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42 keys layout

Created: 21.02.2023

I developed the initial version of this layout on my Sofle V2 (52 keys) but then I realized that I don't need that many keys. I migrated it to tbk-mini (42 keys) and I have been using it for about 6 months. Then I migrated to kyria which has sightly more keys, but I am still using the same 42 keys layout. Now, I am about to migrate to yet another split keyboard that will follow the same approach. In total, I have been using this layout for the last year across multiple keyboards.

Why I wrote this

I wrote this blog post mainly to document my layout journey so far, before the details evaporate. I hope that it will be useful also for other people who are just staring with programmable keyboards. Last but not last I wanted to ask more experienced QMK users for some feedback, but it is impossible to get anything meaningful without fully explaining why the things are in the current form.

Goals

These were my goals when developing that layout:

  • use not more than 42 keys
  • don't use pinky fingers for modifiers or any other frequently used keys like bspc or enter
  • support two languages: English and Polish (with emphasizes on the former)
  • tmux & vim friendly but still be a general purpose layout
  • programmer friendly (I write scala but not exclusively)
  • intuitive
    • keys that are present on multiple layers should be at the same place
    • similar things should be done in similar ways

I think that I should explain what I mean by general purpose layout. I want it to be almost as good as it is for vim and tmux for any other program. So, if there is a program that uses combination like LCTRL+LSHFT+F12 I should be able to type it fairly easy even though this is not something that I use on a daily basis.

There is also another thing that corresponds to that goal, that I don't want to have keys that are very specific to a particular program. For example the default mapping for rename action in IJ is LSFT+F6 and I don't want to have a single one specific key that does that. Although having all F-keys shifted on some layer would be fine.

Alpha layer

I wanted something more efficient than QWERTY. Initially I though about going with DVORAK, mostly because I was unaware of alternatives. I went with COLEMAK-DH which is quite a popular choice these days from what I have seen, and it seemed like a safe bet. COLEMAK is also not terrible when it comes to writing Polish, it is not as good as for other languages like English or German but still better than QWERTY. If you are interested about other possible choices I recommend taking a look at the diagram that I found somewhere on reddit about alternative keyboard layouts.

Default

I use home row mods. I simply followed precondition's guide and settled on the GASC order with a slight modificatin of having AltGr on the most inner column on both sides. I need AltGr to access some polish letters. Putting it in the most inner column turned out to be a good choice since it is fairly easily accessible but I don't have to access it very often (that might be specific to me as I often don't use these special letters but their standard counterpart when writing in Polish).

Regarding home row mods is is important to configure your keyboard correctly. I started with IGNORE_MOD_TAP_INTERRUPT. I tried using PERMISSIVE_HOLD but that resulted in many misfires. Then I decided to try Achordion and it worked like a charm. After that I brought back PERMISSIVE_HOLD and everything works as is should now :)

Instead of Achordion you could also try using bilateral combinations feature from qmk, although I have never tried it and at the point of writing the PR was closed due to inactivity.

As my SHIFT keys are side specific it would be inconvenient to alternate between them when writting all caps words. For that I use CAPS WORD feature from QMK.

I put Esc on the most outer column on the left half as neovim is my editor of choice. The key above the Esc is quite far away and I didn't find any key that would fit this place. Similar concerns apply to the key below it. Suggestions are welcome. This might be also an indication that I should try a smaller keyboard like 5x3.

On the right half the story is similar. The middle key of the outer column is " which offers a quite convenient access to the vim registers and to quoting in general. I don't use the other two keys from this column. I even don't use the upper key from the second most outer column as in colemak that is ; and it is simply too inconvenient to use it.

Thumb keys

I decided to cover them separately because they are identical on all layers which I think contributes to the goal of being an intuitive. They look as follows:

thumbs

The middle thumb keys are in a natural position for my thumbs and because of that they have the most important functions.

Having bspc and space under your thumbs is very convenient.

One function that is hard to visualize on the image is the access to the last layer(Extra) which is done by holding both main thumb keys (bspc+space). Such combination is handy but notice that after doing that your both thumb keys are immobilized which makes it suitable only for a very specific layers.

TMUX key is set to whatever the tmux prefix is. In my case that is CTRL+B. One thing that I recently noticed, is that if I press quickly TMUX key followed by Z which should trigger the zoom action, the tmux job is suspended instead. This is because the TMUX key involves CTRL modifier that, when combined with Z triggers the standard shell shortcut for putting the current program into the background. This can be fairly easy fixed by changing to unregister CTRL modifier already in the key press branch.

Additional resources:

Note about additional layers

Most of additional layers follow a similar design. On one half I have OSMs and the other one contains keys that are specific to the given layer. In addition to that, I found it unnatural to use keys from the same half that I am holding the layer switch on. Hence, I try to put the layer switch on the opposite side to the keys on that layer.

Navigation layer

Quite standard navigation layer with arrows on the right side arranged like hjkl in vim. OSMs are on the left. In addition HOME/END and PG_UP/PG_DN are added as they conceptually fit into that layer. I recently added PrintScreen as is is useful and from the lack of preference I just put it here.

navigation

The F11 key is mapped in vim to "save all" action, but it is still a general key that could be mapped to anything.

The navigation layer gives also an option to access so called window switcher (ALT_TAB and ALT_STAB on the image). I feel that this feature deserves its own blogpost but in short window switcher allow you to change your windows by using combination of ALT+TAB. (You can now read more about window switcher here) The window switcher functionality and the way how the outer left outer column changes across the layouts is something that I really enjoy.

Numbers layer

Numbers are on the right side, so the layer switch is on the left thumb cluster.

numbers

Before I got to this point I did a few iterations. First, I started from the numbers on the home row ordered including their frequency of use as in https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2021/06/03/the-t-34-keyboard-layout . This turned out the be really confusing and given that it was my begging with colemak and split keyboard I didn't have any mental capacity left to learn it. Next, I ordered them naturally which helped a lot with the mental effort but there was no easy way to enter combinations like Alt+number (OSM solves that to a degree, but I didn't know about them at that point).

After that I put them in the form of keypad with 1,2,3,0 in the middle as they are used the most. That was much better then anything before but after some time I decided that the benefit from the frequency-based ordering isn't worth the additional cognitive effort, and I changed them to be like in a regular keypad. I decided to keep the 0 in the middle row (at first mainly because I didn't have any better idea where to put it). This turned out pretty well as zero is definitely the one that is used the most, so having it on the home-row pays off.

In addition, numbers layer override the behavior of the left outer column. This time we get CTRL+TAB and CTRL+SHIFT+TAB.

Symbols layer

Second most challenging layer right after the main one. Luckily, Pascal Getreuer already did the hard job and researched that topic - Designing a Symbol Layer. Obviously, before going with this one I spent few days looking at possible alternatives.

symbol

Similarly to numbers layer, symbol layer also overrides behavior of the left outer column giving us access to TAB and SHIFT+TAB.

Additional resources:

Functions layer

This layer is very similar to numbers layer but instead of numbers it contains function keys. In addition OSM_LGUI is changed to regular LGUI as it is convenient to have it in gnome environment.

functions

As you can see function keys are defined up to F15, however so far I wasn't able to configure my system to get advantage of them because of some detection problems as well as default bindings in gnome.

Extra layer

I am mostly using it as a quick window switcher in tmux but because it contains mappings that could be used outside of it I refuse to call it tmux layer. In fact CTRL+number can be used to switch between tabs in chrome.

extra

Problems

  • space followed by tab (common pattern in shell as tab invokes shell-completion)

    This one was solved by putting additional TAB key on the left outer thumb

  • paste into terminal is different than ctrl+v from nav layer

  • lack of bspc when accessing numbers. I kind of get used to this but I still think that this is an issue.

  • on the symbol layer entering <- (which is common in scala) is cumbersome as it is SFU

Further improvements

  • mtgap? carplax? my own layout?
  • go smaller? 5x3?
  • ESC as combo on NE ?

Additional resources