[atreus] New layout with improved arrows

  • From: Phil Hagelberg <phil@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: atreus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 14:36:56 +0700

Hello folks.

I've been pretty happy with the default Atreus layout for a long time,
but recently I started working on writing a game with my kids, and the
controls for the game are a bit different from anything I typically use;
they require the use of the arrow keys. (For various reasons, rebinding
is not practical.) The lack of easily reachable arrow keys on the
default Atreus layout finally started to bug me.

I tried a few variations, but what I came up with was pretty similar to
the existing layout, except with an inverted T of arrows under the first
three fingers of the left hand on the fn layer. Here's a rough rendition:

! @ up { } pgup 7 8 9 *
# left down right $ pgdn 4 5 6 +
[ ] ( ) & ` 1 2 3 \

The bottom row remains the same.

You lose the nice symmetry of the {}/()/[] brackets lining up, but I
think having the arrows right at the resting position of those fingers
makes up for it.

It does mean that the "you should never have to hit both fn *and* shift"
rule no longer holds--%, ^, |, and ~ now require both modifiers. If you
typically scroll with an analog input device, you may want to replace
pageup/pagedown with some of these characters, but I kept them since
pageup and pagedown are also commonly used to change tabs.

Different usage patterns are going to work best with different
variations, so it's good to experiment to see what works best for you,
but I have heard a number of people complain about the arrow keys being
difficult to hit in the default layout. So if you're one of those who
uses the arrows a lot, try layout_qwerty_alt.h or layout_multidvorak_alt.h
in the atreus-firmware repo and let me know what you think.

Phil

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