Layout feasibility of ZENSAI CHIFFRE
I wasn't fully set on embracing this layout back when I began my 12th iteration of ZENSAI.
When considering what layout I wanted to pursue after the first 65%, I wanted something small. Smaller board, less material cost, less machining time per board, less international shipping cost, all adding up to a baseline pricing scheme to then use as a reference to scale back up to larger, more mainstream layouts, like a 60 or a 75% in the future. Believe it or not, this was the first ever 40% I had used. Initially I thought it'd be impossible for me to daily drive this thing on its own, and that I'd have to constantly hop over to my backup board while test driving. However, after about a month of use, I've managed to switch to this board entirely; not just for typing text, but for various other tasks like gaming and 3d design as well.
A bulk of what made this possible for me was the layout switch mechanism. On the second prototype of the hotswap PCB, I added a 5-pos rotary switch in place of the bottom knob, and bound it to toggle back and forth between 5 different keymap layers. This allowed me to quickly switch between 5 different layouts to access pretty much every single key on a full sized board, without the need to set up complicated combos in QMK.
Doing typing tests on this thing is a breeze, and I got the hang of it very quickly. All the alphas are available on the first layer without any complications, and the colstagger conforms the keys very well to where your fingers sit naturally.
All modifiers, numrow and f-row keys, and a few keys out-of-reach are available on the next layer. I find that hitting some keys like alt+f4 is actually easier here than on a 65% without a dedicated f-row. You should consider making use of split spacebars if you use modifiers like gui and alt all the time, although I tend to rely on switching to layer 2, holding down the set of modifiers I need, switching back to layer 1 while keeping the keys held, and hitting the required alpha.
When I'm not typing text, I usually sit on the 4th layer. This layer has most of your left hand keys including modifiers like ctrl and shift, and numrow keys on the right hand side. I can easily copy and paste things around in a spreadsheet, and punch in numbers really quickly using the right half as a numpad. I created a dedicated numpad and media keys layer as well, but I find myself using layer 4 most of the time for productivity.
Gaming on this thing is pretty sick! Not only can you access WASD as well as ctrl and shift keys comfortably on the 4th layer, but you gain a ton of desk space for swinging your mouse around with the small form factor of the board. Accessing numrow keys is a bit finicky as they'll be on the right hand side, but I've been having a blast playing FPS games with my current setup.
Even if you're somebody like me who does a lot of cad/cam/3d design in general, this board has most of what you need covered. Navigating camera views in 3d space is pretty intuitive on the 4th layer, and I was easily able to map all the most common shortcuts to fit on the left half.
I've thought for a while on what would be optimal in the 5th layer. I threw in some curly brackets here which I occasionally use for writing firmware, but the rest are empty by default. You can use the vial web configurator to change any key to anything you'd like, so I'd strongly encourage customizing this layer to suit your specific workflows.
As I briefly mentioned at the beginning, larger, more user friendly variations of ZENSAI are planned to come in the future. If a 60% variation of this board sounds intriguing to you, you might want to skip this one. However, if you're in the market right now for a wooden board that ships in a week or two, down to try something new, and the current prices for the smolboi parts feel reasonable to you, this might not be a bad pickup! I won't guarantee you'll be able to perform all your everyday tasks smoothly on day 1, but you'll be surprised how far you can get with a bit of practice.
- shoonie