Here is the keymap I have written for my split keyboard:
I wrote this today over the course of about five hours, and it serves a few goals:
- as little layers as possible
I dislike having many layers on my keymaps because I personally feel like it takes away from the minimalist configuration I am naturally going for with a 3x5. I heavily rely on the shifted variants of keys, like the number symbols.
- as many functions on the left hand as possible
I have started playing more video games recently, as evidenced in recent posts, and that means a lot more time that my right hand is off the keyboard. I want to be able to game easily while not having a dedicated gaming layer, which I have tried and didn't like.
The Design
This is around the third or fourth keymap I've designed for myself, and quite a few things have gone into it.
First, the base layer is a bog standard qwerty with space, backspace, escape, and layer taps on the thumb keys. You will notice the mod taps, instead of being in the typical home row mod positions, have been shifted to wrap on the inner side of the home row. This is to avoid the above issue of my movement keys, though this issue still presents itself in the H key (left in Vim) not being able to be held down. Space and backspace are there because they are my daily drivers, so to speak, and it is extremely ergonomic having them on thumb keys instead of having to reach my pinky out far.
Second, not pictured (but in the link) are my combos of Esc, Return, and Tab on the home row - all four is Esc, ring and middle are Enter, and index and middle are Tab. These are again very common in text editing and for a keyboard focused workflow I prefer having them literally at my fingertips. I also have Esc on left thumb key left just for times I need an easy exit from insert mode in Vim.
Third, the number keys. I have tried a number pad style, and a home row style of number row. I vastly prefer the ergonomics of numbers on home row, but as I mentioned it's an issue when gaming because I only have access up to the number 5 on my left hand. I am trying sort of a hybrid approach where the numpad is transposed from a 3x3 to a 2x5 under my left hand. We will see how this goes.
Fourth, the modifiers. Even with home row mods I went with a non-standard order of (from pinky to index) Ctrl, Cmd, Opt, Shift, again because intuitively it felt right. This design features all the modifiers being on my index, and it is nice, if a bit unwieldy when I do my window manager navigation, but this is easily solved with muscle memory over time. Again, if I don't like it I will change this.
The rest of the keysyms were just to fill in what I needed, in roughly where my intuition led me. The keyboard itself might be failing - I get a lot of ghost inputs on the D and N keys when I type, which sucks - I might just pick up a clone next month to have it as a backup. Overall, this is about a year since I picked up my old split and it has been a wonderful year of using one. My qwerty muscle memory is absolutely fine and I can type at 100 wpm still on both my split and my laptop keyboards. If you are thinking of picking up a split keyboard, take this as a glowing recommendation, and feel free to ask for advice! Maybe just don't be insane like me and start with a 34 key split...