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
National Variants
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?