Just got my PVT Model 01 and it’s great! Of course one of the first things I’m thinking about is what customizations (if any) to make to the default key layout, so that my fingers can learn those changes right away as they learn the Model 01. I’ve been thinking for a while, looking at the Model 01 key layouts, that the default assignments for the thumb keys are a little strange, or at least don’t seem like the intuitive choices for me. In particular I find the choice of Backspace for the default position of the left thumb (R1C7) to be curious. I noticed that all the official layouts have this, and all the layouts in this thread seem to have left Backspace alone. Has anyone considered a different Backspace placement – or a different function for the prime location R1C7? My thought is to use R1C7 as my Shift key – I use Shift a lot more than Backspace, even on a bad day :wink:. I’d move Backspace to R0C7, and rotate the Ctrl key currently at R0C7 to the old position of left shift, R3C7. I’m also planning to try Delete at R0C8, opposite my Backspace position – I find a Delete key useful, and the symmetry of having it in the mirror position from Backspace appeals to me (the left hand has delete-leftward, and the right hand has delete-rightward). At the moment I think I could do without a right Ctrl, and just have the one at R3C7. Another thing I might try is to put Enter and Tab on thumb keys – probably Enter on R2C8 and Tab on R2C7, mirrored from each other. I’m coming from a relatively standard QWERTY (Microsoft Natural), and even there I had the (probably bad) habit of only ever using left shift, not right; now having a Model 01 in person, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to reach any of the left-hand keys while holding R1C7 with my left thumb. So I’m fine with not having a right shift, and I could give that position (R3C8) to Alt. Not sure where I would put Cmd. How about you? Anyone else considered moving backspace from its default position (or moving left shift from its default position)? Curious for anyone’s thoughts.

I’m finding that ctrl-alt combos kind of suck. Especially linux’s default ctrl-alt-f1 to switch to virtual terminal 1. These currently require me to palm the fn key & hit ctrl with right thumb whilst chording alt & 1 with the left (I’m sticking with totally symmetrical modifier keys). Any suggestions to make ctrl-alt less terrible? If ctrl were next to alt you could chord it with one thumb but found this kind of layout sucked for pretty much everything else! Let me guess @james.nvc oneshot is the answer - still not quite ready to take the plunge…

[image] rick: Any suggestions to make ctrl-alt less terrible? I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve seriously considered remapping one of the ctrl keys to BE ctrl+alt. If I remember the syntax correctly, you would put CTRL(Key_LeftAlt) in your keymap for that key.

There’s also OneShot modifiers, so you don’t have to chord those modifiers.

[image] merlin: There’s also OneShot modifiers, so you don’t have to chord those modifiers. That’s what I’m trying first.

Moving the right hand down to paw at ctrl, alt & space all at once with thumb, index, middle fingers seems actually very comfortable… Gonna roll with that for now!

Planning on using one of the thumb keys as a macro to make a full stop (period for the americans), space and capitalise the next letter. So instead of typing “full stop, spacebar, hold down shift and press first letter of next sentence” I can type “macro, first letter of next sentence”. Was planning to do something like this in autohotkey anyway before I discovered keyboardio, using the regular full stop key (and using a modifier to allow a usual full stop for when I need to use that), but I think it would work even better as a thumb key.

Interesting idea. @algernon, is this doable without a custom mini-plugin? Without looking at the code, I’m not sure how to do the “one-shot” shift correctly. This actually seems like a case for run-time registering and de-registering of hook functions in some capacity. (With my re-design, I could get the shift held trivially, but the release when another key is pressed is harder.)

Should be doable with a macro that triggers OneShot at the end, yes.

You could even just have the macro simulate the press of OSM(Key_Shift).

Thumb key choices

Model 01 Layouts

merlin (Michael Richters) January 17, 2018, 3:47pm 32

I’ll have to take another look at the OneShot code, and see how it works.

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Thumb key choices

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