I’m not entirely certain what the suggestion is here.
Making the right shift key shorter would seem to have only disadvantages:
- The shift key would be unlike any other key on the keyboard, except, I suppose the far less frequently used function keys? But because one’s fingers need to bend down to hit shift—I usually press shift essentially with part of my fingernail—it is harder to hit precisely than function keys, where one’s fingers extend upward. It would certainly be a different height than every other key in the same row.
- Rows would no longer be aligned, as the up arrow would extend into the lower character row, but only partially, because there would still need to be vertical space for shift.
- Because of this, the up and down keys would still not be able to be full height, because it would give them less than 2 units of vertical space.
It could be that the suggestion is to make the right shift narrower. This is done with the left shift on an ISO layout as compared to an ANSI one. If the left arrow were made a standard key width, then the up and down arrows could be made full height and standard alignment with a similar, narrower right shift. But this still causes problems: with ISO, one’s left little finger rests at about the same distance from the right side of the left shift as one’s right finger rests from the left side of the right shift, despite the two shifts being different widths. Having a shorter right shift, further to the right, would require a considerable stretch to reach while typing.
I’d continue to suggest that making half-height left and right arrows, perhaps combined with physical half-height pg up / pg dn or home / end, would be the better solution to the awkward arrow key layout. It would also be a change that could be done without requiring any change to the input cover, and is the layout that Framework actually uses for the 16.