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Base Developers Features

The keyboard is designed to enhance the developer's experience across all environments and IDEs. Most features are completely environment-agnostic.

On the base layer, two of the most important keys for developers, Control (on both sides) and Tab, are located on the home row. Alt is also easily accessible on both sides.

The thumbs handle not only spacing but also two of the most frequently used keys —Enter and Backspace— which are typically hard to reach on traditional keyboards.

Symmetric modifiers and thumb keys make all key combinations straightforward, including ones that would be highly unpractical on other keyboards:

  • Control + .../Backspace/Enter/Space
  • Control + Shift + ...
  • Alt + ...

Special Layer

The Special Layer contains numbers, arrows, and all the remaining programming symbols ((, ), [, ], ...) logically positioned based on the frequency of their usage.

CAPS_WORD

This variant of CAPS LOCK is extremely useful as it allows for capitalizing only a single word LIKE_THIS_ONE without holding SHIFT or having to disable CAPS LOCK manually.

Once the word is completed, the capitalization is automatically disabled.

In addition to the letters, the mechanism also supports numbers, underscores, dashes, and Backspace.

The placement of keys and modal editing in vi have been influential in development, providing a more efficient way to edit text. Its efficiency has been well proven and is now available in most editors and as extensions in many applications.

In addition to the features previously mentioned, the following points will additionnaly enhance your experience with Vim/Neovim:

  • The Esc key is conveniently accessible on the thumb
  • On Special Layer
    • Arrow keys are positioned in line with the HJKL keys
    • Position of jump keys: ( ) and { }
    • [ ] prefixes for square brackets commands on the home row

Check this in the guide.

ColeMAX

Numerous developers who utilize modal editing are reluctant to transition to better layouts because of the non logical placement of HJKL keys on them.

The ColeMAX layout is an exclusive layout developped for the ADM42 that adapt the Colemak layout with the requirements for modal editing by applying only two decisives permutations.

First K and J are swapped to place them in a logical position. Then, ;: is swapped with quotes. This restore the home row position of ;: while placing quotes at a stronger position.

As on the ADM42 the arrows key on the special Layer stay at the same position as the original HJKL, the transition to a new layout is made much easier.