Post a picture of your ideal keyboard layout!

[Valff]

This is my ideal keyboard layout.
For me, 60% keyboards lacks dedicated function keys, which I need in some video games.
75% keybords have some dedicated keys I don't really need. I don't use arrow keys a lot, for example.
My main keyboard was a HHKB, and I like the function layout, so I'd like to have almost the same one on my ideal keyboard.
I also added a left fn key, which lacks in the original HHKB.

[Chyros]

Because vim style cursor keys in a layer are so much more comfortable.
j-k-l-; == left-down-up-right

Try playing something like Doom with it :p .

Well most games alow to redefine controls. And for those which do not allow it ... I assume your keyboard supports more configurations which alow to change the layout quickly ... mine does

Anyway, one typically does not want to use inverted T arrow cluster to control a game. There is too small amount of additional keys near it. So if you need access to more keys like e.g. for weapon change, interact, etc. then you cannot place them near to the navigation keys ... which sucks. I guess that is the reason gamers typically use WASD or ESDF.

But you are right. To control a game I use IJKL and not jkl;.

Yes, this is true. Personally, I actually play a lot of old games, such as DOS games, and their controls are usually all over the place xD . They're usually not customisable either. I know that that's a rather niche problem though xD. But with minimalist layouts such games are often very awkward to play.

I do actually play a more modern version of Doom where you can mouselook as WASD though xD .

[HzFaq]

I do actually play a more modern version of Doom where you can mouselook as WASD though xD .

Z-Doom? I just started playing that a few days ago, bringing back many pant-shitting memories .

[Chyros]

I do actually play a more modern version of Doom where you can mouselook as WASD though xD .

Z-Doom? I just started playing that a few days ago, bringing back many pant-shitting memories .

Way better, Brutal Doom . With the added metal cover soundtrack pack!

[Corummo]

Like I would ever say that!.

It was a curiosity. I have no intention to provoke a sort of holy war.

[gogusrl]

My ideal layout should incorporate a scroll wheel somewhere on the keyboard. I had ages ago a Microsoft Office Keyboard with a big ass scroll wheel on the left side and it was amazing. I can see this working either in a split spacebar layout or just like that Microsoft on the left hand side.

[amwzhenyu]

at present,in my opinion,this is my perfect keyboard layout

DSC_0412_副本_副本.jpg (983.56 KiB) Viewed 8259 times

[seebart]

After everything I have tried this is still very near perfect for me:

IMGP6716.JPG (930.06 KiB) Viewed 8302 times

[Muirium]

Good. Now your keyboard search is over, you can focus on tooling up for the other side of the hobby: photography gear!

That lighting…

[amospalla]

keyboard-layout.png (31.43 KiB) Viewed 8284 times

This is my ideal layout. Basically a pure ISO layout with the three extra modifiers from a JIS layout which I use extensively. The bottom row exact position of keys may not be exactly the perfect one as I would have to test it to adjust the modifiers a bit.

Function key triggers amongst others, cursors/pgup/pgdown vim like, home/end readline like. I don't care too much about Capslock as I almost never use it. The left "Mod" key is the one I use to manage some functions of the window manager.

The HHKB JIS mimics this quite well (with the help of an USB controller to use a custom layout), except for the bottom row which does the job except for having an extra key on the left side that I have duplicated with one of its neighbours.

I never, ever use the right windows key, and only to some extend I use the Menu key so I could discard them by leaving an ugly empty space on the keyboard.

[Redmaus]

at present,in my opinion,this is my perfect keyboard layout

That looks perfect. Too bad that shift is non standard size.

[davkol]

at present,in my opinion,this is my perfect keyboard layout

That looks perfect. Too bad that shift is non standard size.

1.75u is pretty normal (G80-1800 or HHKB layout). There are more complaints about the 5.5u spacebar.

[amwzhenyu]

at present,in my opinion,this is my perfect keyboard layout

That looks perfect. Too bad that shift is non standard size.

DSC_5624.jpg (46.81 KiB) Viewed 8223 times

another layout i like is this

75 keys

[Redmaus]

I can hear the sticky keys notification already

[Dan]

What keyboard is that? It seems to have bluetooth.

[amwzhenyu]

What keyboard is that? It seems to have bluetooth.

my english is too poor too describe the keyboard exactly

this keyboard is made by a keyboard manufacturers from china , we often called it PLUM


main features：
1.RGB backlight
2.bluetooth 3.0
3.Electronic capacitance switch,35g pressure

[Dan]

It's not the most compact out there, but it's pleasing to my eyes and uses standard keys.

[Dan]

And here are two more adventurous layouts, more compact, because i can't make up my mind which one would suit me best. Take in consideration this is my first time designing such a thing, so any feedback is welcomed. As you can see, the second layout is just the split version of the first, but with a small change to the right spacebar's position, left Win key size and fn layer. In both cases the spacebars are 2 units, i'm thinking using 0 numpad keys for them. What do you think?

ps: the left space bar is there because i need it when using wasd for gaming. I type using the right space bar.

[recon8659]

I don't really like straight, staggered, single-piece keyboards, but if I had to use one, I'd build something like this:

It's inspired by DreymaR's Angle/Wide ergo modification and Sun/Unix layout. All keycaps are common sizes/profiles.

This layout looks really nice.

[davkol]

I've been actually using something similar lately.

The angle mod (=ISO left Shift + ZXCVB shifted one column to the left) is a no-go for me in the end, because the difference in row offset is too much between the bottom and top rows, esp. considering that it's in the opposite direction.

The wide mod (=right-hand-side symbols shifted one column to the right), on the other hand, feels good… not as good as a split keyboard, but much better than stock; Enter, unix-like Backspace (as on ANSI HHKB) and AltGr are much more usable too. The price are worse slash/quote/bracket/equals positions (US QWERTY), but most of these are better placed on a layer directly on/around the home-row resting spots. It would be even better with JIS right Shift and completely split Enter (as on 7bit's Phantom), allowing slash and quote kept in place—or even more hand separation.

Proper spacebar-row design is tricky too.

It's all convinced me to eventually build a compact keyboard with symmetrical stagger and fewer keys overall (because if I put backslash/brackets/… on a layer, there's no point in having those hard-to-reach keys anyway).

[t!ng]

This is the layout I use with Autohotkey. But it would be better to have it programmed to the board (for example I can't program 4 keys to one action with AHK, like "CapsLock & Shift & Ctrl & l::select the next words")

[Mal-2]

I think I've finally arrived at mine. Looks strange, but doesn't feel strange. The most recent changes were to cut the graphic symbol keys from 18 to 15 (they still have Shift and Ctrl and Alt states) to make room for PrtSc/ScrollLock/Pause which in turn pushed the Greek and F-keys to the left by one. At the same time I reorganized the number/cursor pad area. I might have to tweak it again considering I'm finding software that doesn't accept Insert and Delete from the number pad, only from the cursor block and those two keys are absent here. (I am faking it with AutoHotkey in the meantime.) Now that the number pad is relatively normal, I can use the standard (non-lensed) keys for it which feel much nicer.

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In addition to the matrix-Dvorak layout, I have booted [{ and ]} out of the top row, moved =+ back to its normal QWERTY location, and thus reduced the width of the matrix from 14 keys to 13. The trade-off is that the [{ and ]} keys now have to reside in the lower right corner amongst the modifier keys. I do use them enough that I will not force them onto AltGr or anything like that. (Lots of forum software requires them in place of pointy brackets.)

I wish I had the version without the trackpad, but those are always well over $100 and I got this 63401 for under $60. The big dead space sort of forced my layout to the top in order to also let it move to the right, but it turns out that this is a very practical placement anyhow. Now my macro keys are under my thumbs, which is really convenient when I use them in games. I don't think I would have ended up with them there (at least not nearly as quickly) if I had been able to lower the alpha area by one row as I originally wanted.

[Touch_It]

103 key ansi unicomp model M layout for me. Currently trying to use my f122 key unmodded. I can't understand how anyone could prefer it to ansi. I mean I can adapt and use it fine, but it doesn't feel natural to reach so far for left shift and enter.


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[bentglasstube]

Here is my custom built 60% which is of course perfect because I built it myself. Right now it has blank dsa caps from signature plastics but I'm not sure if I like dsa or not.

Here is the layout:

keyboard-layout.png (38.5 KiB) Viewed 7887 times

[neeull]

hey lol have really wanted to build a 40 percent for a while
more or less a mix between a quark and a planck

[jeb]

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to ask a question I've had for a long while. For the most common 40% layout, how does it make sense that you would maximize the number of keys on the top row as opposed to the second row, where one's hands rest? By not having a key right of the pinky, you lose out on a spot for an easily reachable key--easier to reach than you'd have on the top row. (And at the cost of an extra 0.25 key widths, you can have 12 keys on both rows.) This just seems to me like madness, so I'm wondering if there's some peculiar value to it that would prompt someone to consider it as ideal.

[neeull]

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to ask a question I've had for a long while. For the most common 40% layout, how does it make sense that you would maximize the number of keys on the top row as opposed to the second row, where one's hands rest? By not having a key right of the pinky, you lose out on a spot for an easily reachable key--easier to reach than you'd have on the top row. (And at the cost of an extra 0.25 key widths, you can have 12 keys on both rows.) This just seems to me like madness, so I'm wondering if there's some peculiar value to it that would prompt someone to consider it as ideal.

Yes yes I see what you mean. I think that's actually how the layout of the planck is set up. However I think the point of having the second row having one less key is to maintain the staggered layout like most keyboards as opposed to the ortholinear layout of the planck. So I guess adding an extra column on the staggered 40% would make it more ideal but that'd be more of a 45% keyboard right? What I don't understand is why some layouts keep the 6.25u spacebar on a 40% when its already so small haha

[jacobolus]

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to ask a question I've had for a long while. For the most common 40% layout, how does it make sense that you would maximize the number of keys on the top row as opposed to the second row, where one's hands rest?

The “most common 40% layout” was made by one dude, to meet his own goals / match his own preferences, and a bunch of other people also thought it looked fun. It’s not some kind of platonic ideal of a tiny keyboard.

[KRKS]

What I don't understand is why some layouts keep the 6.25u spacebar on a 40% when its already so small haha

Because many people are way too stuck up in "standard layout is the best layout" mentality. Every time a new keyboard with a non-standard bottom row comes up they start bashing on that. And even more amusingly the very same people call me unreasonable for what I say about MD.

One of the reasons I've been advocating for more 5.5u spacebars is that it works with more than the standard bottom row. In fact, it even divides nicely into existing sizes, increasing the number of possible layouts without effectively smashing two PCB's into one(like when combining 7u and 6.25u bottom rows).

But all of this is pointless since 45% is much better than 40% anyway.

[jeb]

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to ask a question I've had for a long while. For the most common 40% layout, how does it make sense that you would maximize the number of keys on the top row as opposed to the second row, where one's hands rest?

The “most common 40% layout” was made by one dude, to meet his own goals / match his own preferences, and a bunch of other people also thought it looked fun. It’s not some kind of platonic ideal of a tiny keyboard.

Well, yeah. But it's been copied enough, and here someone did suggest it in the context of an ideal layout, so I thought maybe there was something I was missing. I'm not really sure what kind of answer I could have been expecting, though.