Hey folks, me again.
Those of you who went from a larger keyboard to a smaller one that required the use of layers: was the transition hard? Could you still type on the old keyboard after?
Context: I was asking the other day about which ortholinear to get for commuting. Although the glove80 is the closest to my current home desktop keyboard, I’ve ruled it out as I don’t think it will fit in my backpack. If it does, it will take up too much space.
So I’m looking at something like the voyager, but with such a small keyboard, there will be a learning curve. I’m used to ortholinear, but I’ve never used layers. And if I manage to adapt, it’d be nice to still be able to use my desktop keywell keyboard at home.
Thoughts?
I borrowed a preonic which got me interested with the orthographic layout. The custom keyboard rabbit hole drew me in, and a friend was planning on doing a ferris sweep build, so I started reducing my keymap to try it out.
Being able to do it in stages helped with trying out and committing to a 34 key layout. Looking back it wasn’t that bad and my advice to someone who doesn’t have an intermediate step to borrow or budget for additional keyboards is to just jump in.
The layers where not the biggest issue to be honest, it’s like using the shift key, except I have 3 more “shift” key, plus the actual shift key. It took me a couple of days of use to get my symbols layer commited to memory.
And changing keyboard if you do it frequently is not an issue, especially if they have different layout.
It wasn’t so bad, switching to a different letter layout was way harder
It took me a couple months to stop thinking about layers.
My first move toward ergonomics was a Keebio Fourier 40%. It had been a few months before that when I started using Colemak on my laptop keyboard; I did that using Windows keyboard settings, and I was taking notes in meetings, so whenever I couldn’t keep up, switching back to QWERTY was a hotkey away.
After switching to the Fourier, and iterating many times on the QMK settings, that was the month or two where I had to think through all the control keys, symbols, and function keys I was typing. I didn’t quit typing on other keyboards, although I typed on my Fourier as much as possible; and I have not ended up forgetting anything I learned before.
I’m now on the precipice of moving from a 4x6 Dactyl Manuform to a 4x5 Splaytyl (if I can find those dang parts and get the thing built!) and that’s too small to have things like Tab, Enter, or the backslash on the home layer. I’m nervous. I’ve tried making a 4x5 layout for the DM, but haven’t ended up sticking with it. I couldn’t really get used to keys that are physically there, not doing anything.
If it’s the only way to press the letter / sign / number you need, you remember pretty quick.
I think you’ll end up going layers on your everyday after you do it on your “other” board.
