40% keyboard

[nihilistpc]

Have you tried implementing this layout on 40% keyboard? I find this project to be quiet interesting

[PromyLOPh]

I have not looked into 40% keyboards yet (we’re probably talking about models like the Planck EZ?), because they’re quite unusual, even in the western world. And I don’t have one either. Looking at their layout I have the following thoughs:

• The four layers lulua uses could probably be supported via Raise, Lower, Raise+Lower.
• We don’t need the number row, because we have them duplicated on the fourth layer, but there’s no room on layer two to move the symbols somewhere. We could drop some and just pray the user knows how to switch to a western layout or move them to layer four.
• Assuming we want to keep special keys (Tab, Escape, Return, …) on their printed keys, there’s only room for 32 keys, but lulua needs 33. The top row requires 12 keys, but the 40% layout only provides 10. The left shift could be used for one of them, but then we’re still short one key. Any ideas?

Hm, I think it would make sense to create a model for this physical keyboard layout with proper base weights, do a few optimization runs and see if the layout will be completely different or similar to what lulua is currently.

[nihilistpc]

Yeah, the example you provided is what I meant by 40% keyboard. They are getting popular recently (especially on custom keyboards communities), and many claim that they are more efficient.

[AzizMogb]

Hi all, I've recently implemented the base layer on my Voyager from ZSA (I think you can consider it 40%?), with some slight modifications:

• ا -> ل
• ل -> و
• و -> ا

I did these changes because I wanted to write ال from write to left, and with my index fingers.

• Moved ظ, ص, and ء because the keyboard doesn't have enough keys.
• Added back ئ and ؤ, because I'm remapping the stranded layout, not using this as its own layout (so I can flash it on my Voyager).
• Lastly, I've mapped the Harakat above ق to ح with a tap and hold events for each, to cover the 8 Harakat.

Here is how it looks:

See it here. And here is my layout on Oryx, not everything makes sense here, I'm experimenting.

Hope this helps.

[PromyLOPh]

Since the Voyager is so different from standard IBM keyboards, I think it might be worth looking at the keyboard parameters in lulua/carpalx.py (yeah, unfortunately not part of lulua/data/keyboards/ibmpc105.yaml), tuning them and then running the optimizer again to get a better layout. lulua was unfortunately not built with such small keyboards in mind.