That’s a pretty good point (with layout I meant both colemak and ortholinearity (is that a word?)). I do think it’s additional work to learn colemak on a standard keyboard, but I guess you could go for it if you think it would pay off. I just prefer having the same keyboard for all my computers.

From my experience:

1. I typed around 60 WPM before on a standard keyboard, now it’s barely 25. It may be because I don’t use standard keyboards at all anymore though.
2. I learnt colemak with my first split keyboard since it seemed like if I was going to learn a new layout, then I should commit to it entirely. I think keeping AZERTY (since I’m french baguette haha) would have just made me even slower on standard keyboards because there wouldn’t be much difference with my normal workflow. Separating the two layouts entirely seems better to me, but you might also say keping the same layout to some extent is better.
3. I went from a full-size keyboard to my monkeyboard, gradually removed keys (left row, top row, inner thumb keys) and now I’m at 34 keys with my triboard. But making the jump could also have worked seems it’s a complete change anyway.

Yes, the main thing is you don’t have to pay for nice!nanos which are $25 each as I remember. XIAOs are only $10 each. The price I put on tarneo.fr is only as I remember it, might be a bit more depending on location and the shipping options you choose. But yeah I guess even with that it’s cheap.

Thanks! Looks like I’ve reached my goal ;-)

Not really, you get used to the small number of keys if that’s the question. It’s really just muscle memory after some time (I’ve been using this layout for around a year, iterating occasionally)

Thanks! Some people find the monospace font hurts their eyes though, but I guess it’s a tradeoff of the 90s theme

I’d like to keep the board as flat as possible, mimicking the TOTEM’s case which doesn’t add any height. This means I’ll have 0.2 mm between the main PCB and the bottom plate, and AFAIK there is no battery that would have the correct size for this.

Thanks, great suggestion! But as it seems it would make use of less common parts (I mean parts that can’t be gotten from local shops or ergo keyboard part sellers like splitkb), plus I think the batteries would be too small even compared to the 80mAh batteries used with nice!nanos.

Yeah, at first it seemed quite alright to do with a smaller angle (from 3 to 6 degrees depending on the battery), but now I think it would make the board too complicated. Right now I am trying to get used to sticky mod keys on home row combos (colemak A+S for LGUI, N+I for LCTL) and it seems like I’ll be able to remove the inner thumb key in the end.

Yeah, a dactyl kinda defeats the point of having a small keyboard. Soon I’ll try to make a 36-key split with some way to link the two parts to make it usable on laptops for example (rn it’s comically large when using a laptop: I need to put the two halves on the side plus a mouse if I don’t want to use the touchpad). I’ll also use sockets for everything (switches & XIAO controllers) so that the next one I make doesn’t cost as much.

2 row cluster

I could cut it off. The 5 innermost keys aren’t even used, and the one left over is just for (rarely) pressing alt, and that’s only on the left half. As for the top matrix row, it’s the same situation: I only use it for function keys which I only use for switching tty’s, and I know I would always ask myself “wait, how do I press f1/f2?” The outer keys are used for the enter key and print screen, which leaves 4 unused keys. That’s:

• 5 useless keys for the left thumb
• 6 for the right thumb
• 6 on each half for the top row which could be moved yo another layer, making the keeb smaller while only having to remember 12 logically placed f keys
• 4 outer keys on the 3 bottom rows

= 27 keys that could be removed. Yikes.

Now onto the xmodmap stuff: when I need to use the keyboard on a new computer, it will almost always be on an X11 Linux one, as that’s what my high school computers for IT use (the one specific to the classes I’m taking), and also what I managed to get my family to use. This means I’ll always be able to add the xmodmap stuff, plus it poses no problem to other users of the same account (if applicable) as it uses f13+ keys which nobody else would use (most people don’t even know these keys exist). I also like not having to change my keymap from us especially when doing work on server hardware (I sometimes physically access a think centre used for backups at renn.es, shameless plug). The configurator is not even really my thing anymore, I only ever change the config through the file nowadays.