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dima55 parent
Is there a single person in the world that LIKES the half-height up/down keys?
mort96
I like keyboards with those half-height keys. I don't use arrow keys much, so it's nice that they don't take up so much space that other parts must be compromised.

I really don't like this design though where the left/right keys are full size (or other designs where they put things like page up/down buttons above the left and right buttons). I don't mind that the arrow keys are a squished inverted T shape, but I really do think they should get to be an inverted T shape. When I do want to use arrow keys, I want to be able to easily locate them by touch without looking down at the keyboard.

kesslern
I do, but they should be paired with half height Page Up and Page Down keys. It's weird with the left/right keys as full size.
blacksmith_tb
Ah, so in two rows pg up, up arrow, pg down left arrow, down arrow, right arrow I do like that layout, I have an old Dell Precision like that (though even its small keycaps are pretty big). My Framework 13 has the funny full-size left and right on either side of half-height up/down, which is kind of annoying, but you can get used to it, mostly.
zerocrates
Probably my preference over there is half-height inverted T, with just gaps above left and right: I'm happy to do Fn for page up/page down/home/end, and find this is the easiest layout to use by touch. Of course full-height is good too, but only if all four directions are going to be full height.
EvanAnderson
The half-height keys are fine. I've used HP machines w/ them for years and gotten used to them.

Sharing the arrows w/ Home/End is awful, though. I don't know how anybody could live with having to use a modifier key to get those. I already combine modifiers with Home/End a ton. Having to add 3rd modifier (Ctrl-Shift-Fn-Left) to get "select from here to the top/bottom" sounds like painful hand gymnastics.

numpad0
Objectively better than the mad man [<][>][^][v] arrangement of old Macs
apricot
I hate them, and will not buy a laptop that has them.
sixothree
I can't tell you how much I need TKL. I'm so tired of seeing numpads and not navigation keys. Literally all day long I'm using shift-home, ctl-shift-end, ctl-arrow, ctl-shift-arrow, pretty much any combination. I need these keys.
browningstreet
..as much as the CTRL key being moved to the wrong place.

(Yes, I could map this elsewhere, but I use too many different machines.)

mananaysiempre
Define "wrong"? Ctrl-Fn-Super-Alt has been used for ages by everyone except IBM/Lenovo and Apple[1], and (for what it's worth) Fn left of Ctrl is explicitly not recommended by ISO[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fn_key#Fn_and_Control_key_plac...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_9995#Function_keys

gonzalohm
And for Lenovo you can change it in the BIOS
browningstreet
When I started in computers, the CTRL key is where CAPS sits nowadays. At some point it moved.

To me, it makes no sense to me to make less-reachable the key that gets used the most. To reach the current CTRL key, I have to bend and twist my hand so that the pinky finger can reach the CTRL key. I never use the CAPS LOCK key, which is sitting under and adjacent to where the pinky rests.

mananaysiempre
Ah. Yes, OK, I sympathize with this sentiment but also feel it’s something of a lost cause for mass-produced keyboards. As far as Ctrl moving from one position to another, from what I can find it’s more that the two options coexisted for while, and eventually the current (and arguably worse) one outcompeted the other.

Specifically:

- The ADM-3A[1] (mid ’70s) had Ctrl above Shift and apparently no Caps Lock.

- The Lisp machines[2,3] (late ’70s to mid ’80s) had Ctrl below Shift and Rub Out above Shift.

- The IBM 3270 series (from the early ’70s onwards) terminals (those that were capable of lower-case input) are pictured in Wikipedia[4] with a Caps Lock above Shift and no Ctrl (which agrees with their input model) but I get the impression that IBM produced a bajillion keyboard variations for these.

- The Model F variants for the XT and the AT (first half of the ’80s) has Ctrl above left Shift, Alt below it, and Caps Lock below right Shift[5], as well as 5×2 function keys on the left and no separate arrow keys; the later Model M variants (1985 onwards) use the modern layout; yet once again, looking at the separate pages for the Model F and the Model M, I get the impression that IBM simply produced a bajillion different versions of them.

- The ANSI standard to which the appellation of “ANSI layout” refers is ANSI X3.154-1988, so presumably things had settled by then?..

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adm3aimage.jpg

[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Space-cadet.jpg

[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Symbolics-keyboard.j...

[4] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM-3279.jpg

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_keyboard#Keyboard_layou...

gonzalohm
What do you mean? Most laptops have

Ctrl | Fn | windows | alt

Which matches what one should expect from a desktop keyboard (Ctrl is the left-most key)

Macha
Given how much more I press ctrl than fn, fn on the left drives me crazy on the few laptops that do it.
soco
If most laptops = HP then yes. However my Lenovo has Fn | Ctrl...
nucleardog
Where "most laptops" = "everything except Lenovo and Apple", more or less.

Easily verified with a simple image search for "<brand> laptop keyboard" where "<brand>" is not Lenovo or Apple.

Which is probably also why Lenovo's BIOS has an option to swap the Fn and Ctrl keys.

kej
Lenovo seems to be joining the rest of the world with Ctrl | Fn, based on the new ThinkPad I was issued at work a few weeks ago. I know the older Fn | Ctrl systems had a BIOS option to swap them, but I'm not sure if the new ones still have that.
numpad0
There aren't many laptops with Control key in the correct spelling and placement like how and where it is on HHKB, even most MacBooks except JIS builds get it wrong.
bryanlarsen
On keyboards with a sane layout, the ctrl key can be pressed with the meat of your hand rather than one of the fingers. This is harder on a laptop keyboard than it is with a proper desktop keyboard, but is still possible.

... as long as the keyboard has the proper layout, with ctrl in the far bottom left. One thing that Apple gets wrong and this keyboard gets right.

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