Hi. New here. I came across this forum a while ago searching for information and found it very useful. Now I have something to share so made an account.
Over a year ago I came across the idea to push the QWERTY layer apart on a standard keyboard. I forget where I saw that. It said that it worked best on an ISO keyboard, so I built one. It was still missing something. I found this PCB that supported lots of alternate key layouts and I tried seeing what was possible. It is called XD60 or XD64 by Kprepublic.
This layout spaces the hands apart by 2u more than a traditional layout. I can keep my fingers on the home row a lot more and my right pinky finger can reach everything on the right side without trouble. I can also see the extra symbol keys without my hand blocking them. As a bonus, my hands are almost centered on the keyboard now instead of to one side.
I found this keycap set called KAM Superuser which supports this kind of layout. It also has arrow keys on the home row. I added two layers to use them as arrows and also home, page down, etc. That is very nice and makes it both more ergonomic and saves four keys on the keyboard.
This layout is still in development, but I’m very happy with the top two rows and can’t foresee any further changes there. On the home row I might want to swap the ’ " and ; : keys, but that would reduce compatibility with traditional layouts. On the bottom two rows things could be improved more, and you can see two empty keys. I have some ideas, but I’ll leave it as-is for a month or so.
I’ve been typing on it for the last few days and I’m extremely happy with how it feels. I need to take my fingers off the home row very little and my right pinky is not stretched too much.
Very cool stuff, almost like a staggered boardwalk layout! Definitely a pretty slick use of the PCB to get what you wanted out of it. These PCBs were originally made to allow for an arrow cluster on a 60%, but this is far more interesting to me, awesome work OP!
This kind of thinking sounds like a slippery slope towards 40% keyboards
1upkeyboards does the pi60 PCB which offers similar opportunities for messing around with the layout in a standard 60% case. 1upkeyboards pi60 60% PCB » 1upkeyboards
This is my handwired board I just built called Barghest (based on P3D/Mechvaults Hydra). I guess it’s a similar idea but just having a gap in the middle rather than moving the symbols there.
Nice. It was something like that which I saw before, but strictly using QWERTY which gave me the idea to make an ISO keyboard and try it, but I could never find it again.
@ElKinoflop I like the PBT Vior! I was looking at that set as it comes with a 1.25u enter key in their 40s set. If I hadn’t found the KAM superuser, I would have gone with that.
Very creative keyboard modification! The idea of separating the QWERTY layer is truly ingenious. This layout indeed has significant advantages in terms of ergonomics. By increasing the spacing by 2u, fingers can stay more comfortably on the home row, greatly improving input efficiency. Moreover, the right pinky can easily reach all the keys on the right side. At the same time, the symbol keys can be clearly seen without being blocked by the hand. This design is excellent. The choice of the KAM Superuser keycap set is also very wise. Adding functions such as arrow keys to the home row not only improves practicability but also saves keyboard space.
Seriously, though, no two vendors seem to sell the same set of sub-2u convex minispaces. You end up building the board around the caps, or at least I do.
I really love this layout. It has been working well. I haven’t made any changes so far. The only rows I think about modifying are the top and bottom rows. The biggest challenge is switching to another keyboard. I need to build 2-3 more with the same layout so that I never lack the proper keyboard anywhere. My next one is going to be lightweight and bluetooth.
Yes, I agree. Half of the 7u spacebar is wasted space anyway. Just no off the shelf PCB that seems to work for me.
I bought the 40s kit for the KAM Superuser keycaps just for the 1.25u Enter key. It has lots of spacebar options, including 1u, 1.5u, and 1.75u. The 1.5u is concave though. I would love to try them but would need to make a custom board.
