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Ever tried to type ALT-F8 or CTRL-U with one hand? Not easy. It can require very ungainly hand positionings. It's really annoying if you spend most of the time running applications or browsing with just a mouse or the arrow keys plus page-up/down/enter, and then have to bring the other hand into place
to select a command from the keyboard.
My suggestion is to mount a third cluster of CTRL, ALT, SHIFT, and anything similar you have on your keyboard, in a convenient location just above F5 and F6. The current layout is great for touch-typing but useless for one-handed programming (if you have to hold a book open, take notes from the screen, hold your place with finger in a column of figures, eat, etc.) Since many programmers have pretty unorthodox typing styles, and people are using their keyboards less and less, I think this could be popular.
You couldn't solve this by re-mapping the function keys to be control and alt, because I often need to press combinations of them with ctrl and alt in the applications I use.
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And while you're at it, put Delete nearer to Ctrl and Alt so I can use one hand to try and break out of the BSOD while using the other to attack the computer with whatever heavy object is near to hand. |
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'many programmers have pretty unorthodox typing styles'
Not just programmers. My manager types solely with his right index finger, using his left index finger for the <shift> key.
I can manage ALT+F9 with one hand on my Dell QuietKey keyboard, but any greater stretch is beyond me. Have a pastry. |
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I can stretch to ALT-F10 on my full-size IBM keyboard. Or Right-Shift-A, if I wanted to. |
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While we're at it, let's move the keypad to the left side. That way I can keep my mouse on the right yet still have the alphabet keys 'centered' in front of me. As it is, I either have to slide the whole keyboard over (which can leave no room for a mouse on some keyboard drawers) or keep the keyboard centered but slide my hands 3" to the left to type. |
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See pottedstu's last paragraph, PS. |
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This is a nice idea. The problem with remappable is that the keyboard becomes a carnival mystery house--everything is then mislabeled.
Related (sorta'), I once saw foot pedals for SHIFT, ALT (Mac:OPTION), and CTRL keys. Thought them a good idea. Especially for Photoshop and other tablet input use. |
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I read the last paragraph. Remap F6 to be a shift key (not shift+F6), map F7 to alt, rearrange the rest, and either cut out two function keys you never use, or if you must have access to all of F1-F12 then move your favorite two to the windows & menu keys in between the right alt&ctrl buttons. |
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The Japanese Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro has about a dozen extra keys on it for remapping fetishists, or I guess Japanese people. |
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Working for IBM, I have the old time big iron IBM keyboards <take two men and a small boy to carry them, 17 years old.> and I can reach almost anything on the keyboard with one hand, from right-control to the number 2 or the F2 key, and the Three-Finger-Buggeroff is simple. |
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Go back to your Mac and get MacOS X which is very stable (well, it's just BSD Unix with a thin veneer of pretty graphics on top, isn't it?). |
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