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70% Keyboard Layout Design Without Modifiers

While toying around with 40% and 30% designs, I noticed that I can easily live without modifier keys and use tap-or-hold on the bottom row keys (usually the row with ZXCV).

But I also noticed that prefer to still have keys for e.g. ;',.-=, numbers and actually also function keys. (The number keys correspond to the virtual desktops 1 to 10 in my i3 setup and the functions keys to the virtual desktops 11 to 22.)

And of course I need a dedicated cursor key cluster, too!

So tried to see how a keyboard layout would look like which incomproates all those constraints while leaving out those keys I don't need.

Why? Because I can! 😉

The Design

XTNM 70

NM = No Mods

XTNM 70

layout as JSON file for the KLE

All keys are standard key sizes and rows except Ins which needs a different key in case the keycap set makes a difference between row 0 and row 1.

Since I always use (at least) the Menu key as Compose key, I labelled it as such.

Usage

Using Tap-or-Hold
  • A and Enter are Shift on hold
  • Z and / are Control on hold
  • X and . are Super (Windows/OS keys) on hold
    • Yes, I only need that key as modifier as I don't use Windows.
  • C and , are Alt on hold
  • Space is Fn (layer switch) on hold. (That concept is nowadays known as SpaceFn although the original idea worked a little bit different.)

If you need to auto-repeat keys, e.g. Space, press it once, release it, press it immediately again and hold it down. (QMK's so called tap-dance.)

Using Space as layer switch
  • The cursor keys are Home/End, PageUp/PageDown.
  • Backspace is Delete
  • Tab is Caps-Lock (usually only needed to unfuck weird systems and KVM switches)
  • Scroll Lock, Pause/Break, Print Screen are undecided yet, but I actually don't care. Probably F10 to F12 or so.

Nicknames

Those names came into my mind first, because they're a pun on used features

  • TableDance70 (because it makes use of QMK features often called "tap dance")
  • StripDance70 (dito plus because the stripped modifier keys)