Felix Kühling explains how hexagonal keys work surprisingly well in an ergonomic layout without fine-tuning parameters like hand rotation, column stagger and splay.

kbd.news is running their Advent Calendar for the second year and I’m honoured they chose my article about Mantis and hexagonal keys in ergo keyboards for opening it. Enjoy the read and have a happy holiday season …

  • luckybipedal@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    That’s a cool find. I had not heard of the Klacker BS. The exact spacing and hand angle will be slightly different but pretty close. Column-staggered hexagonal keys give you 18.6mm between columns and 21.5 between rows with a 30° angle. 0.5u row-staggered MX keys with 19mm spacing give you about 17mm between columns and 21.2mm between rows at 26.6°. Also the resulting column-stagger is not exactly 0.5u but about 0.45u.

    Klacker BS doesn’t eliminate the top inner index finger key. Moving that to the pinkies like Mantis does, would bring the hands 1u closer together.

    • humanplayer2@lemmy.ml
      0·
      10 months ago

      Thanks for doing the math! I’m not quite sure I follow: why is the lengths different for row and columns on the Mantis? Are you calculating to the press point of your sculpted keycaps?