New Keyboard Layout

Posted on 2022-02-16

Yesterday I read a post about switching to Plan9 and I noticed the mention of Neo 2, a ergonomic german keyboard layout.

Switching to Plan9

And as it seems that the most popular thing on gemini, after hating on big things and building small things, are keyboards and their layouts, I decided to hop onto the train.

The Layout

I checked out their website and a few other resources and noticed, I did not want to try their layout. I already setup everything to my current, default QWERTZ layout, (xmonad, nvim, qutebrowser, ...) and that would mean I would have to change my muscle memory completely (mainly hjkl) or change all my keyboard shortcuts. Furthermore, I probably write more English than German.

Their website

But I really liked their idea for a third layer containing all special symbols needed for programming or other, every day tasks. Luckily, they got a alternative layout, NeoQwertz, basically a normal layout with the third layer (and two more I will never use). But things were still not perfect. They had their key to switch layers on the CapsLock-Key, where I have my Escape-Key (someone think of the vim-users). And they used dead keys, and I hate dead keys. That is why I decided to use their layout as a base and change the things I did not like.

I will not describe my layout completely, as I only changed four small things on the default-layout.

The process

I have now been using my new layout (with some modifications every now and then), and I must say I am not sure if I like it. I technically like the idea of using a third layer very much, but they also made some weird substitutions in the second layer (the one you can access with shift), for example including the "ẞ" (big version of "ß" I have not yet seen anyone using) instead of "?", that everyone uses. Furthermore they include a fourth, fifth and sixth layer I will probably never use. I may switch back to the default layout and include my custom third layer using something like keyd. But that might mean I will not get used to using the third layer. May the future decide.

keyd

Return to home