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Some non-gemini friends insinuated that there would be an overlap between geminauts and mechanical keyboard nerds. Let's test that hypothesis! I (their only data point) have been daily driving my gherkin 30% keyboard for well over a year now (or is it two?) for fun and profit. Before that I had two planck 40%. How small is too small? What are you using? Am I alone here?
2023-06-14 · 11 months ago
I'm definitely a card carrying member of the club :) planning on posting in detail on my capsule about it at some point.
I already shared my preferred keyboard layout for the Fingerworks Touchstream:
It's very definitely not a mechanical keyboard--no moving parts--but I kept the same layout with a few tweaks when I moved to a mechanical keyboard later. It's almost a minimal layout, I guess, with all symbols and numbers using chords/layers.
how is it getting used to the key layout like that? been my reason for not getting a smaller keyboard / layout like this. also been toying with the idea of using Dvorak but don't have the time to train myself.
I switched to this layout at the same time as learning Dvorak... it took a while to get used to, I guess a few months, but was definitely worth it. I can still use a normal Qwerty keyboard fine.
@gritty since I only changed the non-letter part and stuck with qwerty it was not that painful for me, it took a couple of weeks to reach a productive state. I guess it helped a bit coming from planck, which was a bigger step for me. The downside with all this is once you realize you can change everything, it is hard to be happy and you're always looking for improvements. I have been toying with the idea of putting some letters on a second layer, giving room for some often used programming keys, like parenthesis. It is a rabbit hole for sure!
@Morgan that is an interesting piece of hardware! I feel I would miss tactility but maybe it is a matter of getting used to. I really like the idea of having the mouse built in.
@johan
The TouchStream is/was great--I wish there was a modern device offering similar capabilities. I finally switched away from the TouchStream because I got tired of maintaining a Windows XP VM in order to configure it.
I'm very happy with my current setup, though. I use a split keyboard with an Apple trackpad between the two halves. It's not quite as convenient for mousing as the TouchStream was, but it's pretty good.
Re: customizing, yes, it definitely takes some time once you start iterating :) my TouchStream layout was version 84, if I remember correctly.
Yes, I love my home row mods ;) but actually I started down this path for non-fun reasons, it was because I started to experience thumb pain while typing. So, I figured it was time to fully minimize the strain on my fingers. (And wrists). So my whole layout / setup is about reducing "reaches" from home position.
Pain is a powerful motivator ;) and having put in the effort to learn, of course now I like it this way. In terms of raw typing speed I don't think it beats a standard qwerty layout, but I do think it wins for editing text, because of quicker access to common edit keys like arrows, home, end and delete.
Nothing custom just yet. However in the medium term I'd like to buy a Ploopy Nano and build it into a replacement bridge for my Charachorder One.
@lypanov that sounds like quite an exotic setup! About the charachorder one, how long does it take to learn and have you tried it for programming?
Right now just learning. Though I hope to begin some basic programming tasks later on in the year. For now I pref
... er to keep to the out of the box setup for the keyboard before making any mappings. Previous comment was cut off due to some issues with AmiGemini that I'm yet to hav
... e any time to debug.
I have three Keychron keyboards and the Nuphy Air60.
Oh, and the Vortex CORE, which is the smallest mechanical keyboard I've ever used!
I did build a 36-key Corne split board just to see if I could, but my soldering skills leave something to be desired still, and I wound up getting tired of having to keep redoing it when the connection for the battery cables kept coming undone. I think this was aggravated by my taking it in and out of a case constantly to bring it to work and back.
I ultimately bought a Glove80, and after settling in to it, I've become quite taken with it. I'm considering getting a second so I can have the exact same experience at work and at home, rather than using my Moonlander at home while the Glove80 stays at the office. Along with switching to split mechanicals, I changed to a Colemak layout.
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