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How do you assign and use special keys? I see I need them frequently, but I have not yet found a way to access them easily on other layers.
So far that is the only reason that keeps me from using my new Piantor.
Well, there are many ways to do that. It's kind of a rabbit hole on its own. For me, I prefer layers to combos to access special keys like symbols, numbers, and function keys.
If you meant modifiers like Ctrl and Shift, I use home row mods. I also started with 40+ keys like a Piantor and swore I would never like home row mods, but ended up loving them after trying it.
Anyway, layers feel pretty intuitive to me. What do you think is making layers not easy for you?
Layers are fine, but I did not yet find the right keys to access those layers. I'm not sure whether I want my shift and ctrl be located on my thumb or pinky keys. I would like my layer switch keys to be on the thumb keys, but then I have to put them there along with shift and ctrl with click, hold, and double click allocations. That is too complicated though.
I'm kind of missing the accessibility of keys on a standard keyboard, but I like the efficiency I can type regular letters on the Piantor.
I haven't tried home row mods yet.
Yeah personally I was never able to fully get used to home row mods. Even after a fair bit of tuning I found that invariably home row mods would start to get in the way of typing speed around the ~60wpm mark. People are always so quick to recommend home row mods as the ultimate solution to finger movement that I tried to stick with it for a fair while but finally switched to dedicated keys for mods and couldn't be happier (plus I finally smashed the 60wpm barrier).
Personally I have shift on both thumb clusters and alt-cmd-ctrl on the left most column of my left split (3x6 layout), the keys that used to be there were moved to combos to make space (ESC is two left most keys middle row, TAB is two left most keys of top row). I've got some of the mods duplicated elsewhere on other layers as well just depending on the use case. Also not using home row mods means you can (probably) use auto shift as well which can potentially eliminate the need for a fully dedicated shift key.
Thanks, that gives me some room for thought! I haven't tried auto shift yet, so I don't know whether it works for German.
I've got a Keyboardio that has the main layer change key as one that you press with your palm. I'm glad it's there, thumb keys are too precious to waste on that.