you started on SA! No, DSA is the one to bridge you from chiclet flatland to where the action’s at. As a veteran on all of these, I still like it plenty for myself.

Will DSA be good on a keyboard with an angled chassis for those who have grown up with laptops for their entire life?

An example of a "keyboard with an angled chassis" is Wooting One or basically almost every keyboard out there

Big Bricced wrote:

Findecanor wrote: By "laptop keyboard", do you mean cylindrical profile, flat chiclet or slightly spherical dished?

If chiclet or dished, then I would suggest you try the XDA profile. Not contoured. Spherical. Quite wide tops.
If cylindrical, not contoured, then maybe the Cherry G80-3000 or G80-3850 might have the best profile for you ... but those won't fit other keyboards and the keycaps are not in high quality IMHO.

What is "dished" profile? And what is the difference between "cylindrical" and "spherical" caps?

wiki/Touch_typing#Dished_home_keys
wiki/Cylindrical_keycap
wiki/Spherical_keycap
and, more generally,
wiki/Keyboard_profile

Big Bricced wrote: Will DSA be good on a keyboard with an angled chassis for those who have grown up with laptops for their entire life?

An example of a "keyboard with an angled chassis" is Wooting One or basically almost every keyboard out there

DSA should be good on anything. The picture I posted above is of my DSA Granite set on a Cherry g80-3000, a pretty regular fullsize MX keyboard. Here it is on my NovaTouch:



Loads more pictures here. I chose that one because it shows you what you’re asking: see how the caps lie? They work just great.

What you’ll notice compared to OEM is they are shorter and more regular. The caps at the back of the keyboard aren’t any taller than those in the middle or the front. (That’s something called row profiles. DSA doesn’t care about rows at all.) So they’re much more like chiclet laptop keys that way.

DSA is still different to what you’re used to in laptop keys though. Chiclet boards have the keys all smudged up next to eachother. (Especially Apple’s in recent MacBooks.) You’ve probably noticed on mech keyboards that there are valleys between the tops of keys. The keys are actually still the same overall distance apart on both—the standard “pitch” is 9.5 mm I think—but traditional caps are taller while chiclets are squat and all smooshed into eachother. Typing on DSA could well get your fingers used to all mech keyshapes.

To me, DSA certainly feels the most laptop-like of desktop key profiles. (Or the ones you can still buy, and that I like!)

Take a look at the DT wiki article on the "unit" of keyboard measure:

wiki/Unit

The pitch, or distance between centers of keys on a "standard" keyboard, is about 3/4-inch or approximately 19 mm.

Thanks Hyper. What I mean is that (despite what I’ve heard tech journalists say) the keys on modern chiclet laptop keyboards aren’t closer together, but rather they’re enlarged to fill the same space more completely. My closeup photo of DSA in action brings out the sides of the caps, giving the illusion they are further apart. They aren’t.

Big Bricced wrote:

Findecanor wrote: By "laptop keyboard", do you mean cylindrical profile, flat chiclet or slightly spherical dished?

If chiclet or dished, then I would suggest you try the XDA profile. Not contoured. Spherical. Quite wide tops.
If cylindrical, not contoured, then maybe the Cherry G80-3000 or G80-3850 might have the best profile for you ... but those won't fit other keyboards and the keycaps are not in high quality IMHO.

What is "dished" profile? And what is the difference between "cylindrical" and "spherical" caps?

By "dished", I mean that it does not have an entirely flat top like most chiclet keyboards.
By "cylindrical" and "spherical", I mean the shape of the dished surface. Look closely in this image in the Wiki: the left key is spherical and the right is cylindrical.
You could place a marble on the spherical key, but it would just roll off from the cylindrical.

Most older laptop keyboards (like classic Thinkpads for instance) have cylindrical key tops, only quite flat ones.
Most newer laptop keyboards have completely flat chiclets, but some "chiclet" keys are a little bit spherical.

Some keycap profiles have a deeper dish than others, and on some profiles (like DSA) the homing keys F and J are more deeply dished to make them easier to find by touch.
The more deeply-dished spherical key profiles tend to "grip" your fingers more as you touch them. If you are used to a laptop with flatter, wider keytops, then you might want to avoid that. That is why I recommended XDA, which has flatter and wider tops.
However, I think that too-wide keytops are worse for accuracy (easier to press the wrong key by mistake), so if you value that then DSA might be better.

Muirium wrote:

Big Bricced wrote: Will DSA be good on a keyboard with an angled chassis for those who have grown up with laptops for their entire life?

An example of a "keyboard with an angled chassis" is Wooting One or basically almost every keyboard out there

DSA should be good on anything. The picture I posted above is of my DSA Granite set on a Cherry g80-3000, a pretty regular fullsize MX keyboard. Here it is on my NovaTouch:



Loads more pictures here. I chose that one because it shows you what you’re asking: see how the caps lie? They work just great.

What you’ll notice compared to OEM is they are shorter and more regular. The caps at the back of the keyboard aren’t any taller than those in the middle or the front. (That’s something called row profiles. DSA doesn’t care about rows at all.) So they’re much more like chiclet laptop keys that way.

DSA is still different to what you’re used to in laptop keys though. Chiclet boards have the keys all smudged up next to eachother. (Especially Apple’s in recent MacBooks.) You’ve probably noticed on mech keyboards that there are valleys between the tops of keys. The keys are actually still the same overall distance apart on both—the standard “pitch” is 9.5 mm I think—but traditional caps are taller while chiclets are squat and all smooshed into eachother. Typing on DSA could well get your fingers used to all mech keyshapes.

To me, DSA certainly feels the most laptop-like of desktop key profiles. (Or the ones you can still buy, and that I like!)

Sorry for another retarded question but how curved is the Novatouch chassis? And how curved are the tops of the caps?

Most Topre and most mechanical keyboards do not have a curved chassis at all. They are backed by a flat printed circuit board.

DSA are not contoured. 1×1 DSA keycaps are actually perfectly symmetric. You could even turn each keycap around 180° so that all legends read up-side down and it wouldn't affect key feel at all.

Muirium wrote:
giving the illusion they are further apart. They aren’t.

This is I get perturbed.

I have used "standard" keys for so long that I feel like wide flat low mesas encourage me to make mistakes around the periphery that I would not be making with sloping summits.

Findecanor wrote: Most Topre and most mechanical keyboards do not have a curved chassis at all. They are backed by a flat printed circuit board.

DSA are not contoured. 1×1 DSA keycaps are actually perfectly symmetric. You could even turn each keycap around 180° so that all legends read up-side down and it wouldn't affect key feel at all.

I meant about the curving for the top (where the legends should be printed); not the actual shaping of each row/keycaps.

Muirium wrote: Thanks Hyper. What I mean is that (despite what I’ve heard tech journalists say) the keys on modern chiclet laptop keyboards aren’t closer together, but rather they’re enlarged to fill the same space more completely. My closeup photo of DSA in action brings out the sides of the caps, giving the illusion they are further apart. They aren’t.

How would you describe typing on DSA caps on the Novatouch TKL?

Fin’s right: DSA caps are entirely symmetric. The tops and the sides!

As for typing on them: I like them quite a bit. It’s pretty much half way between typing on a low profile, slimline, flat modern chiclet keyboard and a great big beefy tall keyed mechanical. You still get the full mechanical key feel, but the keys are lower down, more like you’re used to on laptops. Definitely worth a try.

(With the thread-irrelevant exception of IBM) All mechanicals are “flat” in that the switches lie on a plane. DSA and other profiles all work fine on them.

Muirium wrote: Fin’s right: DSA caps are entirely symmetric. The tops and the sides!

As for typing on them: I like them quite a bit. It’s pretty much half way between typing on a low profile, slimline, flat modern chiclet keyboard and a great big beefy tall keyed mechanical. You still get the full mechanical key feel, but the keys are lower down, more like you’re used to on laptops. Definitely worth a try.

(With the thread-irrelevant exception of IBM) All mechanicals are “flat” in that the switches lie on a plane. DSA and other profiles all work fine on them.

Lastly but thanks anyways; how curved are the sides/edges or cupped of the DSA caps?

I find it interesting that I have a totally different opinion about what looks best versus what feels best. I like typing on DSA on a lot, and I can type faster on it than on most other keycap profiles. My second favorite is Apple's AEK II. I also like tying on some low profile caps and switches, like Kailh low-profile on Havit boards.

But… from the sheer looks and appeal sitting there, inviting me to type on it, in my opinion you can't beat SA profile caps. They're just stunning. Probably followed by Model F/M and Beamspring.

But anyway, it seems that I might have similar preferences as expressed in the OP, so I'd encourage you to try:

* Havit keyboard with low-profile Kailh switches and caps (link: https://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Keybo ... 014&sr=1-7)
* Apple AEK II
* DSA caps on various switches (personally I like them on Topre, the Realforce RGB has Cherry-style mounts)