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When 1080p TVs hit the market, I wasn't all that excited. I was already using monitors with better resolution than that.

With 4k, however, I could replace my entire Wall O'Displays with a single 4k TV. I'm actually looking forward to doing exactly that. One 43" screen mounted to the wall would be much nicer and much more aesthetically appealing than what I have now. I would continue to use the older monitors with other machines, I don't expect my Chromebook (hacked though it may be) to drive a 4k display.

Oh, I forgot to mention that what I'm lacking in keyboard overkill, I compensate for in wall-of-monitors overkill. I do find a way to use them all though, unlike separate keys for 1000 emoji.

What I use every day is nowhere near as extreme, but it is conceptually similar. Basically I took a Cherry point-of-sale programmable keyboard and physically removed five of the eight rows of keys, then glued it to the back end of another, stock POS keyboard. I have changed the key labels for ones with a bit more useful color-coding, and swapped the positions of Escape and `~, but otherwise this setup has been stable for months now, after several months of daily-to-weekly refactoring.

To get tons of usable symbols, I have mapped four to each key on the "backplane" part. Lower left is unshifted, upper left is shifted, lower right is Ctrl+key, and upper right is Alt+key. I also have less commonly used symbols defined in a large AutoHotkey script of my own creation. (I know Windows is unpopular around here, but it's what I use, and AHK is the right tool for this job.) I can -- and frequently do -- type accented characters or ones resembling composite characters via hotstrings, as well as Unicode symbols. If you want to know what's in my list, why not go directly to the source and look? Anyone is welcome to modify and redistribute as they see fit, provided you don't try to do something malicious and blame it on me.

The macro keys are defined on a per-application basis, but labeled with their functions in GVOX Encore, since that is by far the most complex usage I put them to. Even the blue Ctrl+letter keys are occasionally "stolen" for specific purposes, if that key combination has no effect in a given app ordinarily. These assignments are not in the script linked above.

What I use every day is nowhere near as extreme, but it is conceptually similar. Basically I took a Cherry point-of-sale programmable keyboard and physically removed five of the eight rows of keys, then glued it to the back end of another, stock POS keyboard. I have changed the key labels for ones with a bit more useful color-coding, and swapped the positions of Escape and `~, but otherwise this setup has been stable for months now, after several months of daily-to-weekly refactoring.

To get tons of usable symbols, I have mapped four to each key on the "backplane" part. Lower left is unshifted, upper left is shifted, lower right is Ctrl+key, and upper right is Alt+key. I also have less commonly used symbols defined in a large AutoHotkey script of my own creation. (I know Windows is unpopular around here, but it's what I use, and AHK is the right tool for this job.) I can -- and frequently do -- type accented characters or ones resembling composite characters via hotstrings, as well as Unicode symbols. If you want to know what's in my list, why not go directly to the source and look? Anyone is welcome to modify and redistribute as they see fit, provided you don't try to do something malicious and blame it on me.

The macro keys are defined on a per-application basis, but labeled with their functions in GVOX Encore, since that is by far the most complex usage I put them to. Even the blue Ctrl+letter keys are occasionally "stolen" for specific purposes, if that key combination has no effect in a given app ordinarily. These assignments are not in the script linked above.

First, I use the Dvorak layout, but this has no effect on the numbers. (It does affect the two keys between 0 and backspace though.) What really has a substantial impact is that I use a keyboard with no stagger. 6 is directly above F (you'd probably have a Y there unless you have a QWERTZ kezboard), which in turn is directly above D (you'd have H there). It's a right hand key, with no ambiguity whatsoever.

You might imagine it is difficult to get used to a matrix keyboard, that you'd have years of stagger-training to unlearn. This is not so, at least if it's set up properly. Practically everyone centers the keyboard, which means the alpha area where you do your actual typing is offset to the left. In this situation, a stagger is helpful. When you push the hands away from you to reach up the keyboard, you naturally drift a bit to the left because of this. Use a keyboard where the alphas are right in front of you (like a Happy Hacking Keyboard, or a TypeMatrix) and reaching directly back will seem as natural as reaching up and slightly left does now. It took me about an hour and a half to make the adjustment, and a minute or two each time I started working for the first few days. I also made one other substantial alteration to the standard Dvorak layout, moving the [ and ] keys into the modifier row to shorten the top row. This puts += back in its usual QWERTY position, but more importantly brings Backspace 3/4" closer. You can look at it here. I also split the spacebar (though both are still Space, no reassigning one to Backspace or anything like that), and rotated the two halves to run up and down the keyboard rather than across it. This allows the hands to rotate inward without forcing a long stretch with the thumb. You'll also see I juggled the modifiers -- eliminating Right Windows entirely, then swapping Control to be next to Alt. Let the rarely accessed Windows and AppsKey keys be the hard ones to reach. Control is just a tuck of the thumb (either thumb) away, assuming I even need it since I have a set of 29 dedicated Ctrl+something keys. They're also arranged in QWERTY order, dodging one of the annoyances of Dvorak, namely that it was invented before the Control key, and long before the current Ctrl-ZXCV "standard". Killing the stagger also reduces the other Dvorak nuisance, the long and awkward reach to L. Being able to rotate the hands inward increases the row-reach of the little finger as well.

Personally I find I can't live with a bunch of overlay modes. I need a full navigation cluster, and use the numeric keypad just enough to get frustrated once or twice a day if it's not there. My answer for that was to put the keypad on the left, which both centers the alphas in front of me and brings the mouse in closer. It would be nice to have a gutter between the numpad and the alphas, but that's not happening until I build my own keyboard.

Right now, CapsLock does one thing. You tap it, and toggle the state of the Caps Lock function. Why not make it do more than one thing, namely by giving it a different function when held down? Perhaps it can act something like AltGr. I personally a held-down CapsLock to generate small caps (via Unicode, so I can't demonstrate here) thanks to AutoHotkey.

I also have other overlapping assignments, such as the AppsKey (aka "Menu Key", which may or may not be what they're calling the "Right Mouse Button" in the article). Tap it and it does the usual. Hold it down and it generates lookalike characters if any exist for that key (otherwise it generates nothing, so you know you didn't get a lookalike), such as a Cyrillic a or capital letters from the Greek alphabet. Why? Because of wordfilters. I encountered one that liked to change all instances of "moot" to "cuck", but it did so with no regard to the characters around the string. Thus the word "smooth" became "scuckh". I dodge this by substituting Cyrillic o in place of one or both of the ones in the word. Another wordfilter I've encountered changes all instances of "wing" to "wang", including when it's part of the word "swing". Time to bust out the Byelorussian "i".

Another option is to map CapsLock to Ctrl (as many people do), or to Backspace (as is the norm in Colemak). I actually use it though, now that it has the additional Small Caps function. I tried the Backspace assignment, but found myself not using it, and now I have a duplicate Backspace to the left of the Left Shift.

Other funky double assignments: NumLock sends a Ctrl-Enter, but only in Skype, otherwise it behaves normally. My numeric keypad is also paired up differently and uses all five rows:

/, 7-PrtSc, 8-ScrLk, 9-Pause
*, 4-Ins, 5-Home, 6-PgUp
-, 1-Del, 2-End, 3-PgDn
+, 0-Ins, Up Arrow, .-Del
Ctrl, Left Arrow, Down Arrow, Right Arrow

You can take a look if you really want to.