Hi. I’ve been using Dactyl Manuforms for quite a few years now. Settled down with a 5 column with an extremely sculpted SA keycaps and bobba u4t switches. I use only 2/3 thumb keys regularly but enjoy having more.
I’m interested to know if anyone thinks an alternative is worth trying ? Any input would be appreciated!
I've been using a 'standard' dactyl manuform for several years now as well, don't see a reason to change…
Funny, I went the opposite way and went back from smaller boards to adding back the number row. I settled on the Iris, although I've been eyeing building a 4x6 manuform for a while. Layers are fun, until I use some software with a shortcut like Ctrl+Alt+Shift+2… I actually have redundancies, multiple ways to type some characters, for this very reason - mostly numbers and F keys. Sometimes it's really just much more of a hassle to do some key combinations when everything is hidden behind layers.
It's surprising to me that having redundancy isn't common. I've got several ways to get to numbers, arrows, I can reach any key using the left hand only (and one day I'll be arsed to fix things so that the right hand could too). It's mostly theoretical, as some of the combinations are not well memorised, but those I found useful obviously are.
I really felt like I had to build a smaller one, with only five columns, for showing off (to myself mostly, none else at the office could tell the difference, none cares:-)
I thought of building a variant with only 36 keys or one with a trackball, as long as it isn't too expensive. Trackpoint perhaps? I don't know, just bored.
Charybdis nano would be the one to go for then. 35 Keys and a trackball. https://github.com/Bastardkb/Charybdis
Or the Flow if you like that style more and would prefer a more hand wired pi pico style build https://github.com/jsallan/flow