Keyboard 37 Keys

[Eugene Aubry]

Inevery keyboard that I have used, the keys are arranged so that the keys are staggered a small increment to the left from the previous row. Q is above and slightly to the left of A, and A is above and slightly to the left of Z. This pattern continues across the entire board. Case in point:

What is the motivation behind this design? I would think that a column layout would be easier to type on - and indeed, many ergonomic keyboards seem to go with a column layout, where Q is directly above A and so on.

After that, it was what industry was tooled up to make, and what people were used to. And there hasn't been a big enough change to typing to get most people to change over to a matrix (non staggered) layout since. Just like most people still use a qwerty layout even though there are other better layouts around.

Keyboards without staggered keys are generally much easier to type on, but hard to find. For example, I built my own keyboard without staggered keys, which I love. You can see the right hand of it below:

My guess is that it's a skeumorphic carryover from mechanical typewriters. Note how the rows are shifted differing amounts, they are not all uniformly shifted from the rows above and below by half a key's width. This might have been done to allow all the mechanical levers connected to the keys to have their own plane to move up and down in and not collide with the levers of other keys.

The computer keyboard as we know it today came from mechanical typewriters, because at the time the first computers were developed many people were already trained in typing on those machines, so using the old design helped with marketing and eliminated the need to retrain. At the time computers came to be, typewriters already existed for over 100 years, and they underwent a significant evolution in that time. One thing however remained relatively constant within that evolution: the placement of keys on the keyboard. This "QWERTY" keyboard can be traced to the Sholes and Glidden typewriter designed around 1868. (Other typewriters with different designs existed before, but it is the Sholes and Glidden one which became commercially successful.) The notes from the inventors indicate that they designed their keyboard after the piano keyboard (in fact, originally there were two rows of keys only).

When the rows are shifted one relative to another, each key in the middle has 6 equidistant neighbors. This means a finger can easily jump from one key to other six. With the rectangular grid, each key would have had only 4 direct neighbors, whereas other 4 neighbors would be roughly 1.4 times further away.In a 10-finger typing method the fingers almost never have to travel more than one key away from their "home" location, which means the triangular grid is more ergonomic.

On the other hand, we see that on mobile devices and tablets the "virtual keyboard" uses a rectangular grid (well, at least on those devices that I own). This is because nobody uses a 10-finger typing method on a smartphone, and hence rectangular keyboard becomes slightly more preferred.

This answer has been mostly made up using the information from the first three steps of this Ask Ubuntu answer and this Ubuntu Forums thread to which it links/refers to. This other Ask Ubuntu answer was very helpful to. So all credit to NES, llazarte, bodhi.zazen and Argusvision.

Doing the same for PrtSc did not give any output in xev for me (or I could not find the "KeyPress event") so I used Argusvision's advice for using the Custom Shortcuts in All Settings but doing so in order to disable PrtSc as screenshot button by reassigning as Shift + Alt then tried pressing again which gave me keycode 107 for PrtSc in xev like so

Now that we have the key codes for identifying the keys we now make the system do what we want by using xmodmap and as we know F9 has "keycode 75" and PrtSc has the action of "Print" all we need to do is

Go to System Settings > keyboard > Custom Shortcuts. Here you can assign a command to any key or set of keys. Click the add (+) button. In the window that pops up, Name = Print Screen ; Command = gnome-screenshot. After you've created it, click on the line to the right of the name where it says "Disabled". That should change it to "New Accelorator" Just press F9.

After a little looking, I found an answer for scroll lock. I got started on this answer from what I found here. You should be able to apply it to any set of keys using xmodmap from the terminal. Edit: You can also read more about Xmodmap here

You could also look through man xmodmap and xmodmap --help for additional options.

For example, xmodmap -pke lists your keymap table as expressions. That way you can locate the expressions assigned to other keys as well.

Exactly the same happened when I was cleaning keys. Go into Accessibility - assistive touch - mouse keys - then press turn off. I haven't had the problem since. It is a weird combination you have entered on your keyboard whilst cleaning. That should work.

My keyboard number keys [above the letters] stopped working properly, both as numbers and as symbols. Only 5 and 6 are functional. Also, I've noticed that the End key isn't working either, and perhaps a couple more from that group.

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with those evil Sticky Keys/Filter Keys/ whatever those ease of access things are, BUT I've turned off all the ease of access keyboard options and nothing has changed. Is it possible that something is still turned on while I unchecked it? Are the on/off checkboxes to control WHEN it happens or IF it happens?I also tried rebooting and uninstalling/reinstalling keyboard from device manager, to no avail.

I've had the same problem, weirdly on both our main and laptop computers, within a week of each other. was getting really annoying, kept getting locked out as passwords didn't work, couldn't enter credit card details (maybe no bad thing.... perhaps my husband set it on purpose)

Read all the answers, and figured it's just some key combination that possibly the kids have pressed (or me in a strop!). Tried the things suggested - and finally just pressed as many keys as possible (both hands) and what do you know? I'm back in business! I'm sure people who know stuff about computers will be horrified and maybe my computer will self destruct in 5 seconds, but it's good for now!

It turned out to be a Trojan Horse infecting Explorer and it could be traced to a bogus ADOBE upload or patch in Explorer. Look for a misnamed ADOBE.COM directory in Program Files or Windows and delete it. It has been attached to Explorer as it seems to be a nuisance only in that program.

We wonder if this came in as a result of loading Ad-Aware or due to some gaming sites my young son goes to. Finally, we just did went back to a previous system restore point - but it has been persistent - and annoying...

I could not resolve a big keyboard problem that suddenly appeared from nowhere - most keys did not work, and those that did were not acting as usual. I had tried plugging in a USB keyboard to see if the usual wireless one had gone AWOL, but the USB keyboard behaved identically. So I (wrongly) decided it had to be the PC+software at fault.

I noticed by a lucky accident that the Alt key on the wireless keyboard was stuck in the depressed condition. As I had never removed that keyboard from the equation it obviously affected the USB keyboard too. So check that none of your keys on any connected keyboards are jammed down!

I had the same issue with iBall wireless keyboard. Keys 5,6,F1,F2,+,-,=_ were not working. I opened the keyboard and cleaned it with a tissue paper. It had very small dust particles. After cleaning it worked perfectly.

This question now 9 years old, but the issue is still occurring. I have an HP Pavillion Sleekbook, 15-b010tx running Windows 8.1 Professional. The computer runs NordVPN (using NordLynx protocol) and Avira AntiVirus.

After experimentation, I found that pressing the "=" key and then "backspace" cleared the problem and restored keys to full functionality .... until it happens again a minute, an hour or a week later - completely random. I have not as yet managed to find any rhyme or reason as to why this occurs - although ... probably coincidence .... it started happening after the most recent 8.1 update ....

I just recently purchased an HP Envy m6-1205dx laptop and i noticed that certain keys wont work on the keyboard. None of these particular keys work in Windows or on the BIOS screen. I am on my second replacement keyboard and i am having the same issue. The main keys that dont work are the "asdf" and "jkl:" Also, the main enter key does not work. The one on the number pad does. Considering i have trie multiple keyboard with the same result, i would have to assume it is something else entirely. Please help, this is driving me crazy.

This is a great question other customers may also be wondering about. When we have come to a resolution, please share what worked for you with others by marking this post as an Accepted Solution. If you would like to show you appreciation for my efforts today, please take a second to click the Thumbs Up button below.

Now i am having issues with the keyboard again. This time the num lock will not activate nor do these keys work: f3, f6, f10, t, y, [, ] I tried the same process as before and went through the troubleshooting guide to no avail. I also tried a new keyboard and i have the same issue. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Or it would allow me to easily set a keyboard shortcut to not run if I'm holding down another key (I have Ctrl+Option+Left, Ctrl+Option+Up, and I want to add a keyboard sequence that triggers Ctrl+Option+Left+Up that does something different; but currently it seems I can't easily prevent the standard shortcuts I configured from running; except to tell them to not run if another shortcut has run within Xsec, or not run if a certain UUID has recently run, etc (which isn't user-friendly in the UI)

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