Comment by culebron21
4 days ago
1. What about a thumb cluster with 4 keys in a row? IDK if it's workable, maybe not. My experience with Ergodox says pressing top row on thumb cluster is too clumsy. (Maybe it's easier with dactyl-like keyboards?)
2. On Ergodox EZ, and non-English layout, I need more keys. Unfortunately, the right side corner of ISO keyboard has to be distributed among other places on Ergodox EZ. (I'd love to have home/pgup/pgdn/end column somewhere, like on laptops. Maybe the rightmost end of kbd is not the best place for it, IDK.)
3. Adding extra row/column causes lower row collide with the thumb cluster. I guess, it's reasonable, but I don't know what's the workaround. (remove the lower row completely?) https://imgur.com/a/vdfOLq1
Good idea about finger scanning.
I tried the scan the hand and simulate features. Will the editor make different halves of the keyboard?
Also, thumb bends differently than in the simulator. :)
to be clear about non-English layout in ErgoDox EZ. In ISO keyboard, there are 3 keys (two square brackets and foot/inch key), that don't fit in EZ's main keys block. I got 2 options for them:
1. Put them on the rightmost column, but it's unclear where the `]` has to go -- lower, or upper.
2. Use the rightmost wide column of keys for some special keys (like home/pgup/pgdn/end), but have to redistribute these 3 keys elsewhere.
Not sure the specific problems with a non-english layout, but if it helps with some ideas this is the layout I use for my keyboard (so far)[1].
[ and ] go on the inner columns on either side and '/" goes where it normally would be on an ansi qwerty layout.
The page up/down and home/end keys live on a temporary (hold) layer under the arrow keys, which is a habit I picked up from many years of using mac laptops where fn + arrow keys is how you get those keys anyway.
Layers 0 and 3 are the really important ones, 1 and 2 are just the defaults from Ergodox. And while they are assigned, I currently haven't been using the capslock, the lower-left ', the lower-right [ ] and cmd+enter keys or the Meh key so those would be freed up for use if needed. I also turned on the "auto-shift" functionality, so if you liked that it would also free up the left and right shifts for other use.
The letter layout is "middlemak"[2] which I found to be more comfortable than qwerty or colemak on the ortholinear layout, and a bit easier to learn than colemak because it shares a lot of keys with qwerty. But that may not be relevant for you if you're using a non-english key set.
[1]: https://configure.zsa.io/ergodox-ez-st/layouts/pNO0G/latest/... [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Middlemak/
Interesting layout. I see I forgot the `=` also does not fit in ED-EZ.
My problem with it is 1) lack of F11 & F12. 2) important keys in upper row of the thumb block. How do you press those keys without stopping everything and looking at the kbd?
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