Well, normal keyboards are staggered, while there ...
# tornadofxe
edvin
07/18/2017, 3:33 PMWell, normal keyboards are staggered, while there is no good reason for them to be. Moving your fingers up and down a grid is much easier for us humans, and lends itself much better to using more fingers while touch typing. On a normal keyboard you use your weak pinkies a lot, for stuff like enter and maybe backspace (many use the ring finger there). It makes a lot of sense to use the strong index finger instead, so enter and backspace is placed vertically in the middle of the keyboard. It also forces you to use the right hand and not cross over into the other hand's territory. Then you have the split space bar. Most people use only one thumb, the other is just hanging there. On TornadoKeyboard one of the space bars (or both) is an FN key, so holding that will enable F rows on top as well as arrow keys and even mouse control. It is also fully programmable, so you can change the layout and functionality around however you choose. There will be a graphical configurator written in TornadoFX of course. The F row is removed, because it's just too long a reach, you can't get to it without moving your whole hand/palm. Therefore you just reuse the number keys while holding FN for F keys. There are lots of other goodies as well.