In this session I'll focus on various aspect of modern keyboards and their outdated design and walk through the improvements the open source community brought to this field.
- Hardware: Physical layout and how to improve on a design that dates back to the 19th century. Columnar stagger, split keyboards, thumb clusters and splay will be the keywords for this section.
- Software: How the open source keyboard firmwares changed how we use the keyboard. I'll talk about advanced firmware features like layers, mod-taps, caps word and combos.
- Layout: Functional layout and how the QWERTY layout was designed to slow you down (really!). I'll talk about modern alternatives like Dvorak, Colemak-DHm and Miryoku which leverages the more advanced features of modern firmwares.
Finally I'll put everything together and talk about my current daily driver: a 34-keys bluetooth split keyboard powered by the open source ZMK firmware and the Miryoku layout.
Objective of the presentation:
In this talk I'll guide you through the benefits of a custom keyboard layout focusing on a reduced number of keys and what software tools will make this a viable option. Starting from a normal keyboard, I'll talk about its outdated and un-ergonomic design flaws and how the open source community fixed them both in hardware and software.
Attendee pre-requisites - If none, enter "N/A":
N/A