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Comment by csdvrx | Hacker News Reader

> (am not even Japanese, just have bad habit of using thumb clusters a lot, and this is the only layout with small space bar)

Same, the 106/109 keys JP layout is wonderful!

I use the Ro key as a quick desktop toggle (right next to PageUp on my Thinkpad keyboard) and the Yen key as a full-word erase (like Ctrl-W on bash)

The extra left and right thumbs are also extrely helpful to have Home and End in an easy-to reach position.

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these are interesting hacks, glad you let people know about this possibility.

It is a very nice keyboard layout. I'm very happy I discovered it (even if it was by mistake!)

Another example I can think about: remap the Ro key to toggle between international layout while it's pressed, so you can switch between layouts with a key right next to the shift key.

For example, on a US/RU settting, press Ro while pressing the 6 keys to the right of Tab in a sequence and you would get ЙЦУКЕН, don't press Ro and do the same: you would get QWERTY. Mixing and matching in both upper and lowercase would be very easy.

Could you make the key under the C act as a Cmd/Ctrl key like a Mac?

There are probably many ways of doing it at software level, I would suggest either of these two cross-platform tools:

[1] https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad

[2] https://github.com/jtroo/kanata

With the extra keys, you can have 4 modifiers on each side of the space bar: Control, Win (Super), Alt and Cmd - total 8 modifiers, ideal for your thumbs!

This still leaves you with the Yen and the Ro key to map for other things!

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