deskthority

Hey y'all

i've made some improvements to the keyboard-layout-editor, notably SVG export, and an option for the squirrelly fancy holes that let the diehards take the key housing off. See picture of my Atreus-like design i've been fiddling with:



With this you should be able to design whatever, throw it in inkscape and put an outline around it, and get it laser cut at your local loonybin/makerspace. Should make it a good bit easier to rapidly prototype

I still need to support:
- stabs
- off-center keys (caps et al)
- weird things like ISO enter -- not really sure if those should just be added after the fact in inkscape or what.

Anyway, i'd love to give a pull request to ijprest so everyone can play with it, but he hasn't been on github in half a year and there's no license information in his repo, so i don't know if i'll be able to... Anyone know where to find him?

Nice improvement, these are very useful features! No idea how to contact him : Isn't it possible to communicate on github or isn't he registered on GH, DT?
In case you're not able to contact him, don't trash this work it's really worthy.

Wow, great idea! Everytime I've been playing with the keyboard-layout-editor I thought to myself how great it would be if I could turn this into a real thing right now. And "fancy holes" is much more amusing than "cherry mx plate mount switch holes"

Use of squirrely holes instead of H-like holes don't solve everything. Stabilisers are directional, so you would need to add a setting for each key's switch direction anyway.

It is not really "laser-ready": You will still need to add boundaries, points for mounting to the case and use the layout to design edges.
I would also prefer export to DXF. It can be read by Inkscape, and also by CAD programs that don't read SVG.

Slightly OT: I hacked a basic dxf export into my crappy editor (http://ne0.cc/laygenV2/#L8eoK ) but its still missing support for space bar stab holes.

Findecanor wrote:Use of squirrely holes instead of H-like holes don't solve everything. Stabilisers are directional, so you would need to add a setting for each key's switch direction anyway.

sure. I don't really care about the weird holes because i'm not really interested in mods. And adding directionality to the keys is a bit more logic than i felt like doing... but the code's there, if you're so inclined!

Findecanor wrote:It is not really "laser-ready": You will still need to add boundaries, points for mounting to the case and use the layout to design edges.

Yeah, that's why i said:

bearcat wrote:With this you should be able to design whatever, throw it in inkscape and put an outline around it...

And of course building a case is beyond the scope of the tool...

As for DXF, that fileformat doesn't look like much fun But hey ne0's tool does it! I don't have anything that consumes dxf (for now) so i can't really test. If/when i upgrade my cam software i'll revisit it.

ne0phyte wrote:Slightly OT: I hacked a basic dxf export into my crappy editor (http://ne0.cc/laygenV2/#L8eoK) but its still missing support for space bar stab holes.

Cool! Didn't know this one existed. Really nice! And i love that THKB...gotta build one of my own.

freschu wrote:Wow, great idea! Everytime I've been playing with the keyboard-layout-editor I thought to myself how great it would be if I could turn this into a real thing right now. And "fancy holes" is much more amusing than "cherry mx plate mount switch holes"

Thanks! It's here on github, you can clone it and use it -- but see the unknown license issues above. I think if it's on github as a public repo, it's ok, but IANAL.

bearcat wrote:
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Thanks! It's here on github, you can clone it and use it -- but see the unknown license issues above. I think if it's on github as a public repo, it's ok, but IANAL.
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I presume you are aware of http://builder.swillkb.com/ ?

Between KLE and his script, things got a bit mangled with my ergo design.

Anyway I've also decided to have a go at fixing a few things with KLE, do you mind if I use your version as starting point?

Thanks, Ian

bearcat wrote: ↑Thanks! It's here on github, you can clone it and use it -- but see the unknown license issues above. I think if it's on github as a public repo, it's ok, but IANAL.

He makes the source available but has a Copyright in the main page, so I'm also wondering about the status.

Since we have no way to update the live version, I was thinking of sticking any improved versions on a website for general use.

It would be nice if we had a few more presets to play with, it anyone feels like sharing their designs ...

thanks, Ian