Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards
Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)
i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²
¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid
No excessive posting/"shilling" for commercial purposes. Vendors are permitted to promote their products/services but keep it to a minimum and use the [vendor] flair. Posts that appear to be marketing without being transparent about it will be removed.
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A while ago, I bought a pre-built Totem and just enough switches. I could never get used to the large stagger and the splay.
When I saw a relatively cheap wireless Corne on Aliexpress, I thought I'd have another try at a low profile keyboard. I didn't think of checking how many switches I had. Well, I'm two short! Damn.
Otherwise, the keeb uses ZMK and it took me a minute to flash it with my config.
I just wrote an opinionated blog entry about my experience with Miryoku. To each their own, and if you're happy with it that's fantastic. My experience was not that great.
I took it as a basis and adapted it to my needs. It's for my travel keyboard that has to be as portable as possible. For normal work I use another keyboard that has extra keys for the modifiers.
I try to keep my bindings the same because of I have to stop and think about which keys to press it really throws the chain off the gear. Especially if 100% of the non-autonomous wetware processing power is dedicated to the task at hand. I can't just swap out where the modifiers are; a good setup, for me, is muscle memory, and I'm not built with modal capabilities. Switching layouts makes me feel like Scott Sterling going through hurdles.
It's bad enough having to occasionally use QWERTY keyboards, as when fixing something on my wife's laptop. It's often faster to find the layout settings and switch it to Dvorak, than hunt-and-peck QWERTY.
This is why kanata is such a godsend: same layout, everywhere, regardless of how many keys the keyboard has. I just keep it in sync with my QMK configuration. This means on full size keyboards, many keys go unused: it's harder for me to switch to using them than pretend I'm on a smaller keyboard.
I envy your ability to switch modes. It must be so nice. For me, 42 keys is almost perfect, and if I fine that timerless homerow mods works for me, that would be a real game changer.
Miryoku is worth looking at for layout ideas. But using it as-is of a non starter for me.
I'm still slowly making changes to my layout. It has some features that you say you don't like in your blog (numpad on the left) but it works for me.
I mean, lefties exist. It's fine if they want to have left-dominant. And if fast 10-key numeric entry isn't important and you're a rightie, then that's fine too. It's just, in both cases, the exception rather than the rule.
I really liked the layer switching on the thumbs; the problem, as I mentioned, is that if you're not ambi and you have a low key count board, a lot of common stuff is going to be in layers, and preferably under your dominant hand, and that really only comfortably lets you use three layers (under your non-dominant thumbs), and it's just not enough.
But TLDR on my blog, the real killer of Miryoku for me was having the modifier keys (M/A/C/S) under alphabet keys. There's simply no way to time that s.t. it's not either causing false mods or slowing your typing down. I really can only see Shift being under a letter key not doing either if you're not a fast typist. Nobody types perfectly consistently. Maybe MAC alone works, with a long enough activation delay; those aren't used in speed typing. But shift has to be its own key, or shared with something uncommon, like brace/bracket or some other uncommon punctuation.
If you're having trouble with homerow mods, I recommend trying Urob's timeless homerow mods. I had issues with the default implementation of ZMKs homerow mods until I started using urob's config
Holy crap. I looked at that and it's brilliant. Now I just have to try it.
Normally, I flash with qmk-vial and then load my Vial config. I've had the kb for a year and a half, and I still tweak the layout, and Vial is peerless for that.
I'll figure it out.
Thanks! I'll check out out.