I tried Emacs six times before liking it. The time it stuck was when I was editing some code in a language where the include/import statements almost matched the directory structure in the filesystem, but didn’t. So, in Vim, I could cursor over an include statement, type gf… and not quite be able to instantly open up the included file. The way gf worked was that it was written in C as part of Vim, and to tell it where to look was a matter of configuration. But I needed a bit of code instead, to make up a couple of places in the filesystem to look on the fly, when I wanted to find-file-at-point (the Emacs term for Vim’s gf functionality). Not only was find-file-at-point written in Elisp, but it already had a place where you could hook some custom code in, and documentation about how to do it. The documentation was available inside the editor (as you might expect from using Vim’s :help), but it also had a link straight to the Elisp source. I was able to try out my function, change, and try again without restarting Emacs, and debug it step-by-step using edebug.

Anyway - have fun with Neovim. I hear it’s spiffy. :)

Uh what units does that measure in

I haven’t built a musical keyboard, but I’ve taken apart a home (electric) organ or two. I hear that one among the many options you have if a modern pipe organ is being made for you, is different strengths of magnets that initially impede your keypresses, like the pneumatic valves would if it weren’t electronically controlled; as well as different woods for your keys. There’s a channel on YouTube to which I’m subscribed where the guy is building his own tiny pipe organ (like, 30 pipes, the size of a large suitcase).

The hexagonal key layout mentioned by others, and also often seen on one side of an accordion, is one among several alternative musical keyboard layouts: the white and black keys are sort of a musical QWERTY. Not the best, but the largest installed base, the most likely for new people to learn, and the most likely to be attached to an arbitrary keyboard instrument you come upon.

I have a Folger Tech i3 2020, so named because its frame is made from 20x20mm aluminum extrusion. No bed levelling, no quiet steppers, no all metal hot end, five years old. I’ve added a part cooling fan whose nozzle I printed off Thingiverse, a janky ring of 24v LED lights, and a cheapo 0.6mm nozzle. Sometimes I have to print part of the first layer a couple of times and move the z end stop to get it right. It takes about 10 minutes every couple of months, so not a big deal.

I say this not to recommend this printer to you today, but to say that even if you don’t manage to get perfect prints out of the box, the fiddling it takes to get what you want is probably not that bad.

Besides keyboards, and an occasional toy car or something, I’ve printed a replacement shade for a little fluorescent kitchen light, an adapter to fit a lampshade that was on sale to a lamp that was on sale, a fancy toilet paper spool, and a custom wrench to try to remove my washing machine’s tub. Oh and brackets that hold my cell phone, so I can use my ergo keyboard to type at a terminal on my phone, broadcast my pirate signal, and hack into the Matrix, while riding the bus. :)

https://github.com/alonswartz/trackpoint is one data point. I don’t know where exactly you’re supposed to get the trackpoint module.

There are all sorts of Corne variants, as I recall, where circular trackpads are added. Some Dactyl Manuform forks add a trackball.

1. This comment is everything I hoped for but didn’t know to expect. Exhaustive, precise, correct, informative, substantive.
2. Yes, dust.
3. MONTY is swamped: 429 Too Many Requests :(

I just bought an oak board about 1/4 inch thick and 6 inches wide, sawed it off about two feet long, and made sure my keyboard was rubberized on the bottom

Awesome! The only other keyboard I’ve seen this on is the Ergowarp. I couldn’t quite manage to tweak it properly, and I have so many nice-to-have requirements floating around in my head that I can’t progress with a design. Well done!

The Beepberry and Pocket CHIP are not unlike these, though they have a portrait form factor and a more raw aesthetic. Small, wide LCDs can be had; it’s tiny keyboards that are hard to get. I’ll add that I don’t value tiny keyboards much: it was a netbook keyboard that first made my wrists hurt, and since that time, I need my keyboard to fit my hands far more urgently than to fit in my pocket.

Earlier than these, I have an HP 95LX: a handheld equivalent to a PC-XT, with a 40x16 character mono LCD and one megabyte of battery-backed RAM, with DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 in ROM. The keyboard is made of HP calculator keys, which were often lauded. It would be somewhat promising for a mod, except it’s vintage enough that hacking it up would be a shame.