As a Tunisian (north africa) I write mixed texts containing both arabic and latin scripts. I have an azerty/arabic keyboard, arabic letters are on the same keys as latin letters so I constantly need to switch layout when I'm typing. A ~200ish keys keyboard would be Ideal for me. And i suppose it's the same for all non-latin keyboards
> Even Latin, if you use enough languages with enough diacriticals. Or want to code in APL. Or use Greek letters when typing math.
I've always wanted something like the space cadet keyboard with a couple of extra modifier keys vs. what's typically available today for typing unusual characters (and the keycaps for making that easy).
That's pretty straightforward to DIY with the TMK firmware. Or even just with Autohotkey and your existing board; pick a key you don't use much (Caps Lock, right-Win, etc) and make it one of your meta keys.
Print your own keycap labels with Avery sheets for starters, and once you've got the layout nailed down, you can send off to have custom caps made by whatever process you like.
Only 3 extra modifiers, really (a PC keyboard having 4, discounting left and right variants) and fewer actual keys (a mere 100) than an old U.S. 101-key Model M keyboard, let alone a modern U.S. 104-key Windows keyboard.
Keyboard maps are on the host, not on the keyboard. Engravings on the keytops are meaningless and are not what determine how a key is understood. A (for example) U.K. 105-key keyboard and a French 105-key keyboard just look like two 105-key keyboards with all the same keys to the host.
Several common operating systems just combine all keyboard input from multiple plugged-in keyboards into one giant "union" keyboard and apply a single keyboard map to it.
I've been working on Linux/BSD software that allows individual different keyboard maps per keyboard, for my user-space virtual terminal system. It's achievable, but I've not encountered anyone else who has seriously attempted to make such a thing work, in the general case where arbitrary USB keyboards can be plugged in and out at runtime.
You're right, I haven't tried this. But my (unmentioned) approach was going to include using at least one fully programmable keyboard -- QMK or similar -- to send precisely the keycodes wanted.
It doesn't work that way. The USB HID usages (and PS/2 scancodes) are the same. There is one usage for the key at (say) D01, and the keyboard doesn't know or control whether it is "Q" or "A" or something else entirely. You cannot switch layouts on the keyboard, because the maps are on the host. Multiple keyboards with D01 engraved with different symbols will not actually vary anything, and all send the same thing across the wire.
Maybe not for 450 keys (!), but I would dearly love to be able to type all the diacritical marks and at least select Unicode ranges (Cyrillic and Greek).
It's been a really low-priority desire (I won't dignify it with "need") and so I haven't even really worked out a layout or even carefully defined what I'd like, but yeah, the Really Big Keyboard would fill at least a small need.
In A.I. War (book by Daniel Keys Moran), Trent uses a "custom 240-point Unicode board" to code in SuperLISP, which originally put the idea in my head. I asked Moran about this. He made it up whole cloth. No such keyboard exists. Of course, we still have ample time to invent one before the time of that story.
If you persuade your operating system to load up keyboard maps with the ISO 9995 common secondary group, you will get all of the combining diacritical marks at least. They're mostly on level 3 of group 2.
