Command Classic

Tsundoku's keyboard concept. Concept, goals, etc. here.

Concept

The Tsundoku Keyboard is intended for a range of GUI environments that follow the general principles established by the Apple Macintosh. This broadly includes:

• Mac OS
• BeOS and Haiku
• NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, Mac OS X (macOS)
• tsundoku's custom X11 environment

Prior Art

The keyboard design mostly derives from Apple layouts of the 1980s through the mid-1990s, before the AppleDesign keyboard made Apple's variant of the IBM AT Enhanced layout a de facto standard on the Mac platform.

• Escape on number row, left of 1 key
• R2 1.75U Control (left of A)
• Arrow keys on right side of bottom row - left, right, down, up
• No function keys
  • Not expected to be used often
  • Fn layer on number row enables them to be used when necessary
• Number pad that is always a number pad (no Num Lock)
• Large Command and Option keys

Compromises

• (JIS only) No 英数 key left of spacebar
  • 3.5U spacebars unavailable. Would need to be custom made
  • Use slightly more common 4.5U spacebar

• IBM style number pad operator keys
  • Mac-style operators would require custom keycaps
  • IBM style operator keys are not particularly objectionable

Variants

• JIS
• ANSI

Design Goals

• • Large Command and Option keys for people who use them often
• Not minimalist
  • Dedicated arrow keys
  • Coincidentally smaller than 101/104 keyboards, but compactness itself is not a goal
• No IBM-style nav cluster
  • Arrow keys can go on the bottom row as on many Apple keyboards
  • Home/End/PageUp/PageDown on Fn layer of arrow keys
• Has a tenkey
  • No Num Lock (no modes!). Always numbers

Problems with existing PCBs

Reasons why the Tsundoku Keyboard must be designed from scratch.

• No JIS Right Shift support
• Layouts all referenced from AT101/Windows 104
  • 75%, 60%, etc... all expressed as reductions of AT101
  • No consideration for different combinations of elements. Tenkeyless? 75% 60%? What about a tenkey but no IBM nav cluster?