Perhaps the audience for the Model 01 is different than the Ergodox but as far as I can remember there have only been four key cap sets to provide an Ergodox set with legends on the modifier keys (out of about 40).
Perhaps their selection can give us some idea of the most prevalent layouts.
The nice thing about the Model 01 is that it’s likely to have more users that are new to split ergonomic keyboards and have not formed their own opinions and habits and as such might benefit for a unified standardized layout.
You can use http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/ to create a layout. I do not have a Colemak layout handy, but you can start with a blank one. I am also working on a tool that will be able to generate nice images like the one above, from a number of sources (including, but not limited to KLE).
It is certainly possible to do so, as the firmware is open source, and remapping keys isn’t too hard. Whether that is a good idea to do by default is another question
I’d personally go with the number and letter keys labelled, and the rest blank. I just know that I’ll be messing with the layout a ton to get something I like.
Here’s a crazy thought: give us some extra keycaps with modifier/meta labels that we can swap around ourselves into the positions we settle on! And leave the 1.5 height keys blank
The only change from the image that I’d suggest is a backspace instead of duplicate ctrl key (probably swapping on the left one).
As for the printed labels I do like the simple way they are shown on the Qwerty board on https://shop.keyboard.io/… (mind you I may choose blank keys; maybe one day mixing labels and blanks). I love the bottom left corner for the letters. Some of the other labels may look better centered, but it’s all a matter of taste. We’re debating the difference between A+ and A++ probably. Dang, just look at this:
Colemak has a spec for diacritics. So potentially we may want to add labels for that to an unused corner of the key (bottom-right or top-left if we don’t inscribe the numpad legends). Some would just be diacritics, some would be non-diacritic symbols, and others would be accented letters.
Colemak has a semi-official Vim layout, which advocates using IJKL (on QWERTY) instead of HJKL. If someone uses that, I think they would also want for their fn arrow keys to follow the same layout. So if there are enough people using this layout, we may want to consider removing the arrow and brace glyphs, since there’s a good chance they won’t be accurate.
On the first point, I am inclined to say “leave them off”, as we already have three legends on the keys, and AFAIK no way to color-code them. It might get confusing, and I’ve never seen a manufactured Colemak keyboard bother to include them. However, I am a mostly monolingual ugly American who rarely needs symbols more complicated than an acute accent or a tilde. If there’s a significant number of non-English users that are using these bindings, they may be worth including.
For the second point, I have no idea how many people actually use Shai’s vim layout or how many Colemak users use the vim defaults. But since the layout is no longer maintained, my guess is not many use Shai’s. I favor leaving those legends on unless we can establish that people are using it.
Outside of that, my position remains “do what QWERTY does but move the letters around”. Colemak markets itself somewhat on not being all that different from QWERTY, so I don’t think it’s a shortcoming for the Colemak layout to make relatively few changes.
One thing to note that many users tend to forget, left and right ctrl, alt and win/menu keys are not the same keys, they have different scan codes and mean different things to the OS, this is especially true for international layouts but also affects a lot of other things.
I think you are right in that more people will want the quote on the right rather than above the O, I’ve adjusted the layout but personally I prefer it the other way around
I added the brackets and put a LED/REC key on there.
Fixed the typo though again I don’t have a key for |\ and /? myself but I use |? and /\ instead.
Interesting placement of the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys. I can see why you did that.
But the lack of Shift keys on the thumb arcs is alarming to me. I’d dread an “ergonomic” keyboard that makes me reach to the very corners to hit those important modifiers.
I simply placed them there because I was aiming for as generic as possible, they could be swapped with ctrl or Win/Menu but given my experience with the Thumb cluster on the Ergodox I find that other than the two primary positions for thumb keys it becomes very tedious to reach the other keys to the point where I’d rather use my pinky.
Perhaps the Model 01 has a more ergonomic thumb cluster so there isn’t the need to oddly roll and tilt one’s hand to reach the other thumb keys but I have not tested it and hence can’t say for sure.
I believe the SVG I gave Arley is sized accurately. (The front-to-back key spacing is likely the easiest to measure. That’s 18mm stem to stem. Left-to-right is easiest to measure on the inner columns. That’s 19mm).
If you’d be game for printing a copy of the layout to feel how the stretch on the thumb cluster is, that might give us more information.
I made the size of the document based on making a desktop wallpaper lol, I can make a tile-printy PDF for testing. I’m just a bit fuzzy on what parts these given dimensions are relating to. Let me know, I wanna nail it!
Hi y’all!
Here’s my contribution to the printable keys layout (thanks to antevens for the starting point). I left the numpad labels because they seem to have a good home, but I will leave arrows (WASD locations- ring finger up!) PGUP/PGDN for another layout. I did keep the ANY key and GUI/butterfly as they seem important to the original concept- i suppose you could map ANY to NUM if you use the numpad a lot. I understand that PROG is important? for flashing/LED’s- so I left it.
I moved the ; key and \ key to keep the brackets together- as a programmer these symbols are important to have on the base-layer. I also kept L & R Ctrl and Alt keys as I agree it’s important to have both to make all diacritics, but I feel they make sense for thumbs as mod-keys.
As an aside, I really want to put the return & backspace to the pinky’s, they would be much easier to reach- but I’m not sure what to put in their place as those center keys are so prominent.
I guess I like this layout, except for a few things.
In my experience, people only use one thumb for the Space key. Why not reuse the left side’s Space for, say, backspace?
I am a programmer and will definitely be hacking my keyboardio to serve that purpose, but I think that Jesse wants the default keys/labels to be optimized for a regular Colemak typist. That means that we shouldn’t change the Colemak layout for the sake of programmers. Specifically, keep the semicolon key above the O key. Brackets will have to go elsewhere. Besides, programmers will probably be hacking their keyboard anyway.
I’d rearrange the thumb arc keys. At a minimum, I’d make it identical to the QWERTY layout’s arc. There’s nothing Colemak-related about the rearrangement of those keys. If I had my way, I’d move the Shift key to the third from the outside on all layouts; I reason that the second from the outside is the default key (judging by the tactile bumps on those keys in the Keyboardio photo above), and the Shift key is used more often than ALT or Control. But that’s not how Jesse has his propotypes, so I doubt he’d make that change. What do you think, @jesse?
Same for the inner columns of keys. Why rearrange them from the standard QWERTY layout without a Colemak-related reason?
For #3 and #4, I don’t oppose the changes to the inner columns and thumb arcs, per se, I just think it’s good to keep things cohesive and unified across all layouts unless there’s a good reason to deviate.
