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Comment by somat | Hacker News Reader

With regards to the idea of function keys, sometimes I wish there were keys reserved such that only the end user was "allowed" to bind them. I often am looking for keys to bind and they are always all taken.

One thing I like about gaming mice is there is no real expectations for what buttons 4+ do, so I can bind away.

The actual method on how you would keep software company out of what they would perceive as "free real estate" on the keyboard I leave to others, I have no clue, the mentioned cua?

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But you just override the bindings? Why does it matter that they're taken, not all of them are taken by useful commands so often you don't even lose anything and don't have to move things around

I find f13-f24 keys are useful for exactly that.

You need a keyboard you can reprogram however unless you find a physical keyboard with those.

I use a dygma defy that has those keys programmed in.

If I ever make the hop to building a fully custom keyboard I'm going all out with f13-f24, add some repeats of a-f around the number pad to allow fast hex input + ":" for IPv6 input (and put an equals key somewhere in there!), put the numberpad on the left so it's a bit more balanced, move num/caps/scroll lock all up by each other in the corner as small buttons instead of in the body of the keyboard as various sized ones, turn the normal caps lock into a firmware level layer key, and add a key for shortcutting unicode inputs to the right of the 2 function rows.

This was the initial layout I came up with, there are a few things I'd probably change on the hardware layout side but as far as actual keys I usually go with blank caps so that can be changed without much pain so long as it isn't a special shaped key: https://i.imgur.com/zVJWbC9.png

What would be on the other layers? you seem to have every key you want to press already present.

One thing I would suggest is that if you can split the space bar, it’s soo much real estate for one key, even if you split into 4 keys with 2 keys being space.

I have a split space with shift mapped into one of the keys so I hold shift with my thumb much easier then pinky and makes touch typing flow better.

I just decided that the function keys and right Alt plus a key would be mine to bind to whatever I wanted. I am using a program called Clavier+ on Windows, and some transparent keycaps for labels for function keys. I press F1 for an AI, and Right Alt + E for text editor for example.

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