Not observant myself, but best wishes to those of the faith. My first ever hand-wired keyboard was a Planck with an extra column.
Can’t do these. For me, it’s 100% or nothing. I need my numpad and spacing around the arrow keys.
I made a lot of my own boards, and the three I use the most are:
- One that’s basically a “Tenkeyless”, but I keep an external numpad nearby.
- One that has a numpad but everything’s kind of compressed and I use “Fn+number” to get the F keys. That one has a speck of UV resin on down-arrow so I can find it without looking.
- One that is still a bit compact in layout, but has 117 keys, including a big red industrial pushbutton and a volume knob.
As fond as I am of this little guy, I just don’t use it very often.
Would it be possible to have pictures of the boards you mentioned as well? You got me curious !
“TKL like”. This one actually has a couple of siblings because it was not much more expensive to order extra aluminum plates.
Were key-board ergonomics not invented until the 90’s or something? A perfect grid for the key’s is a nightmare to actually type on or use. This was figured out during the type-writer heyday.
Typewriters were staggered so that the mechanical arms wouldn’t collide. Your finger bends out and back linearly. Personally I prefer split keyboards or ones like the Atreus that have each half angled out, this avoids having to bend your wrists. But either way keyboards with linear columns are more ergonomic than staggered columns.