Layouts: Programmer's Keyboard version 2


Programmers Keyboard version 2

Note: the characters are not supposed to be italic. I see there are also some showing up broken. It must be due to some font issue on my system, when I get it fixed I'll replace the image.

Following on from Version 1, I printed it out life-size, got some repositionable spray glue, and mounted the keycaps on the printout, to see how it would feel.

It was immediately clear that the space and enter keys under the thumb were not comfortable at all, so I moved them to a more comfortable location. Then the Alt keys had to move too.

It seemed like a good idea to put the backspace under the thumb as well, since I use it so much. One for each hand.

Then I got to thinking that it would make sense to put the most common letters under the thumb as well, so I added keys for those.

I had once again become interested in the dozenal (base 12) numbering system, so the extra characters for that got added to the numpad and numrow.

Then I thought about how programmers do not only write programs, but have to write comments and documentation as well. So it would be nice if things they needed were on the keyboard, instead of them having to look up Unicode numbers. That led to me adding almost every currency symbol on earth... there are a few Arabic ones missing. They're arranged in most-used order from top left, skipping slots already taken, eg by dollar, euro or yen.

Along the way I also added in a lot of Greek symbols for use in Math equations, and more unusual punctuation. The problem with this is that most fonts do not support these characters. The idea is to use grey AltGr to access ones on bottom right of key, and purple Meta key to access ones at top right on key.

Replaced the Escape and OS keys with Unicode official symbols. Replaced "Magic" key with Unicode "Meta" symbol.

Added dedicated keys for And/and and The/the since they are so common in English. Also Begin and End for people programming in Ada or Pascal, and some other common trigrams in English.

However this layout is also unlikely to be built because of issues identified in my studies of optimal keyboard layouts.

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