I’ve been using Model01 plugged to a Win10 computer for two weeks. I explained in other thread some thoughts about Spanish default mappings. Here are some thoughts not specific to the layout itself:
This keyboard was designed for someone with different hand size than me. Pressing the fn stretches my hand in strange ways, reminding me every time about the issue.
Lower row, lower edge is a bit too extreme to my taste.
I feel this model01 was designed for writers first, American coders second.
Let me explain that last point. I’ve been editing lot of videos/audios lately and the keyboard feels quite unsuited to the task. Conventional workflow, select a piece of clip with the mouse, position it in the timeline, apply a keyboard combination to modify the clip.
If I want to ripple cut (Ctrl+Shift+X) I need to do a strech exercise with my left hand or take the hand back to the keyboard and do a dual hand move. Maybe I want to move to the next clip using Ctrl+Alt+Right Arrow. That becomes Ctrl+Alt+Function+L. Maybe I need to review another window. Alt+tab requires me to move my hand back from the mouse to the right half of the keyboard. Fortunately I don’t have to do Ctrl+Alt+Supr as often
I don’t know if there is any solution for this particular issue of having to type complex shortcuts while using a mouse on the other hand.
I do find that using the OneShot plugin really makes shortcuts like that vastly easier to hit, because you can press the modifier, release, the press the key to combine it with. I use Emacs all day & I’ve found it much, much better than it is on a normal keyboard.
The most common solution I saw for this very case, as used on other keyboards that share a lot of properties with the Model01, is the use of app-specific custom shortcut layers. So instead of contorting your fingers to press Ctrl+Alt+Fn+L for Ctrl+Alt+RightArrow, you’d press Fn+D (as an example). Basically, you’d either change the Fn layer to contain the shortcuts you need, or introduce another layer with them. In this case, you could change one of the Fn keys to go to this layer instead.
Combine with OneShot, and this becomes super convenient after a bit of practice. No more chording 3-4 keys, no more weird finger and hand positions to reach every key of a combo, but simple, two-key sequences!
If you do video editing all the time, I would use only the left half of the keyboard so the right hand is always on the mouse. An alternative way to achieve what algernon said is to map the bindings for the numpad layer. This layer has no mappings for the left side of the keyboard and it stays on until you disable it (you don’t have to press the fn key all the time). So you could have all the keys mapped to editing actions and use a cheat sheet to remember where to push. Once you are done editing, you just disable the numpad and you are back to straight typing.
Here is an interesting video. A professional video editor shows how he’s using two keyboards with some software to trigger video editing macros. You might find some insight there:
And this guy is using a left hand only keyboard along with a digital pen to work, much like my suggestion. Of course, programming will be easier when keyboardio releases a GUI, but you can achieve the same:
