What's element of HHKB layout is most important to you?
Posted: 29 Mar 2016, 06:22
If you could only keep one aspect of the HHKB layout, what would it be? It seems the biggies are:
- Backspace above Enter
- Control left of A
- Fn right of a split right Shift
- Diamond arrow cluster
Obviously the sum of the parts make it really great, so why entertain ranking them? I’m just curious. As I’ve remapped my laptop and my other keyboards and built customs to mimc the HHKB layout, I’ve had two honeymoon phases.
The first was having the Control key left of A. But my primary reason for liking the location is kind of an edge case. I hit modifiers with my left hand about 85% of the time so it’s natural for me to use my right hand for arrow navigation.
By far the quickest and most accurate navigation for me is to stay on the home row and use IJKL for arrows. But when browsing I also like scrolling down/up one-handed using the standard HHKB diamond arrow cluster.
While the location of Control, was my initial attraction to the HHKB, having Backspace above Enter seems to be the layout change I’d hate to give up the most. Maybe appreciating this location is directly proportional to the number of typing mistakes you make
The location of fn being right of the Right Shift doesn’t seem to be that critical to me. As it’s really not possible to mimic this aspect of the layout on other boards, I feel I’d be okay with the fn placement in a number of other places as well…other than the obvious fact it might make using the diamond cluster a two-handed task if it were not as strategically placed. The spacing between the fn and the cluster does seem to be ideal for the comfortable pinky/forefinger combo.
- Backspace above Enter
- Control left of A
- Fn right of a split right Shift
- Diamond arrow cluster
Obviously the sum of the parts make it really great, so why entertain ranking them? I’m just curious. As I’ve remapped my laptop and my other keyboards and built customs to mimc the HHKB layout, I’ve had two honeymoon phases.
The first was having the Control key left of A. But my primary reason for liking the location is kind of an edge case. I hit modifiers with my left hand about 85% of the time so it’s natural for me to use my right hand for arrow navigation.
By far the quickest and most accurate navigation for me is to stay on the home row and use IJKL for arrows. But when browsing I also like scrolling down/up one-handed using the standard HHKB diamond arrow cluster.
While the location of Control, was my initial attraction to the HHKB, having Backspace above Enter seems to be the layout change I’d hate to give up the most. Maybe appreciating this location is directly proportional to the number of typing mistakes you make
The location of fn being right of the Right Shift doesn’t seem to be that critical to me. As it’s really not possible to mimic this aspect of the layout on other boards, I feel I’d be okay with the fn placement in a number of other places as well…other than the obvious fact it might make using the diamond cluster a two-handed task if it were not as strategically placed. The spacing between the fn and the cluster does seem to be ideal for the comfortable pinky/forefinger combo.
