Hello.
I’m very interested in Framework Laptop project.
But I can’t see myself happily using it due to poor keyboard layout.
I’m a programmer, I’m using Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys a lot. Current layout requires both hand to input them, which I find unacceptable.
What alternatives exist on the market, other than 100% layout with Num block:
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Vertical Home/PgUp/PgDn/End keys block at the right side of the keyboard. This is well known solution and it was proposed a lot in other threads already. Unfortunately, I’m quite pessimistic about the chances it will be offered. Current state seems to be
half-assedcost-optimized and totally depends on mass-market. -
Fnkey next to arrow keys. Would allow to use most frequent combinations singlehandedly. I think it was most often seen on Sony laptops. Without sacrificing Alt or Ctrl key that would require a different hardware layout with space key moved to the left. -
Dedicated Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys in the F-keys row instead of other special keys. I wonder whether this is patented by Microsoft, because it is exclusive to their Surface laptops and keyboard covers afaik. Honestly, I would prefer Surface laptop just because of this feature. If there is no legal argument against such layout then it can be offered on the same hardware.
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Good support for permanent OS-independent custom layouts, so anyone could make something acceptable with the hardware we’re given. I see there is some firmware editing experiment already but it seems to be non-permanent and OS-dependent (I use Windows so it doesn’t seem suitable for me).
More topics (sorry, as a new user I can’t put many links even to existing forum topics):
- Framework | Framework Laptop Keyboard (blog post)
- Alternative Keyboard layouts - Framework Laptop - Framework Community
- PgUp PgDn Home End Keys - Framework Laptop - Framework Community
- What keyboard options will be available? - Framework Laptop - Framework Community
- A QMK configurable keyboard - Framework Laptop - Framework Community
Sorry for creating an another one.
In this topic I suggest to focus on options that will not require a different keyboard hardware and therefore are more likely to be supported.
- Does current hardware design allow a custom permanent layout in principle?
- Or would it require another mainboard revision?
- Can we have at least bios flags for a couple of alternatives, possibly with cap kits? (Fn instead of RCtrl, “Surface-like” layout if it’s not patented.)
- If embedded controller firmware is open source, can we have custom builds with permanent custom layout or is it signed?
- Any other ideas? (I was going to ask about a possibility of a mod board between the keyboard and the mainboard, but figured that would probably won’t work very well in many cases with logic performed by embedded controller.)
