Regarding keycaps and non-standard keyboard layouts

Question

1.30K views06/30/2023

oogieboogie 06/18/2023 0 Comments

Hi! These keyboards have been in my sights for a while.

I’ve been thinking about investing in one of the keyboards (possibly the ortholinear split ergonomic, or the ultra compact f77 model), but had some questions about it.

After looking through the Q&A’s and manuals, I noticed you can reprogram these with QMK, which is great! I am thinking about using this keyboard with a non-standard layout like carpalx, and it would be easy by reprogramming it through QMK. However, I am unsure about the keycaps.

I’ve had an old IBM Model M122 in the past, which had the “keycaps” with the stem to hold the switch, and thin keycaps on top of that with the printed characters on them. Do these new Model F keyboards have similar two-piece keycaps per switch, or is it one solid keycap + key stem?

Thanks!

1 Answer

Answer 1 · 2023-06-30T10:27:08+00:00

admin Posted 06/18/2023 3 Comments

Glad you are joining the project! The keys are all one-piece and they can be placed on various rows as there is no profile with Model F / M keys.

Confirmed the keyboard can be reprogrammed by QMK. Each physical key on the keyboard can be set to be any key.

oogieboogie commented 06/30/2023

Thank you for answering my question so quickly!

I was just wondering one more thing; Since these are reprogrammable with QMK, are these profiles/layout already available in tools like the QMK Configurator?

That website in particular has an enormous list of layouts available. Are the keyboards recognizable by a specific (group) name in that list?

If I were to use the QMK Toolbox, would it automatically recognize which keyboard is being used? Thanks!

oogieboogie commented 06/30/2023

Thank you for answering so quickly!

I was just wondering one more thing. Since they are reprogrammable in QMK, are the profiles/layout already available on something like the QMK Configurator website?

That list has an enormous list with keyboards, though. If they are listed there, what name can I search for to find them more quickly in the list? Thanks!

admin commented 06/30/2023

For now you need to use the beta QMK web site – please review the step by step instructions in the manual linked to at the top of each page. Various template layouts (.json files) can also be downloaded from there.