thumbledore

I only uploaded this so that it may serve as inspiration. It is still being tweaked.

Typing on a standard keyboard is not a great experience. Your thumbs idle while your weakest finger contorts to reach keys like escape and backspace. Exotic keyboards can remedy this, but lack portability.

thumbledore is a set of tweaks that are meant for keyboards with at least three keys per thumb, but that also fits within the constraints of the typical keyboard.

Each finger travels one key at most. Your thumbs pick up the slack.
Easy to remember. There is only one additional layer for symbols, plus one for navigation and function keys.
Enables graceful degradation. You can keep a somewhat consistent layout even when you're stuck on a standard keyboard.

Your eight fingers maneuver the letter keys, while your thumbs handle power keys. These are:

On the left-hand side:
1. meta/esc. The meta key is useful for binding actions in your window manager, and it is also used to get to the arrow keys. It gets an additional function when you tap rather than hold it: it triggers escape, useful for modal applications like vim.
2. space. When held along meta, it exposes the meta-modified keys that were hidden under the navigational cluster, and it also allows you to access function keys.
3. ctrl/enter. Tapping gets you enter, the logical counterpart to escape.
On the right hand: 4. alt. Tapping it generates the compose key, allowing you to type special characters by typing intuitive keys in succession (e.g. symbol symbol ' e becomes é). 5. symbol. This is a one-shot key: when you tap it, it will be activated for the following keypress. Double tapping activates it until you tap it again. 6. shift. Also a one-shot key.

The layers and finger keys are meant to be the same on every keyboard, while the power keys move around based on what's convenient. On a standard laptop keyboard, your thumbs hover over alt_l, space and alt_r, so it makes sense, for easy access, to turn alt_l into meta/esc and alt_r into the symbol key. The shift and control keys can stay where they are. Since there is a dedicated enter, your alt can be tucked away in the bottom left corner where the super key was, next to ctrl.

✎ Default

Don't worry, the letter keys themselves don't change from what you're used to (be it QWERTY or something else). The major difference is that capslock becomes backspace, avoiding the huge move your pinky would usually make.

tab  q   w   e   r   t       y   u   i   o   p
bsp  a   s   d   f   g       h   j   k   l   ;   '
del  z   x   c   v   b       n   m   ,   .   /

⇧ Shift

You're already familiar with one of the layers, too: the one exposed by shift.

tab  Q   W   E   R   T       Y   U   I   O   P
bsp  A   S   D   F   G       H   J   K   L   :   "
del  Z   X   C   V   B       N   M   <   >   ?

◇ Symbol

This layer has been crammed full with the remaining symbols. If you simultaneously press a pair of parentheses, brackets or braces, your cursor is automatically put in the middle.

tab  &   [   ]   *   #       %   7   8   9   ^   @
bsp  |   (   )   -   =       ~   4   5   6   $   `
del  !   {   }   _   +       0   1   2   3   /   \

⌘ Meta / 🧭 Navigation

XXX hom  ↑  end pgu XXX     XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX
XXX  ←   ↓   →  pgd XXX     XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX
XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX     XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX

The meta layer has a navigation cluster in the top right, placed so that you can control it with one hand. It contains directional keys, home/end, and pageup/pagedown.

The remaining keys act as if they were pressed with a super modifier. This is convenient as the one key for all non-application-specific shortcuts that you might want to set. For example, I set super+{h,l} for focusing workspaces and super+{j,k} for focusing windows.

⌘ Meta / ✲ Function

Since the navigational cluster obscures half of the super-modified keys, the meta modifier layer is split up into two parts. That is, when you combine it with space, the navigation cluster on the left hand side is lost, and you gain a function key cluster on the right hand side.

XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX      XXX f7  f8  f9 f10 XXX
XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX      XXX f4  f5  f6 f11 XXX
XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX      XXX f1  f2  f3 f12 XXX

Usage

Install keyd (version >=2.3) and copy keyd/default.conf to /etc/keyd/.

slakkenhuis / thumbledore