I was just reading this thread… https://sh.itjust.works/post/23476261
…and it got me thinking about something that I’ve wanted for a long time. Why is it that keyboards have not evolved to have dedicated copy/paste keys left of the main board? I’d love to see an additional column of keys left of Esc->Ctrl configurable as macros at least. I do a lot of copy/paste for work. The current shortcuts arent terrible or anything but they’re not exactly comfortable. I’d rather move my whole hand to the left for a macro key than contort to hit the current shortcut.
What do you think?
I disagree. [Modifier] + C & [mod] + V works just as good as a dedicated button and you are using the space more efficiently by having multiple uses for one key.
Keyboard already has a lot of buttons. We should be considering which to remove, not any additions
I don’t think we need to remove anything. I mean if you really want a smaller keyboard that badly you could get one of the ones that removes the number pad.
But as someone who was a cashier long ago before GS1 codes on produce, we got fast at 10-key typing by touch. The thought of doing a spreadsheet or extended number-work without the number pad is unthinkable to me…
I support the number pad as well. I type in numbers into spreadsheets often enough that it’s useful for me.
If we were to delete, I’d say get rid of the F1 keys, get rid of Home / End, get rid of Num lock, etc.
Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V have been so burned into my muscle memory, relearning to use just a single dedicated button might actually be more trouble for me than just using the standard hotkeys.
I have a row of macro keys on my keyboard on the left side. I thought I’d be smart and add copy and paste macros (that were near mm’s away from Ctrl) and I never used them.
Muscle memory would always take over and I’d Ctrl+C Ctrl+V. I realized it would take more work to train myself to use the macro keys (and God forbid I used a different keyboard) than I was saving not having to press a key combination
That’s the first thing i learned using computers, and not something i’ll ever forget.
I wish Ctrl + C wasn’t the break command in Linux so I could map copy to that. It’s harder to presa Ctrl + Shift + C
Maybe if you weren’t so floppy about it
If I was an evil peripheral manufacturer, I’d not only add keys to copy and paste, but I’d add them to the mouse too.
Then I’d have a small display in the keyboard that showed the last five things you copied, and let you select which one you’d paste.
That way users would get used to it, have to buy my gratuitously expensive peripherals with displays in them for no reason, and then not know how to use anything else.
Add monthly subscription fees just like Logitech is thinking of doing
Would you like to subscribe to PastePlusPro Premium?
Logitech’s approach would be more like, please subscribe to our monthly service to use the copy paste buttons and history display
Keyboards already have too many keys. Your fingers are extremely inefficient at certain distances so you should never even touch numpad with proper keyboard design. 10 fingers can combine a lot of keys.
Numpad is a MUST for doing quick calc, that top row of numbers always slows me way down.
Also, I need the full numpad in case I’m playing Arma 3, cuz I need to additional keymappings ;)
CTRL-C / CTRL-V too much? ;)
Right???
Not exactly. Its just awkward for a bunch of repetitions, especially on MacOS keyboards. CMD+C/V is even worse on those.
Personally since I use touch typing being able to hit ctrl-c,v without looking works best for me. Anything else would require me to shift my hands too far away from the “home row” and slow me down.
I use touch typing
As opposed to taste typing??
Some people never learned touch typing.
Never heard it called touch typing before… Always just “typing”
Before millennials, touch typing was a specialized skill on your resume, since “typing” would include hunt and peck, which itself is still fairly common among earlier generations.
The Control key is just badly placed on present-day PC keyboards. I swap Caps Lock and Control.
Honestly I LOVE being able to have Ctrl and Cmd be different modifiers.
Ctrl-C is break, Cmd-C is copy. And so on. All the Unixy stuff respects Ctrl and ignores Cmd and vice versa for the Mac stuff. Honestly it’s the best keyboard setup I have experienced and the only one which never manages to irritate me.
(Personally I am fine without a dedicated copy/paste key; the only ones I like having dedicated keys for are things like volume up/down for which I’m not aware of a universally understood key combination for)
MY PEOPLE! I’m so used to the CMD key that I made this shitty AutoHotkey script that makes things mostly work the same in Windows. It’s glitchy and imperfect, but it’s better than changing my muscle memory.
If anyone has any recommendations to improve the situation (besides recommending that I switch OSes), then I’m all ears.
Your first mistake is using apple products
Can’t help it when your job supplies it to you.
I’ve got Graphene on my phone and Fedora on my desktop.
It’s a bit awkward to do a basic action
Is this a joke? It’s so easy. What would be better?
Not everyone has the same hands.
Well sure, some people have no hands and need a completely different way to input keys. But I figure we weren’t talking about the exception, and you didn’t actually answer the follow-up question.
I wish there was a dedicated hotkey combo that worked across all applications for paste plain text
on linux debian, it’s ctrl+shift+v
Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + V is pretty much the norm. It works in everything I’ve used it in.
Thanks, it seems the support for it has improved since I previously gave up on it.
On mac it’s cmd-shift-v
Same on windows. Works in most applications except some Microsoft Office apps (like Excel and Word) that have a separate “past as text” option.
Powertoys has a “paste as plain text” module that will allow the same keyboard shortcut across all of Windows
no, never. 34 keys is all you ever need
Could you screenshot this again but showing what each key maps too?
Christian Seleg (not sure if spelt correctly, but the Apollo for Reddit dev) has a recent video on his channel about making a keyboard very similar to this shape and it looked really cool but again couldn’t quite understand what key each is.
I configured it using ZMK, it’s a firmware for wireless keyboards. The keyboard is “wireless”, I’m just using USB cables for power while I’m waiting for the batteries to arrive. The keyboard you saw might be the Ferris Sweep, which mine is based on. Well, based on is probably the wrong word, I copied the layout, rotated the pinkies a bit and did the PCB myself using Ergogen and Kicad.
This is my default layer:
I use the Colemak mod DH matrix layout. Colemak is a common alternative key layout, mod DH is a certain modified version of it, and matrix means that the keys aren’t row staggered. You can also see that some keys have some more stuff on them, those are homerow mods (red) and dual function layer keys (blue). Homerow mods is the name for a common practice on small keyboards where you place modifier keys in the homerow along with the normal keys. Holding them turns them into the modifier and pressing them is just the normal key.
Holding A or O is like holding CTRL R or I is ALT S or E is Shift T or N is the Windows key The keyboard is split so they’re mirrored on the two sides (also useful for when you want to do CTRL+A for example)
The layer shifts function similarly, pressing them results in the normal key (tab, space, enter) and holding them shifts me to a different layer (layer 7, layer 1 (its 0 indexed), and layer 2). Layer 7 has function keys, layer 1 is for navigation and layer 2 has my symbols.
layer 1:
(here you can see that I technically have a “numpad”, just that it’s always directly under my hand instead of off to the sidelayer 2:
layer 7:
I have 11 layers in total, but the other 7 are just special layers for games. I use this keyboard for everything, including programming and gaming without any issues.
edit: not sure why people downvoted you, it’s an awesome question and I’m glad you gave me an excuse to spam you all with info about my keyboard. Also, Ben Vallack got me into all of this, he kinda inspired this layout. He has some AWESOME videos about keyboards like this, look him up if you’re interested! You don’t have to go as far as I did.
Mechanical keyboards like this are often fully programmable. I have a ZSA Moonlander and routinely modify the function of each and every key. Everyone’s workflow is a little different, for example I have a
Del Wordkey which deletes entire words, but is really a macro of the OS key + Backspace.Very hard to imagine after 30 years of qwerty muscle memory. Not sure I could change even if I tried.
It’s definitely a challenge. Colemak has a progression called Tarmak which transitions you to Colemak by changing only a few letters at a time. I did it over the course of about a month.
Thanks.
Surely you don’t change A-Z though? That seems like it would be unworkable.
Also, never knew OS Key + Backspace would delete a word. Thanks for sharing.
It’s totally workable, there’s significant movements to get away from the QWERTY layout and at least several alternative keyboard layouts. Personally I got on board with Colemak-DH; there’s also Dvorak, AZERTY, Workman, and so on.
Learning a new layout comes at a short term price if all you’ve ever used is QWERTY, but there are long-term gains to reductions of RSI, and typing comfort.
The OS key differs between OSs. Macs are Command+Backspace and I believe windows is Ctrl+Backspace.
You can make them what you want. Also with layers , much like the shift layer, but now you can have 4 shift layers if you want.
Thanks. I guess there is an optimal setting for A-Z is why I was asking for OPs setup.
Not sure why I took a downvote tbh for asking a question.
I guarantee I can hit ctrl-c faster than I can move my hand to a different part of the keyboard.
Oh man, you were born too late for the wild 90s era of experimental keyboards
While it doesn’t have a copy and paste key, my omnikey ultra is certainly wacky.
Just buy this
Not so subtle dig, but I’ll allow it. 😉
I have a mouse that happens to have two extra buttons off to the side and mapping those to ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ has been the best thing i’ve ever done for my productivity. Also mapping middle mouse button to ‘screenshot to clipboard’ but that’s just a personal thing i happen to do a lot
Forward and Back is also nice to map on those buttons if you do a lot of web browsing or navigating through folders.
by default my computer interprets them as forward and back but i’ve got to be honest, it doesn’t do it for me 😂
I use “forward” in my web browser about once a year
I have also been using wgestures which let me have gesture movements with mouse that serve “copy”/“paste” functions. Can’t work without it
oh that’s awesome!
I think that everyone who really wants that will spend a half an hour learning how to remap keys.
True. My caps lock is already my mute button. Now I’m going to figure out which keys to remap as copy/paste cause that’s an awesome idea
Nice. Also because it has a little light that’s now on whan you mute things.
Exactly, and really, you can just hold shift with your pinkie if you need caps
My caps lock is ctrl and, in vim insert mode, my tab is escape
One of my computers has a clipboard key that’s for pasting.
Except I’m totally used to ctrl-C ctrl-V, so I never use it.
(Adapted from XKCD)
There are 5 zillion hotkeys.
“5 zillion hotkeys? Ridiculous! We should add dedicated buttons for common operations.”
There are now 5 zillion hotkeys and “media buttons” nobody uses.
…
Seriously though, a lot of old keyboards in ye olde computers had dedicated buttons for a lot of things, but then people figured out software defined, remappable key commands are actually pretty neat. You don’t need a dedicated “Help” key if it’s usually mapped to F1. Moving back to dedicated keys is, ummm, sometimes unwarranted?
We do. ctrl+c / ctrl+v
Most people would use dedicated single copy/paste buttons more than page-up/down or home/end.
No and yes. If the copy and paste buttons would be at the position of page-up/down, I think many people would still use Ctrl+C because it is quickerto reach.
If the keys would be at easily reachable positions, then sure.
I 100% agree with what you are saying. Not to be contrary, but just because it amuses me, I use page up/down and home/end all the time. You’re still right.
But… That’s on the right side of the keyboard. I guarantee it’s faster to press Ctrl-C/V since my left hand is already there than it would be to move it or my mouse hand to Home/End.
But I realize there are left-handed people and other use-cases…
page-up/down or home/end.
I don’t even think about those keys
Well, they don’t think about you either.
Meh, Ctrl+C Ctrl+V works well.
What I really would like is a Compose key.
The concept is brilliant, you use it with a special key combination to “draw” a special character or symbol.
If you wanted to type a copyright symbol you would hold the Compose key and press O and C in order, then release the compose key.
Here is a list of a few characters with their compose key combinations, every combo is pressed in order while holding the compose key.
To get the letter Ä use " and A
To get the letter Å use o and A
To get the letter Ö use " and O
To get the letter Æ use A and E
To get the symbol ¿ use ? and ?
To get the symbol ¡ use ! and !
To get the symbol ® use O and R
To get the symbol ™ use T and M
To get the symbol € use C and =
To get the symbol £ use L and -
There are plenty more combinations…
I have never used a computer with a compose key, but I love the concept of drawing other characters like this.
Yes, finally someone else who appretiates compose key!
I use Linux, so I remap it on every PC I use, when I have right context key, I remap that, otherwise I remap right Ctrl to compose.
It’s so good, specially for using US keymap to write in other european languages. At first it takes a bit, then it’s second nature.
Yes! 100% this. The closest thing I’ve seen is Quick Accent in Power Toys for Windows. But something like what you’ve described is what I’ve always wanted.
I also thought about mapping this to Auto Hotkey, but didn’t bother after finding Quick Accent.
Most linux distros allow you to set a compose key through a gui. For Windows there’s (or at least was) WinCompose. I know fuck all about MacOS, so I can’t help you there.
On windows at least, that sort of already exists. You can hold down Alt and use 3 numpad numbers to “compose” any ASCII character you like. It’s fun!
I do know about that, but that is just picking a number from a list, the clever part of a compose key is that you can sort of figure it out on your own; if you are on a US keyboard and need to type the letter/word “Å” it makes sense to try with compose+Ao but when that didn’t work you tried compose+oA and got it.
No need to look it up in a big table.
