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Building the Developer's Dream Keyboard
New submitter mondalaci writes: This article is about building the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard step by step, starting with an Arduino. Lots of pictures and nerd talk included. It's a mechanical keyboard that can split down the middle and re-merge, and it has four layers of keymappings to keep the design compact. It will support custom keymaps as well. They're planning to release the firmware and design files under the GPLv3, and they're working on repair instructions, too.
What would be nice would be a multi-key "gaming" keyboard, except with color e-ink on each key so one can not just map keys, but show where they are mapped.
The 6 key is on the left side? Do you even touch-type, bro? This is the one thing that annoys me the most about split keyboards.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This keyboard seems to have already filled this role.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'd totally be able to capture keyboard input on that thing from at least 20 feet away.
Come on now, a developer keyboard with no navigation keys? Really? Okay, so you can map multiple key combinations to represent them. Still, no way. If I want to highlight the text to the left of the cursor, I use CTRL-SHIFT-LEFT_ARROW. If I want to select the text from the cursor to the end of the line, I use CTRL-SHIFT-END. I already use those navigation keys in 3-key combos. I don't need it to be a 4-key combo, or something totally proprietary to the point I can only function with any proficiency on a keyboard that there is exactly one of in the entire world.
When I chose my last dev machine a few months ago, I really, really tried to make it a Macbook. I figured I could dual-boot windows and have all my bases covered. I had already tried using my older Macbook as a dev machine, and had given up. Why? No Home, End, PgUp or PgDown keys. As I stated above, I already use 3 key combos with those keys. I'm not about to try and make it a 4 key combo because Apple puts style over functionality. (and of course no Macbooks are touchscreen, and part of my work is making sure that web based multitouch HTML5 works properly on modern touch-screen desktop browsers).
Better known as 318230.
Yeah great, I have to use key combinations for the f-keys. Best keyboard evar!
No arrow keys, no side numeric keypad? Not interested.
I have a cool mini-idea. Snitch a scroll wheel from a mouse and put it in the keyboard. Then make the wheel up/down clicks send volume up/down keycodes. The wheel press can be a mute command.
No arrow, function or pretty much anything useful keys, seems like a nightmare.
The perfect keyboard has been around for a long time an IBM M13 mine is nearly 20 years old and in perfect working order. While I like the larger keyboard with f13-24 it's a pita to get many OS's to use them. You can also bludgeon an intruder with it and go back to typing.
No sir I dont like it.
Not to mention, this one already successfully finished its kickstarter campaign and is on to the next phase of actualization:
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
Both keyboards appear to have somewhat awkward choices for the CTRL position, though.
I'm still sort of fascinated by the Twiddler, though... http://twiddler.tekgear.com/
Would be nice to try one out to see if I could get used to it before shelling out some Benjamins for it, though. Also would be neat to consider dual-wielding them.
OTOH, I'm pretty happy with my $10 keyboards.
Now if they could just add a thinkpad-style trackpoint to it, I'd be begging for them to take my money.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'll stick with the Ryos MK Pro. One with red switches at work, and blue switches at home. :)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Another keyboard with staggered rows, in 2015?
Row staggering was a workaround for a mechanical typewriter, so that the levers that went from each key to the type ball would not overlap. It has not been necessary on any of the computer keyboards ever designed.
On newly designed keyboards, stagger the columns instead, matching the variation in finger length.
They're there using the "mod" keymap instead of the "Fn" modifier, but otherwise doesn't look too bad... better than the Fn - arrow keys I have to use now for PgUp/PgDn/Home/End on the PowerBook at work.
What does bother me about his layout is the position for the "Browser Back" in the mouse keymap, which is of course right in between mousewheel up and mouse up. And maybe also that he put LMB on the right and RMB to the left probably for ergonomic reasons, but it will probably still break people's brains. Mousewheel Left and Mousewheel right might be good mappings to have available as well.
What is the probability that the device would be as "awesome" as the group behind kickstarter marketing campaign says? They don't identify any particular manufacturers or vendors for who will be mass producing this thing. Doesn't that matter? Are they just going to go with the cheapest bidder, or are they targeting a particular vendor that is known for manufacturing high quality products. Seems like any kickstarter campaign should be including that at the top along with the other vapor, so people deciding whether to fund have a real idea of what/who they're funding.
Actually, he works with me as a frontend developer, and judging by his commits, he's a fairly prolific writer of code...
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
So the perfect keyboard might be the Macbook Pro keyboard, as it seems to be the most common high end machine?
10-bit input. That's ten keys, so my wrists don't have to move. All that's needed is a slight flexing of each digit. How much faster could I type if my hands didn't have to move *at all*?
Ten bits is 1024 characters. That's ten times as many keys as an enhanced AT keyboard has.
That'll also more than cover the entire Latin block of the Unicode set (up to 024F).
Hell, even 8-bits is still 256 characters. My first home computer had all of 128 characters (including control and escape characters) in its entire lexicon, and I was dialling out to bulletin boards with that thing.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Mod+J on this keyboard is left arrow whereas every programmer since ASCII started (1963) knows Ctrl+J is linefeed (cursor down), and Ctrl+H is backspace (cursor left). Certainly at least since the ADM-3A (1975) and the vi editor, (left,down,up,right) have been (H,J,K,L) yet this keyboard's modifiers give you those on (J,K,I,L) instead? Huh?
Holy crap! I'm having a hard time imagining that getting funded.
I'm kinda fond of the http://www.keyboard.io/ keyboard.
It's kinda a hacker/programmer keyboard, but it's a little old school classy (milled out of a chunk of Maple) as well..
The Ducky Mini has been my favorite keyboard to code with. It certainly looks better than this garbage.
Currently waiting for Keyboardio to release their Model 1. If you really want an ergonomic keyboard, remove the stagger in the key rows.
Note: there is a newer version that's hard to find on their page, but the production prototype looks a little bit different. It doesn't look so much like a butterfly as some of the older revisions do. I think they were considering embracing the butterfly look, but then they changed their mind.
I'm afraid that you're mixing things up: Browser Back is featured on the Fn layer, not on the mouse layer.
Obviously, some details of a keyboard's operation must be mechanical(ergonomics, key travel, the Absolute and Unquestionable Superiority of Buckling Spring Designs, etc.); but other details can be addressed at the hardware level, the firmware level, or the OS/userland level. Tons of function keys, say: you can physically add the additional buttons for all sorts of functions(volume control, start/stop/play, application specific shortcuts and macros), you can have some sort of firmware-level capability for assigning unusual keycodes or keycode sequences to specific keys or modifier key+key combinations, or you can have the keyboard remain relatively dumb, with most of the work happening at the level of software on the host machine(as with IMEs that use English keyboards to handle input of East Asian languages, or programs that execute complex macros on demand).
In your ideal world, how would you divide the work up? Eat the extra space and cost, and break out a ton of dedicated buttons? Endure the rather limited user interface that keyboard firmware can allow, in order to be able to do complex macros, custom keycodes, and other fun stuff even in the BIOS, on another computer, in an OS without software support? Go for a fairly minimal-complexity keyboard; but use software that provides a great deal of power from the keycodes you can generate?
Have to change modes to hit esc is a big fail. Real developers use vi!
Do Not Blaspheme. The Model M is the closest thing to the platonic essence of 'Keyboard' that mankind has ever managed to produce.
All unbelievers shall spend eternity doing data-entry using T9 text input on an aging dumbphone with intermittent key response.
Already produced, years ago. It was called the Keytronic FlexPro. Been using mine for 20yrs, through multiple adapters as the original was 5pin AT, now connected to a USB. 5pin -> PS/2 -> USB.
"Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
Control key belongs next to the A key, right where unix intended.
Esc key should not require hitting a mod key first to get to it. That is a constant key in vi to use and should be readily accessible.
Yeah, well, I won't be happy until Control is back where it belongs, to the left of the letter A!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Probably for silly reasons like increasing speed and decreasing carpal tunnel,
Keeping your hands still and not moving them *helps* repetitive stress injuries??? The consensus nowadays with typing, sitting at a desk... anything repetitive, is that changing positions often is key.
Any keyboard with an asymmetric stagger (i.e. >99.9% of them) is automatically disqualified from being in any way "ultimate".
Unless you've spent the majority of your life sat in front of a mechanical typewriter, the need to adjust won't (in the long term) outweigh the inherent disadvantages of an asymmetric layout.
There are simple, off the shelf answers out there, you just need to look at the point-of-sale market. This means you may end up with an unnecessary credit card reader attached to your keyboard, but otherwise there is no real issue. (Besides, wouldn't being able to swipe a card, even a magstripe, be a nice second factor for login?)
As I posted to Deskthority just yesterday:
http://cherrycorp.com/product/...
http://cherrycorp.com/product/...
And the one that I have chosen (for now) to serve in a similar role, that of having alternate language characters and mathematical symbols within easy reach, would be this:
http://cherrycorp.com/product/...
I chose the non-trackpad version.
You can play with the Cherry programming software to see the limitations of the hardware without actually buying anything, but I can tell you that doing things like typing {} followed by a left arrow would be quite trivial, as would double characters like == and !=. Emulating Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V is also pretty trivial.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
a perfect keyboard.
ones fingers never leave the home row to point, click, type, scroll, delete, backspace, esc, and type numbers.
the pointer has the precision, accuracy, and speed of an optical mouse.
it is under development. the concept is proven and patented.
inputexpert.
... without the damn water soluble contacts. I buy one, am very happy with it... then a bit of water gets between the keys... and dead.
I'm sure other people would prefer other keyboards but I like that one. It is great for putting in my lap and typing from there which is literally where I do 98 percent of my typing. I cross my legs in my chair, then put the keyboard in my lap... and type. :)
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
C'mon! Every programmer worth their salt knows that Control belongs to the left of 'a'. 'Mouse' is cute, but stick that on the bottom (and not where the Meta key goes!).
I'll go back to Emacs now...
-Chris
Oh, they labelled it "History Back" on the mouse layer... I'm assuming that'll probably do the same thing as "Hist -" on the Fn layer.
Oh, sweet! Yeah, I was wondering about something like that after some other comment in the thread mentioned that staggered rows would be more natural than the staggered column layout used in most keyboards.
From where your cursor is on a mac:
Control-Shit-A selects to the start of the line.
Control-Shit-E selects to the end of the line
OS X has since the beginning been able to use many Emacs control directives inside any text box - so the way the above works is Control-A is a command that moves to the start of a line, while Shift is the modifier that selects (just as you can hold down Shift to select while moving the cursor with the arrow keys).
So if you want to select a whole line quickly you can do Control-A to move to the start, followed by Control-Shift-E to move to the end of a line and select it all. These commands work to move in text in pretty much any area you can type, the select aspect even works for text in web pages (though it goes a whole paragraph).
Home and End are needless keys that just take up space.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
6 on the left half is a side effect of the continued stupidity of staggered key columns.
He should have used a TypeMatrix as his base to work from.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.
It's generally faster to hit a modifier key than it is to move your fingers all the way over to the pgup/down/etc area. I'd much rather hit Ctrl-A/E for Home/End, Ctrl-U/D for pgup/down, etc. I'd take shell-like or vim-like keys any day.
Pff, a model M? Puny. Real women uses Model Fs.
This device, which has yet to be released, kind of reminds me of the thinking behind this. Except they took it a step further, made both independently moving sides into mice as well. The price is a bit steep for my liking, though, and it looks like it might have a bit of a learning curve.
it's already funded
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
This is my dream keyboard: http://www.synthtopia.com/cont...
As an Emacs user since the late 70s I don't really see the appeal. It's nice that it doesn't have all that crud like a numeric keyboard or arrow keys and the like, but since I never take my hands away from the keybaord anyway those things are simply distractions. Meanwhile a smaller space bar isn't a winner.
But nice mechanical keys are good.
*shrug*
Spacebar is messed up, no arrow keys, no function keys, no insert/delete, no home/end/pgup/pgdn.
It's horrible.
I've never seen a keyboard worse than this one. There have been various satanic malformations, but even those had a normal fucking spacebar.
Nice job so far! I started working on an open keyboard similar to a Kinesis Contour or Maltron, but I was using closed source CAD and my windows installation started refusing to boot one day and I haven't been sufficiently inspired to fix it yet. CAD is the main thing holding back open source hardware IMHO; there is FreeCAD, but assemblies aren't even there yet; that's a showtopper for me. I think if you laser sinter the entire keyboard shell and hand-solder the keyscanning matrix, you could almost reach cost parity with the commercial versions, which cost around 300 bucks. My main motive was to be able to fix firmware bugs and replace keys individually, even though Kinesis is really cool about sending you replacement parts if you buy one of their keyboards and manage to wear out the keyswitches. I also wanted mechanical switches for the F-keys; the rubber dome switches drive me nuts.
Clearly, we need a keyboard which constantly shifts the positions of the keys around randomly.
Real hacker's dream keyboard: https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/s...
Seriously, why is your 'ultimate hacker's keyboard' just a split version of an 1860's typewriter?????
Well, at least they have Ctrl and Alt keys on both sides of the keyboard, something not all compact designs have. Otherwise, using that keyboard for any kind of serious programming (and debugging - most IDE's make extensive use of the function keys) would get old pretty quickly.
I have nothing against Caps Lock, but as far as I'm concerned it can live up there next to Scroll Lock. The Windows key can also join it.