this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

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Keep it ergo

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

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I'm really struggling with how to lay out my additional layers.

Where should I put brackets of all kinds, parentheses, underscore, dash, hash, back tick? Should I have a numpad? I just can't decide and wonder if there's already a moderately consensus best practice?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

once you get into ergo (or split ergo), this becomes a LOT more personal – you put symbols where you will find them or where you expect them to be – adjust for whatever layout (QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak-DH, etc.) you are using and then pile on macros and optimizations to cover whatever programming languages you are working in …

[–] falcomomo 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks this is solid advice - at least I know I'm not reinventing the wheel.

Those links were great and I've read them all. I hadn't thought about, or heard the term, bigrams before.

After reading these I think I've decided to keep my symbol layer separate from my numpad layer too.

[–] RustedSwitch 3 points 1 year ago

Miryoku is the layout I see referenced most often. Lots of people just do their own, as the other commenter noted.

[–] muppetjones 2 points 1 year ago

As others have mentioned, it's very much personal preference. I program with 34 keys every day with three primary layers: colemak dh, numpad, and nav. After having used Miryoku for almost two years, I've been using Callum-style mods for the past several months, and I really, really like it.

I'd recommend taking a look at keymaps in the QMK repo -- especially for layouts similar to the board you're using. You could also search github for zmk-config repos. It's a different firmware, but layout is layout.