7 ms·

Can someone, who uses one of those tiny keyboards, elaborate how to work at all (let alone effectivly) without the Home/End/Page up/Page down block or arrow key

by feeela 5y ago

Can someone, who uses one of those tiny keyboards, elaborate how to work at all (let alone effectivly) without the Home/End/Page up/Page down block or arrow keys? How do you mark a word? How do you jump between lines or beginning and end of the line? (And I don't even want to think about having no F-keys - which would require even weirder key-combinations in many cases.)

mattlondon 5y ago
They have "layers" so you can do some shortcuts and the extra keys become active - so e.g. activate a layer and now U, I, O, and P are home, end, insert , delete etc. Change layer back to normal and off you go.
aikinai 5y ago
There are shortcuts for all of those keys that I use even if I’m on a full-sized keyboard that has them. MacOS has two sets actually, one with command and arrows and one with control using Emacs shortcuts.
OskarS 5y ago
You don't really need those keys for that, there are almost always various chords that do that. macOS, in particular, has "Emacs-light" keybindings in most edit fields: Ctrl-A goes to the beginning of a line, Ctrl-E goes to the end, Alt-Backspace erases a word, etc. Of course, if you use Vim-style keys, you use normal mode for all that stuff. In general though, custom mechanical keyboards have firmware that can be programmed with "layers": hold down a certain key (or toggle) and layers get activated which changes the meanings of keys. This is the way those very minimal keyboards (which doesn't even necessarily have a number row) can work for daily use. If you want the keys badly, just program your firmware appropriately.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Yep, for me the home/end/etc keys rarely got use because I’ve been using the macOS text navigation bindings instead (though I’ve been using Cmd-arrows in place of Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, etc for moving to start/end of doc, line, etc).
tremon 5y ago
I use a 70-key Redox, not sure if you would classify that as a tiny keyboard. I have all the navigation keys available in my primary layout. Since I'm a vim user, I mark words exactly as I would on a normal-size keyboard: using vW. I do not have F-keys in my default layout, and I don't miss them as I rarely used them on a normal-size keyboard anyway. But if I do need them, they're just one layer shift away: Fn+1 gives me F1. Do note that layers can be activated permanently, not just through chording. In my layout, tapping Fn twice turns the right half of the keyboard into a numpad layout so I can do quick data-entry. And in that layer I also have a Tab key under my right hand so I can do both horizontal and vertical data entry. On a normal keyboard, the missing Tab key always forced me to keep both hands on the keyboard when using the Numpad.
SxC97 5y ago
I never understood why people needed keys like home and end until I had to switch from MacOS to Windows for work. Turns out, MacOS has some (IMO) more sensible key bindings for those operations involving either the Cmd or Opt key + the array keys.

by feeela 5y ago

mattlondon 5y ago

They have "layers" so you can do some shortcuts and the extra keys become active - so e.g. activate a layer and now U, I, O, and P are home, end, insert , delete etc. Change layer back to normal and off you go.

aikinai 5y ago

There are shortcuts for all of those keys that I use even if I’m on a full-sized keyboard that has them. MacOS has two sets actually, one with command and arrows and one with control using Emacs shortcuts.

OskarS 5y ago

You don't really need those keys for that, there are almost always various chords that do that. macOS, in particular, has "Emacs-light" keybindings in most edit fields: Ctrl-A goes to the beginning of a line, Ctrl-E goes to the end, Alt-Backspace erases a word, etc. Of course, if you use Vim-style keys, you use normal mode for all that stuff. In general though, custom mechanical keyboards have firmware that can be programmed with "layers": hold down a certain key (or toggle) and layers get activated which changes the meanings of keys. This is the way those very minimal keyboards (which doesn't even necessarily have a number row) can work for daily use. If you want the keys badly, just program your firmware appropriately.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
Yep, for me the home/end/etc keys rarely got use because I’ve been using the macOS text navigation bindings instead (though I’ve been using Cmd-arrows in place of Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, etc for moving to start/end of doc, line, etc).

tremon 5y ago

I use a 70-key Redox, not sure if you would classify that as a tiny keyboard. I have all the navigation keys available in my primary layout. Since I'm a vim user, I mark words exactly as I would on a normal-size keyboard: using vW. I do not have F-keys in my default layout, and I don't miss them as I rarely used them on a normal-size keyboard anyway. But if I do need them, they're just one layer shift away: Fn+1 gives me F1. Do note that layers can be activated permanently, not just through chording. In my layout, tapping Fn twice turns the right half of the keyboard into a numpad layout so I can do quick data-entry. And in that layer I also have a Tab key under my right hand so I can do both horizontal and vertical data entry. On a normal keyboard, the missing Tab key always forced me to keep both hands on the keyboard when using the Numpad.

SxC97 5y ago

I never understood why people needed keys like home and end until I had to switch from MacOS to Windows for work. Turns out, MacOS has some (IMO) more sensible key bindings for those operations involving either the Cmd or Opt key + the array keys.