Open-Sourcing our Firmware

Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by varispeed on Friday January 21, 2022 @02:08PM (#30028429)

This is I don't understand. Why laptop manufacturers neglect probably the most important thing that is the keyboard? Almost every single laptop that comes out these days looks like the keyboard is an afterthought. Why can't I have full size cursor keys? Pg Up, Pg Down, Home, End and few others?

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by tomtheelder on Friday January 21, 2022 @02:24PM (#30028684)

I suspect majority of users never touch Pg Up/Pg Dn/Home/End and all those other keys over there. For arrow keys, the compacted layout is helpful when designing a space constrained keyboard, and it's totally usable.

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by varispeed on Friday January 21, 2022 @03:51PM (#30029825)

Wouldn't that be because these keys are difficult to use in typical laptop keyboard, as in self fulfilling prophecy?

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by franga2000 on Friday January 21, 2022 @05:15PM (#30030670)

It probably doesn't help, but it definitely isn't the reason. Most people still do their work on desktops with full-sized keyboards and they already don't use those keys there.

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by varispeed on Friday January 21, 2022 @05:38PM (#30030867)

So how they e.g. move around cells in the spreadsheet or documents?

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by franga2000 on Friday January 21, 2022 @05:44PM (#30030931)

Mouse. If you're correcting data in a spreadsheet you're probably jumping around a lot and a mouse makes more sense and if you're entering new data most people I've worked with use tab and enter.

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by dsego on Friday January 21, 2022 @04:01PM (#30029939)

fn+arrow combo is imho equally as usable

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by orthecreedence on Saturday January 22, 2022 @03:42AM (#30034885)

I hate fn+arrow as an alternative to having real home/end/pgup/pgdown keys. It's probably the thing I hate most about my blade laptop.

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by dsego on Saturday January 22, 2022 @10:38AM (#30037563)

Why? Do you feel similar about not having a "real" dedicated key to ctrl+c / ctrl+v ?

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by orthecreedence on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @06:29PM (#30079639)

Because I came from a laptop that had home/end/pgup/pgdn and grew fully accustomed to those keys for keyboard navigation (which is my bread and butter these days).

The alternative was to get a 15" laptop, which is slightly too big for me, so I suffer in silence and occasionally bitch about it on forums.

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by jlokier on Saturday January 22, 2022 @09:09PM (#30042966)

It takes two hands to use Fn+Up/Down instead of PageUp/PageDown keys to scroll around. These keys are for some people the most common keys used for fast nevigation in code and documents.

Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V are used far less often, and you can type them with one hand.

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Re:Open-Sourcing our Firmware by dsego on Sunday January 23, 2022 @09:06AM (#30046208)

> It takes two hands to use Fn+Up/Down instead of PageUp/PageDown keys to scroll around

Doesn't seem like a big deal, I'm trying to think of a situation where I need the other hand to be free while paging or moving to end of the line.

> These keys are for some people the most common keys used for fast nevigation in code and documents.

Seems like a personal preference. I have a working trackpad so I almost never use them. Also, home/end on a thinkpad are out of reach anyway. And what's the point of 'insert' ?

> Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V are used far less often,

I use these constantly, I don't remember touching home/end ever, pg up/dwn maybe by accident.

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