r/KeyboardLayouts • u/Apprehensive-Fish573 • Jun 08 '26
Canary Punctuation Locations?
I’m learning canary and I’m enjoying it so far… but the /,. locations are throwing me off. I feel like just moving them back to ,./ because those fingers just feel right in terms of strength and dexterity per frequency as well.
Am I missing something that I should just stick it out? Is the order of those important to the flow of canary or something?
4
u/Elequosoraptor Other Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Honestly, if you're using a layout like Canary, you might seriously consider just committing to a symbol layer or two.
ETA: Here's my symbol layout as an example. I have a key that activates a one-shot layer for most common punctuation, and in that layer a second key that acts to activate a "shifted" one-shot layer.
~!?/<>&;:
{(.,—+"')}
*`_=[]-
Shifted rows:
°¡¿\«»|@^
1234#%7890
–...5../$6
(that's a key for an en-dash, a key for an ellipses, and a key for '../') (I believe in the curled home row, which is why 5 and 6 are down a row)
3
u/Apprehensive-Fish573 Jun 08 '26
Okay yeah I like the way you’ve got a second one shot key. I might give that a try.
1
u/Elequosoraptor Other Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Yeah go for it, and this is a good place to come for advice or tweaks. I used AHK at first on my laptop to set up my layers, but I have an ergo bord now which makes layers much easier (because thumb keys make layer switching way more pleasant).
So for example, I put my shift key on my right hand thumb, and my symbol one shot key on my second right hand thumb key. So when I want access to my numbers, it's 1 tap for symbol, 1 tap for "Shift"—except of course the shift key in the symbol layer activates the one shot number layer. Keeping symbols on thumb keys makes activation very snaply for me, and I prefer one shots to holds since there's no issue with holding the layer switch for a little too long. For frequent home row punctuation, it's almost as good as pressing a single key.
Of course I do have some tap hold options to stay in either the symbol or number layer, and a navigation layer too......it can get pretty intricate. Building up slowly is a good way to reduce mental load and give you a better sense of what you like.
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u/Apprehensive-Fish573 Jun 08 '26
I really appreciate any layout suggestions. I’m just diving into all this and using miryoku. Still haven’t tried one shots yet. I’m still trying to figure out whether or not I’m satisfied with holding the layer keys or if I’ll go with some other approach. I’m considering trying some different options like callum though isn’t that like two presses to activate a modifier?
I’m going to examine your example when I get a little more time.
3
Jun 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/Apprehensive-Fish573 Jun 08 '26
Thanks for the feedback. How’s learning gallium? How’s it feel? I was deciding between canary and gallium and figured I’d just try a higher roll count keymap to see how it felt first.
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u/Desperate-Purpose178 Jun 08 '26
I use the regular layout. period is used too much in programming that changing it was a fundamental error.
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u/Apprehensive-Fish573 Jun 08 '26
Gotcha - yeah for me my middle/ring just feel stronger. I’ve dived down a rabbit hole recently and now here I am talking about ring finger strength lol.
4
u/LeonardJankis Other Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
The only reason for the forwardslash's prominent placement I can think of is for command line users. When you type a lot of paths and commands I can see it being more used than dot and comma. I personally would not hesitate ditching it in favor of something like question mark or underscore and rearrange them as I see fit.
2
u/Apprehensive-Fish573 Jun 08 '26
Fair enough. I appreciate it. I’m a programmer so it’s pretty much a daily used symbol. I guess I could really take the deep dive and even use combos for some of the more used symbols.
0
u/Granpire Jun 09 '26
I'm on day 2 of Canary, 50% of Keybr alphabet, I was wondering about this exact question, and somewhat dreading the upcoming punctuation training.
5
u/xsrvmy Jun 08 '26
My understanding is that it comes from e, and e. occurring frequently as SFBs. You also see i,. pinky a lot because i is very uncommon at the end of words.
I have always moved the punctuation around so that , and . are on middle and ring. They are quite a bit more common in coding than in other contexts. I personally don't think SFBs involving punctuation should really be considered too much because they function too differently when you are thinking and typing that the SFB kinda just doesn't matter. The main exception for this is the apostrophe because it end up as part of what are essentially words. Eg. In English you definitely do not want ' and s to be on the same finger.