I'm left-handed and I like the metaphor that my left thumb "pushes" the prose forward, while my right thumb pushes it back, but you could swap it if you tend to tap the spacebar with your right or prefer a "pulling" metaphor as a right-hander. My home thumb positions (I rest my thumbs on the outer thumb keys) serve as Space and Backspace, respectively. Tapping my right inner thumb key enters Layer 1, My inner left thumb key controls Shift and operates just like normal on layer 0, allowing me to write sentence case fairly naturally (although I am still tapping with my left pinky to try to shift occasionally still). But I want to focus more on the four thumb cluster keys. The only other thing of note is that I opted to demote the semicolon to one of my peek-in layers, and replaced it with the single/double quote key, because I've found that I write far more contractions than complex sentence clauses 3. I am sticking with QWERTY for the time being so I don't have to rewire my entire brain while learning this new layer system, but I would love to experiment with alternatives like Colemak or the ISRT layout that Vallack uses someday 2. All of the non-thumb keys are purely alphabetical and punctuation, so this layout will accept any letter arrangement without issue. Layer 0: prose writingĪt its most basic, this layer is focused on writing English prose in the way that is most comfortable for the user. The peek-in utility layers are activated by holding the right and left primary thumb key, respectively. Functions and long number sequence input. My layout has 6 layers total: 4 that are "tap-through" layers and two that operate as "peek-in" utility layers. I'm already not the fastest typist, so I want my keyboard to help me as much as I can. Vallack says they don't bother him, but I just can't accept throttling any of the speed if I can help it. I really didn't want to introduce any delay-based holds at all into my layout. Prioritize writing prose unencumbered whenever possible.Isolate keys with different tap/hold functions to the thumbs.I've added the following principles for myself: I agree with Vallack's stated design goal for his layout of reducing "chording", where you have to hold a key down to enter layers. I was immediately not that into it, because it seemed to disallow the kind of rolling that fast typing requires (Ben makes this point in his video as well), so I decided to have a go with creating my own. I had a struggle putting it together but after setting it aside for a few months I came back to it and got both sides working with the default keyboard layout 1. I decided that the low ~$50 price for this setup combined with the potential big rewards after some experimentation made it a worthwhile investment. Last year he walked through a layout system that he created for himself on the 34-key Ferris Sweep layout, whose PCB layout he also showed how to lightly modify. I was fascinated by the work that Ben Vallack has been doing on his YouTube channel to pare down his keyboard layout to be as ergonomic and efficient as possible. Eager to try the layout?If you have a Ferris Sweep of your own you can use it by downloading ferris_sweep-frank_noirot.json from my kit repo on GitHub, uploading it to and clicking Compile followed by Download Firmware. I recently got to build two split keyboard setups, and I'd like to talk a bit about the layer system I'm experimenting with on the smaller, 34-key layout, because I think I'm onto something with it.
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