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Comment by evook | Hacker News Reader

Well the problem arises if you use more than a few shortcuts.

If you start having keybinds like ALT + CMD + (F1..F6) you _really_ dont want to have to press an additional FN Keys. I found 4 key shortcuts not viable in the long run if you have to press them multiple times a minute.

With that said:

> So for me personally it's a number of advantages without a single drawback

The objective drawback is the expandability of your shortcuts because you are artificially limited in your options of key combinations. For me that would be a no go. Though I am close to 500 shortcuts in my 3 main applications alone, excluding i3 or KDE globals. I only use a mouse to browse the web.

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If you have to regularly enter 4 key shortcuts you can just define a few macros in the firmware and be done with it. I haven't been in a situation where I absolutely couldn't input some combination. Some shortcuts are awkward, sure, but I rarely need those.

If I had to regularly use 4 key shortcuts I'd go insane no matter what keyboard.

Edit: Then again I don't (yet) have 500 shortcuts, but if software doesn't support rebinding those that's not a problem with the keyboard imho.

Those keybinds are mainly custom macros and scripts.

Some project specific some more general. The project specific keybinds range from do test deployment and run tests to grab the latest test results format a text variant as well as pdf, archive and send them out to everyone who needs them. The general ones range from tell my AC/heating that I'm heading home from office to open my local weather forcast on Screen #2.

IMO there's no good reason to omit possibilities for aesthetics. Though as often as I thought about it I am not going to use a stream deck since I know I couldn't live without one after a few weeks and don't want to be bothered to carry it with me while traveling.

> IMO there's no good reason to omit possibilities for aesthetics.

My point is that it's not for aesthetics but comfort. For aesthetics I wouldn't use vertical stagger or a split layout.

With a 40% keyboard you can enter everything without moving hands or wrists at all and more important keys are moved right below the thumbs so I can use Ctrl and Shift without twisting my hand.

All said and done I still think that the standard keyboard layout is actually not a bad choice either, and is sometimes underrated. I just think that some more experimental boards manage to be just as productive while removing some ergonomical weaknesses.

That is not an argument for more non-modifier keys; it is an argument for more modifiers. Why? Each added non-modifier key adds X more modifier+non-modifier keybindings (e.g. C-n) and X-1 more modifier+modifier+non-modifier keybindings (e.g. M-C-n), where X is the number of modifiers. In practical terms, a keyboard with control, alt, shift and super only gets four two-key and three three-key bindings with each additional key. That is not great.

Adding a modifier, OTOH, add Y modifier+non-modifier and Y modifier+modifier+non-modifier bindings, where Y is the number of non-modifiers. So adding a hyper key means adding , say 104 additional keys (on a keyboard with 52 non-modifier keys). Adding a compose key means adding … another 104 additional keys.

My current keyboard has control, alt, super, hyper, compose and shift. A lot of folks add raise & lower, for even more modifiers.

> My current keyboard has control, alt, super, hyper …

Assuming USB HID, how are you distinguishing extra modifiers?

For many, additional modifier keys means keyboard firmware changes with macro programming. My keyboard does not have media keys, but I have programmed the keyboard that Fn+Q sends the Volume Up key, Fn+A sends Volume down, Fn+W sends Play, etc. There is no Fn key in the HID specification (at least not that I'm aware of), the Fn key exists only on the keyboard's firmware.

Many keyboards these days are getting quite fancy. There's even an open source keyboard firmware standard. https://qmk.fm/

I use X11 and a custom keyboard firmware: both of my hyper keys generate USB left super and both of my super keys generate USB right super (or vice versa), and X11 turns left super into hyper and right super into super.

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