[peace4all]

I like it being low-profile. That's why I didn't buy ErgoDox.

So all the best wishes to the author.

But there are some tradeoffs why I probably not buy it.

1) I'd suggest a column of home/page up/page down/end (top to bottom in this order) on the right side, like some laptop makers do. They're very convenient. That's absolutely necessary for text editing or navigating in various windows. (Sure one can use combos, but then you must stick to the keyboard all the time.) Del/backspace probably also should be different keys.

2) Missing menu key also requires you to take mouse sometimes. Laptops can get away with touchpad. But with the minimal keyboard, that requires user to hold it more and use combos, you must leave the keyboard and take a mouse to open a context menu.

A general philosophical question (not a negative comment to this particular keyboard): do we really still need key rows to be shifted 1/4 of width, because keys needed arms underneath in the late 19th century?

[tsuujin]

I use a custom built corne keyboard which staggers the columns based on finger length, but not the rows. I don’t think I will ever go back to a standard layout keyboard after having used this for a few months.

https://imgur.com/a/kEEIRhf to help visualize.

[cantSpellSober]

Cool, how'd you get started? Something like this still accurate? https://www.reddit.com/r/crkbd/comments/esv3i8/guide_corne_d...

[ProZsolt]

Yes, I built my Corne using that.

If you won't like to source all the components yourself there are vendors who happy to sell you kits, but you can make 3-5 keyboards for that amount of money.

I suggest to use the Miryoku[1] layout.

[1]: https://github.com/manna-harbour/miryoku

[foepys]

I configured all my programmable keyboards to map Capslock to Fn and use Fn+WASD for cursors keys and Fn+Q for Home and Fn+E for End, so I think that dedicated keys are unnecessary.

I cannot imagine using anything else anymore because it is so insanely convenient to press and hold down Capslock with my pinky finger and browse around text extremely fast.

All my keyboards also map Fn+1 to copy and Fn+2 to insert text which saves additional effort to lift my finger from Fn/Capslock.

[peace4all]

But how do you press "shift+home" or "shift+pg up" to select a line or page? I tried this on Asus laptop 10 years ago, and IIRC it didn't work.

Another combo I use sometimes is "ctrl+shift+home/end" to select the text from cursor position to the very beginning/end.

[foepys]

Combinations with 3 or more keys get a bit tricky but you get used to it quickly since the modifier keys are near each other and you usually have 3 fingers available for them.

The keyboard needs to be programmable either by it's built-in firmware or by flashing a custom firmware like ZMK in the OP.

Autohotkey can do something like this for every keyboard on Windows but it's not as seamless as a firmware solution. Plus the firmware solution works on every computer you plug your keyboard into be ause it's just a remapping of the keys, not a driver hack.

[enragedcacti]

That sort of thing works much better with fully programmable keyboards/QMK. I always rebind my caps lock at the keyboard layer and all of the normal combos you would expect work perfectly.