For starters, on my MiniVan, I use my caps lock key location as my “fn” key to go to layer one. As soon as I tried typing on my MacBook Pro keyboard, I’d run into all sorts of problems. Well, having my arrow keys underneath my j/k/l/ keys became second nature to me, which was great! Unless I was using a different keyboard. So with all of that introduction out of the way… what are we talking about here and what is a “Hammerspoon”? And I can layer the arrows with macOS modifers without thinking about it. While it may seem a little weird at first, I have gotten fully used to having access to all four directional keys without having to move my right hand off the home row. I adopted the arrow layout that the MiniVan’s creator uses, a modified vim 2 layout: key combo Retraining my muscle memory from reaching down to the little inverse “T” arrow cluster at the bottom right of my keyboard to a new configuration was rough. As a software engineer, I use my arrow keys a lot. The first thing I had to get used to on my new MiniVan was arrow keys. You don’t have enough keys to fit all of the functionality of a full-size keyboard in unless some keys are pulling double (or triple) duty. On a 40% board, using layers is a necessity. It’s magic! So what if you could add additional layers to your keyboard? You could fit additional functionality into the same set of keys, keeping functionality you use often right at your fingertips. When you press and hold your shift key, you gain access to a new set of characters using the same set of keys. In fact, every single person already has access to a layer you use every day: uppercase letters (and symbols above numbers). Layers are a mechanism that’s used to add additional functionality to your keyboard. Those number keycaps are actually serving as a reminder for what’s “underneath” the top row of letters. If you take a look at Garrett’s MiniVan, you can see that the top row of his keyboard isn’t actually QWERTY, but a full 1 number row. Great question! The answer is a concept called “layers”. I now own several 40% keyboards with variations of the MiniVan layout, and the first question I’m asked whenever anyone sees one on my desk is: “how do you type numbers?!”. Most 40% keyboard layouts are limited to: a full set of letters, a bottom row of modifier keys, and ~one modifier key on each side of the letters. That keyboard is called a MiniVan, and it’s what’s referred to as a 40% in the mechanical keyboard world, which roughly means that it has 40% of the keys that would be found on a full-size keyboard. PSOKdtlpu5- Garrett Murray January 10, 2017 I was intrigued by a picture posted to Twitter by All three of the keyboards he showed were interesting, but the bottom one – the little guy – was the one that caught my eye the most. posts Hammerspoon December 6 th, 2021 5 minutes /posts/hammerspoon/Ī while ago, I got into mechanical keyboards.
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