I designed a lil fantasy keyboard on a plane.
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I designed a lil fantasy keyboard on a plane. Two Tabs, bigger and simpler modifier keys. Bonus: A bit more symmetry.
(The original is in the second image for comparison.)
@mwichary You could also make the Enter key fill two rows like in the German layout.
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@mwichary You could also make the Enter key fill two rows like in the German layout.
@frumble I don’t need that in my fantasy, but I can see the value!
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@frumble I don’t need that in my fantasy, but I can see the value!
@frumble I’d probably do a big-ass Enter instead. Dogleg-shaped.
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@mwichary Why the US layout “Return” key isn't two rows tall (like everywhere else on Earth) will always puzzle me.
@fabienmarry @mwichary Copy that
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@adamrice I think it’s probably Page Up/Down!
@mwichary I am suddenly reminded of the Alan Kay quote “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
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@mwichary If we’re designing a fantasy keyboard, it's missing the Touch Bar. There's room for both!
@gregatron5 Please don’t contaminate my fantasy with bad ideas!
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@gregatron5 Please don’t contaminate my fantasy with bad ideas!
@mwichary Let's not conflate a bad idea with bad implementations.
The Touch Bar was absolute magic in IntelliJ IDEA when debugging. Good implementations are great!
If the F-keys were there AND the Touch Bar had room to breathe, I think it would have found its groove. Think: app-modifiable action buttons with icons. Trying to have it replace too much at once was its death knell.
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Tim Cook hire me you coward
@mwichary be careful what you wish for
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@mwichary Why the US layout “Return” key isn't two rows tall (like everywhere else on Earth) will always puzzle me.
@mwichary I was wondering who I could ask for the reason behind the different US return key... Thought about that dude who kickstarted a whole book about keyboards, looked up his name, his mastodon handle... and came full circle…

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@mwichary Let's not conflate a bad idea with bad implementations.
The Touch Bar was absolute magic in IntelliJ IDEA when debugging. Good implementations are great!
If the F-keys were there AND the Touch Bar had room to breathe, I think it would have found its groove. Think: app-modifiable action buttons with icons. Trying to have it replace too much at once was its death knell.
@gregatron5 *winces forever*
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Tim Cook hire me you coward
@mwichary Figma can’t possibly be going *that* badly
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I designed a lil fantasy keyboard on a plane. Two Tabs, bigger and simpler modifier keys. Bonus: A bit more symmetry.
(The original is in the second image for comparison.)
@mwichary They should make the ortholinear 14x6 dream real.
Perfectly symmetrical
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@mwichary They should make the ortholinear 14x6 dream real.
Perfectly symmetrical
@rogelin Too weird!
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@noiob Too weird, possibly? Unless Enter gets a similar shape.
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@rogelin Too weird!
@mwichary Indeed and also would give funny optical illusion

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@gregatron5 *winces forever*
@gregatron5 Wait, but what made it good in IntelliJ.
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@gregatron5 Wait, but what made it good in IntelliJ.
@mwichary Here's the overview: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html
Basically, when you started debugging (which you could do from the touch bar) it morphed into the debugger controls, with continue, step-into, step-over, step-out, etc. No need to remember which was F7, F8, or cmd-shift-F6.
I think you could setup the default view with custom actions, like rename, extract variable, etc to make common tasks easier, but my Intel MBP needs to charge before I can turn it on to check.
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