Origin/practicality of HHKB the bottom row?

I was surprised that you link to the Wayback Machine, but indeed: Accessing that URL via drop.com causes a redirect to the home page — despite they still link to it from the (finished) Tokyo60 v3 GB. Very unprofessional behaviour by Drop… Glad that the Wayback Machine captured that gem!

To chime into the discussion itself:

  • The different Ctrl position was also common on Sun keyboards.
  • The missing keys in the bottom row also avoid pressing those with the palm while your hands are resting over the keyboard — especially with lightweight switch springs.

I mostly like the layout for how it looks. But since I prefer dedicated cursor (arrow) keys in the lower right button, I’m not really a fan of using that layout — with one exception: Zambumon’s Tokyo 66 design manages to provide a HHKB style layout with dedicated cursor keys in the bottom right corner:

You though probably can also squeeze that layout into a 60% if you make the outer blocks of the bottom row just 0.75u. But it probably doesn’t look as good.

About the symmetry: the two bottom row blocks have different size — 1.5u and 2.5u if I counted correctly:

Not that much of a symmetry… :wink:

4 Likes