[chrismorgan]

If you have keyboards with physically different layouts—e.g. one ergonomic, one typical laptop, one swipey touchscreen—and use them all at least occasionally, you’ll be able to develop independent muscle memories for each.

Go ahead and learn a different layout on a fancy keyboard, while keeping a stock standard layout (not even remapping Caps Lock to anything!) on a laptop keyboard, and I understand you’ll have little-to-no trouble with it.

(I’m only early on in this process myself, but have been told this by others and it makes sense to me. As one small example I have experienced, I automatically switch to using Cmd for shortcuts instead of Ctrl with no thought, as soon as I’m faced with an Apple keyboard—regardless of the OS, which has tripped me up a couple of times!)

[mauvehaus]

I can confirm that having physically different keyboards makes it much easier to switch back and forth. Many years ago, I worked for a company that had a mess of old Sun hardware in the lab with the old Sun-layout[0] keyboards. After about a week of using them, I was pretty comfortable using them, and had no trouble switching back and forth the the customary layout keyboard at my desk.

One day, I discovered the one Sun machine that had a Sun-manufactured keyboard in the customary layout. I was incapable of functioning because I expected it to be in the Sun layout. I had to switch it for a Sun-layout keyboard so I could get some work done.

As an aside, I decided I prefer the Sun layout, and so I've remapped the 6 or so keys via software on basically every computer I've used since. The only issue is the `~ key, which ends up on [ESC], since I haven't yet found a keyboard that has the [backspace] key split in two.

In practice, this isn't much of an annoyance to me. My wife, however goes nuts any time she needs to use the computer for "just a second" and doesn't log me out. I've since gotten better at switching, and if I have to type something when she's logged in, I usually flip the switch pretty quickly.

[0] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Sun_Type_5#Layout

[JdeBP]

For a keyboard with separate single-width E13 and E14 (like the old 84-key PC/AT keyboard and the Sun Type 5) instead of a single double-width key spanning both, you want the JIS 109-key Windows keyboard or the Korean 106-key Windows keyboard.

* http://www2d.biglobe.ne.jp/~msyk/keyboard/layout/usbkeycode....

* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Korean_106-key_keybo...

* http://www.ps-aoki.com/~ace/ebay/pc/keyboard/5W_1.jpg

The 104-key Windows keyboard moves the old PC/AT E13 key to D13, and the 105/107-key Windows keyboards move it further to C12. The 106-key Windows keyboard has it back at E13. The JIS keyboard actually has that key at C12, though. Its E13 key is another key with a different PS/2 scancode and USB HID usage. This is important to know when remapping the keys.

(I have the JIS E13 mapped to the FEP/IM toggle, a.k.a. Zenkaku/Henkaku/Kanji, in my U.K. International and U.S. International maps, with the E00 "Grave" key retaining its usual mappings.)

[acheron]

Sun keyboards are nice for pair programming, since when your partner does something good you can press the 'props' key.