Does anyone here use a numpad? What for? I made my own macropad[1] but I struggle to find a use, the only thing I use it for is CAD shortcut keys. Any ideas are welcome!
[1] https://immich.home.stavros.io/share/GE_noaUx1_cayK9WDVvzutr...
Does anyone here use a numpad? What for? I made my own macropad[1] but I struggle to find a use, the only thing I use it for is CAD shortcut keys. Any ideas are welcome!
[1] https://immich.home.stavros.io/share/GE_noaUx1_cayK9WDVvzutr...
> Does anyone here use a numpad?
Yes.
> What for?
Inputting numbers.
The number row is too wide and too offset on a staggered keyboard to really work for me. I'd be interested in trying a full-width ortholinear keyboard, but can't find any.
Oh durr, I forgot about that. I have remapped tilde so when it's held down it turns the right half of my keyboard into a numpad, so I use that for numbers. I guess I was more asking if anyone uses macropads.
I've personally replaced keymacros by things like Alfred's workflows (or Raycast's): aka a universal command palette.
It's usually very fast to type "cmd-space", and then type 3-4 letters to find the macro I want.
Yeah, I use a similar utility, plus I've built a custom QMK-based keyboard that has extra shortcut layers. I think macropads might still be useful for per-app shortcut layers, but in practice I don't find myself using it that much.
I don't use a numpad, but a friend of mine swears by them for playing roguelikes. It makes it much easier to move diagonally in a single turn.
If you play any games with keyboard and mouse, you could bind some letters/numbers from the right half of the keyboard and then place the macropad on the left so you don't have to take your hand off the mouse to hit anything.
For another idea, you could bind pgup/pgdn or scroll wheel up and down for scrolling webpages, IRC backlog, etc.
Roguelikes are a great use case. I used to play Castle of the Winds all the time with a number pad, Shift+7913 fast movement FTW.
Hmm that's a very good use case, thanks! I'll keep it in mind for next time, I think it wouldn't have occurred to me if you hadn't said it.
Same with MUDs: a numpad is a critical piece of kit for getting around those rooms with north/northeast/east style exits.
True, but also thank god for speedwalking.
I do when I'm using a keyboard that has one, for numeric input, but I don't do this often enough to prefer it to the smaller form factor of a tenkeyless keyboard.
My usual layout, left to right, is Magic Trackpad, tenkeyless keyboard, mouse on mousepad cut down to roughly the size of a Magic Trackpad (with a larger mousepad on hand for gaming and other precision applications).
Quite a bit - I have a bunch of custom shortcuts for musical notation (adding dynamics, expression, etc.) for rapidly entering music into my notation software.
As a 90s phone user where you text on one it feel like a fast way to type a credit card number or similar. Pretty rare use case with modern keychains and password managers though.
Man, T9 was the best though.