Giving me major nostalgia for the Optimus Maximus (https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/maximus/) keyboard and its successors. This one looks like an interesting take now that displays are even higher resolution, have haptic feedback, etc.
Also came here to say this — I wanted to love the Optimus Maximus (perhaps because of a bad case of buyer’s regret generating a counter-force to maximise cognitive dissonance) but as a keyboard it was awful.
(Combined it with a BMW-designed Level 10 case; quite the looker but monumental and monumentally oversized.)
Same here :). But original Optimus has a screen in each key. This technically similar to a later design https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/popularis/. Which also had a single big LCD and transparent keys on top of it.
Elgato's Stream Deck is a more mainstream application of the same approach, with a single LCD under all of the keys.
The Stream Deck isn't doing anything particularly exotic with its key mechanism, though (from what I can tell, there's a frame between the LCD and buttons with the actual contacts on it; no Hall-effect sensors or anything like that).
I remember thinking the Optimus was _so fucking cool_. I think when it was first announced I was still in high school, and I wasn't even a programmer yet, so the utility of it would have mostly been lost on me, and the price tag was laughable. But I just thought the idea was so cool.
Definitely my first thought when I saw this too. That brings me back to the good ol' days.
This is exactly what I've been dreaming of ever since Hall effect switches came back. It's very reminiscent of the old school Zboard keyboard that had physical overlays tailored towards specific games. This digital approach seems a touch more scalable.
Each key is magnetically suspended with rare earth magnets allowing them to be 97% transparent and ultra low friction. Each switch has 4mm of travel and will be available in linear and tactile variants. They also feature a software adjustable actuation point in 0.1mm increments and rapid trigger functionality through analog hall effect sensing.
The keys contain magnets along their perimeter which are attracted by magnets in the frame which surrounds them. This magnetic attraction suspends them in place and provides the return force which makes the key bounce back after depressing - similar to a spring.
Yep. From that link
"Rich Lee is known for implanting headphones in his tragi in 2013, as well as for his work on a vibrating pelvic implant called the Lovetron9000. His biohacking activities were used as a justification to remove his parental custody rights in 2016."
I got the same implants after talking to him about it on IG. It barely worked. An array of magnets on the skull would probably work. I had to get the magnets in my ears removed when the casings failed.
One reason some people do this is so they can feel currents, and it's a cool party trick. But the real effect is spending the rest of your life explaining to people that you can't do something because you have magnets in your fingers.
My guess is that if this keyboard is released and if you use your fingertips rather than fingerpads to type, you might not have a problem unless you are ticklish.
No, but I am vegan. Vegan since 2002. Magnet in my finger since 2013. It's fun to feel my laptop charging. But also it's kind of inconvenient in ways I never expected.
I like magnetic force too. My guess is that they use two magnets of different polar orientation on the key and below the key, like -+ to +- or +- to -+. This keeps the key floating above the base.
If they are really with the times, then they will use printed polymagnets:
Programmed magnets, or polymagnets are magnetic structures that incorporate correlated patterns of magnets with alternating polarity, designed to achieve a desired behavior and deliver stronger local force. By varying the magnetic fields and strengths, different mechanical behaviors can be controlled.
This is interesting... but I can't help but think how much better it might be if instead of a video background just had a simpler e-ink display for indicating
what the transparent key caps were for. The animation/videos are very distracting.
I never liked the Apple TouchBar or anything that required "active" attention away from the main screen.
E-ink is extremely expensive, especially at the size of a keyboard like that. Memory LCD would be more practical, but at that point the lcd costs the same and offers more power for those who want it.
There isn't anything stopping you from making the entire screen black except for the legends, probably
True dat. I recently made this for my home, as a once-a-day automatic newspaper deco thingie (ticking all the latest hype boxes: wrote a custom Rust driver for the EPD controller, and it's now also using the ChatGPT API to trim and style-transfer articles and headlines -- this and also various layout/typography improvements not yet in that album): https://imgur.com/a/PqkhdGd
$400+shipping for the display panel (a competitive price from the shop). Even at volume (which an enthusiast keyboard won't be) it's still very expensive.
I was recently messing around with a very small eink display (and used it to display HN posts somewhat similar in concept to you). Out of curiosity, what display is that/where did you source it from?
It's a 13.3" 1600x1200 panel made by E Ink, from the Carta product line also used in Kindles et all, the ED133UT2. I bought it via Waveshare together with a little driver board featuring the ITE IT8951 controller: https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1/...
The ED133UT2 is also available from E Ink directly and from other shops, but I haven't seen a significantly better price. There are also some other boards with the same controller around. An alternative to using the IT8951 is to hook the display up to an MCU with an adapter board for the flex cable directly and then drive the waveforms from the MCU, this is more complicated however and a little controller talking SPI is quite nice to have.
There's also a 10.3" with an even higher resolution that is very nice for various applications.
Saw your project a few days back, absolutely loved it! Same-ish setup here, a massive e-ink screen hooked up to a controller and pine64 board. I hung it up next to my bed, displays my most important emails/weather/health-notifs etc., everything I need in the morning to get up and running
The cost of the panel makes me cry but there's nothing like e-ink :)
Very cool - I've been researching something nearly identical and it's nice to see your implementation of it. Unfortunately I'm not sure I want this bad enough for the $500 in hardware costs.
Yup. TFT LCDs are in everything because they are so cheap, and they make designers who are used to designing for computers feel less constrained.
I have indoor and outdoor air quality sensors in my apartment; the outdoor air quality monitor is an LCD and the indoor one is e-ink. I kind of like the LCD better, but have to use a feature to turn off the screen at night so it's not illuminating the entire room with its backlight. The e-ink doesn't emit light, but it also doesn't update as frequently, so it's often displaying information that's out of date. Because of the various pros and cons, neither technology seems like a "win" over the other; the product designer has to pick one and hope the market agrees. LCDs get the nudge because of cost, though.
My understanding is that the price of the displays is largely dependent on the size of the screen due to manufacturing techniques. I don't know the specifics unfortunately.
E-ink gets exponentially more expensive with size, and an e-ink panel in this keyboard would have to have a fairly decent resolution and refresh rate, whereas the price tags are usually 1-bit color, low res, and barely have to refresh
> There isn't anything stopping you from making the entire screen black
Except perhaps product designers wanting to make a flashy product that draws attention all the time, 24/7, pushing through '''features''' that leverage (force) full screen animations in the driver software.
I am bitter, yes, I met too many excellent hardware ruined by stupid, oversized, look-before-function attitude software. Making it grand and flashy (eventually overcomplicated and ugly) not because it is useful but because they can.
I think it'd be much better if they just had a simple e-ink display for showing what the transparent key caps are for. That way, you don't have to deal with any distracting animations or videos, and you can just focus on getting your work done.
And yeah, I totally get what you mean about the Apple TouchBar and stuff like that. It might look cool, but it's just another thing that takes your attention away from the main screen. We need interfaces that are designed to help us be more productive, not ones that are just flashy and distracting.
I was thinking e-Ink too, it would allow the keyboard to be made wireless and have a respectable battery life of at least a week or two if not much longer.
E-ink was the very first thing I thought of. Less power use, less glare, less distraction. Heck, I have the Logitech K800 Wireless Illuminated Keyboard and it hurts my eyes when the room is not brightly lit (unlike my Mac Book Pro's backlit keyboard which does it right).
I wonder about the parallax effect, since the display is a significant distance from the key tops. You can kinda see it in the short typing demonstration a third down the page. Though I never liked self-illuminating keyboards anyway.
Yeah I’m not sure what the target audience is. I just bought a nice keyboard so I’m in the right market but I don’t really look at the key caps nor do I feel the need to have contextual buttons
I mean they're obviously going to make it so that you can set up the backgrounds however you want, and even if they didn't it would be a simple software update to make it so you can disable animations so I don't really think that that's a negative.
honestly - IDK I feel like the amount of force on my left index finger is kind of high. Turning up the sensitivity doesn't really help either. My nub isn't even very worn.
I have one. Somewhere. Because the keys need to be as close as possible, it's less than ideal as a keyboard, and because even though the keys are right next to each other there are still gaps between the keys, it's less than ideal as a touchpad.
Would be really interesting. I'm sad that the Touchstream (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks) never got anywhere. Without sensing the keys it was really difficult to use, but the mix of keyboard and touch interface was nice.
I dunno what the software on this looks like (wrt writing a custom driver) but if you can add knobs it seems like it could pick up trackpoint wiggling around
I did in fact find a keyboard like that online -- some noname brand, and the promise was good, but not the execution. A high quality version would be welcome.
Weird - I saw this and thought ... "this is all great, but where's the trackpoint?" :D The only real ooo-ahh for us is if some fancy new keyboard design has a trackpoint. All the pretty lights don't match up to that trackpoint :D
If you will use QMK powered keyboard (or similar) you can even map mouse movements to the keys [1], so you won't move from keyboard at all. On my keyboard, I have wasd style mouse movement on ijkl keys, and it works quite well.
I prefer blank keycaps. Better for posture and focus to not be looking at your keyboard all the time. Also, maintaining the need to see your keys clearly puts arbitrary limits on tent angle.
I would appreciate something which could understand both my keyboard firmware and whichever app has focus, and summon a hotkey helper on screen which mirrored my key layout.
I've been using a blank Das Keyboard [1] at work for years. Besides all of the benefits you've listed, I've also found that it's the most effective deterrent for keeping people off my desk/off my computer that I've ever deployed.
I used a blank DAS to learn to touchtype. I now use a non-blank Kinesis Advantage2, but it has qwerty keycaps while all my devices are colemak so it has a similar effect to blank with the added bonus of confusing other people even more because the keycaps don’t match what is typed.
People hated on Apple for the touch bar, but this is the natural evolution of the keyboard, why stick to fixed physical keys when you can have them digitalized to be context aware
The problem will be the price
Mechanical keyboard market already is a scam where 90% of products are greatly overpriced, that will not encourage them to offer a reasonable price unfortunately
EDIT:
The keyboard will cost between US$299 - $350 after discounts for pre-orders with a retail price of US$450.
Yeah, the price of a console-tier GPU, way too overpriced to be a successful product
Are you kidding, I saw a mouse the other day selling for two hundred bucks. Provided that by some miracle this has a good keyboard feel, I can imagine entire shops switching over to this in specialized industries, plus loads of gamers, translators, people wanting it as a status symbol. It could even be something of a security measure by obfuscating the keys during login. Even perhaps a laptop manufacturer can license their tech for dual screen laptops like the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i. It wouldn't even be a $400
yeah, came here to say something similar. It looks super cool and the features, wow... but unfortunately when I don't use an ergonomic keyboard (my Microsoft Sculpt has been with me for 10 years), pain starts pretty much instantly. If they ever release a more ergonomic version that would be interesting!
Well, the bar is in hell. Nobody should be using flat slab keyboards. They are objectively terrible for your wrists. Absent space constraints like inclusion in a laptop this flat design is a nonstarter.
I have used a LOT of custom keyboards, looking at an Ergodex DX1 on my shelf now. I wish this is something I could be confident in.
but, them not treating the screen as a display I think significantly limits the utility of this. You have to go through their software to customize the screen, layout, and customizations. Many of us know how hit-and-miss esoteric keyboard software tends to be.
If they stuck to making it an external display managed by the OS, polling the keyboard layout from the OS, and maybe just have their app apply custom functions like emojis and tool graphics I would have some confidence.
They are trying to tie up too much to their software which they will eventually stop supporting, like my DX1 paperweight.
I see your point, but I actually had the opposite concern when I was first looking at the product page.
I'd actually rather not have to worry about how my OS treats the extra "display" - plus I don't want running my keyboard to eat into my computer's resources in any significant way.
For me, this approach is better. Although I do have some concerns about the software eventually going EOL unless they open source it.
> They are trying to tie up too much to their software which they will eventually stop supporting, like my DX1 paperweight.
This is precisely why I probably won't buy one despite it looking honestly very cool.
Hardware manufacturers these days seem to be allergic to telling their customers how to actually talk to their gadgets, in favor of proprietary bundles of software that inevitably go unsupported within a few years.
Here I really don't understand why nobody open-sources their drivers when they end-of-life a product. I know some chips are covered by patent agreements blah blah, but that doesn't cover all cases. And part of a code base is better than none, even if the bits covered by the agreement need to be censored.
I also think software companies should/should have to open-source products when they discontinue them like Dropbox did with Zulip (the only example I can think of offhand), but I understand why the profit motive discourages it. But surely for hardware even that tenuous rationalization goes out the window.
> Truly hot swappable 84-key keyframes to switch between tactile keys and linear keys in just 2.15 seconds.
I think I love everything about that sentence.
An easy-to-clean keyboard could definitely find its uses in dirty environments. Even if the screen is glass, the keys should protect it pretty well. Depending on how scratch-resistant they are. For CNC, being able to customize the keyboard seems really useful.
It's interesting that they say you can play video on it due to the built-in 8 GB storage, but it's not available as a display to the host. Their point that the "mouse cursor could get lost on the keyboard" is a nice rationale, but it does feel like an odd limitation for such a powerful device.
I wonder how complicated it would be to allow customization based on SPAs. Their list of initially supported applications suggests they are not tackling web apps at launch. E.g. the Google Docs/mail suite would be interesting to me.
There are upsides to the “not a display” approach: it means the display isn’t being driven by the host, so it’s going to be consistent even when your system is under load. I’m sure that was the original rationale for putting in its own ARM chip. I feel like they could totally add a pass-through mode, flip a switch to make it a display for the system to drive.
Yep. Magnets and magnetic cleverness are a real problem for those of us doing any kind of metalwork. They suck up all kinds of conductive metal chips and grinding dust. Even the speaker in a phone can be problematic.
If this didn't support something like QMK I'd be shocked. They seem to know what will drive sales and the keyboard community will be huge on hacking. If they're tone deaf enough not to have that ability then.. well, we'll see.
As far as I know the "other times this has been tried" all have had individual displays (and controllers) in each key. The difference being that here there is just one panel under the whole board with most of the parts above the display being transparent. This approach should be far less complicated to build, more robust and cheaper.
Honestly, I don't think I need an LCD in my keyboard but I'd quite like to have a go on some mAgLeV hall effect switches! On that note, if you like magnets and/or keebs you might be interested in Void switches[0] -- 3D printable hall effect switches
It's a shame that attempts to build open hardware and firmware for Topre/Niz-style capacitative rubber domes haven't gone anywhere over the years. Unless I'm out of the loop, people are still stuck yanking PCBs and controllers out of their Realforces and HHKBs to use domes in custom builds.
One could use those silicon popper OCD toys as a keyboard construction method. Still might need some sort of compliant spring mechanism with hysteresis.
Looks like a nice use case for eink IMO, as I don't see the point of having video playing under my keys but having keycaps that can change depending on the context sounds nice.
I remember seeing this _exact_ comment back in the late 2000s and being really excited for an eInk keyboard. eInk was always a super cool tech that was _just_ around the corner, but after almost 15 years I'm disapointed that it's applications have been largely restricted to eReades.
It would be extremely cool to finally end the constant pain of either overpaying for a laptop with my country's localization on the keyboard or straight up using a keyboard from a different country and just not looking at the keyboard since the buttons are all different when you set the software localization to my own country. eInk under every key, would of course be expensive at first but it would mean that the keyboards would now only have to be developed for US and got the ISO standard.
My stationary computer has Slovenian layout (which is where I'm from), Chromebook has German (where I also bought the laptop) layout because I couldn't find the same model for anywhere close to the same price in Slovenia (which is very common, most electronics I've bought have been from Germany or elsewhere just not Slovenia, because even including the shipping it's still cheaper.
But I still set the software keyboard layout to Slovenian, which means that the stuff that's printed on the keyboard is useless to me...
If anyone is looking for an excellent website to compare prizes and find products in Europe, I highly recommend geizhals.eu, the filter options make it so that you can basically build your own laptop, they are really amazing!
If you don’t have the displays in the keys themselves, the symbols get really hard to see at the angles users typically use. I don’t typically look directly down at my keyboard as it’s not in my lap.
True. If it had short travel large keys (like on current MacBook Airs) with thin keys it would be better. I wouldn't mind having mechanical instead of magnetic suspension on the sides of keys and non-transparent (i.e. metal) gaps between keys (as it is now, again, with MacBook Air) as having a pretty big picture of video shown in the background is completely unnecessary, being a bother actually, distracting and annoying. Basically transparent material thin keys looking through many small windows into the single background display that may show whatever letters or small pictures (in high resolution) we want for each key.
Theoretically the glyph images could be offset. That is, there could be a setting so that they are all shifted upwards slightly so they appear neared the centre of the key when sitting back.
Of course, this does nothing to help if your position relative to the keyboard changes more dynamically throughout your usage.
Is my decades long quest for a keyboard that can switch between space cadet lisp mode and APL finally coming to an end?? I hope so. Hyper super meta alpha!
Rough outline to get you hacking: Run `setxkbmap -print | xkbcomp -xkb - -` and edit super/hyper/meta keys to your liking. Install result with `xkbcomp my-cool-layout.xkb $DISPLAY`.
IMO APL is best implemented as a new input method rather than a layout, add a new .mim file into /usr/share/m17n.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadShould be much cheaper to produce, and cost is always the problem with projects like this.
(Combined it with a BMW-designed Level 10 case; quite the looker but monumental and monumentally oversized.)
The Stream Deck isn't doing anything particularly exotic with its key mechanism, though (from what I can tell, there's a frame between the LCD and buttons with the actual contacts on it; no Hall-effect sensors or anything like that).
Definitely my first thought when I saw this too. That brings me back to the good ol' days.
>The keyboard will cost between US$299 - $350 after discounts for pre-orders with a retail price of US$450.
That's... not as high as I thought it might be, considering how expensive mechanical keyboards can get and how esoteric of a product this is.
I would claim that there’s nothing expensive about mechanical keyboards, there’s healthy profit margins, and passionate people.
Each key is magnetically suspended with rare earth magnets allowing them to be 97% transparent and ultra low friction. Each switch has 4mm of travel and will be available in linear and tactile variants. They also feature a software adjustable actuation point in 0.1mm increments and rapid trigger functionality through analog hall effect sensing.
The keys contain magnets along their perimeter which are attracted by magnets in the frame which surrounds them. This magnetic attraction suspends them in place and provides the return force which makes the key bounce back after depressing - similar to a spring.
I got the same implants after talking to him about it on IG. It barely worked. An array of magnets on the skull would probably work. I had to get the magnets in my ears removed when the casings failed.
https://feelingwaves.blogspot.com
My guess is that if this keyboard is released and if you use your fingertips rather than fingerpads to type, you might not have a problem unless you are ticklish.
If they are really with the times, then they will use printed polymagnets:
Programmed magnets, or polymagnets are magnetic structures that incorporate correlated patterns of magnets with alternating polarity, designed to achieve a desired behavior and deliver stronger local force. By varying the magnetic fields and strengths, different mechanical behaviors can be controlled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_magnet
I never liked the Apple TouchBar or anything that required "active" attention away from the main screen.
There isn't anything stopping you from making the entire screen black except for the legends, probably
$400+shipping for the display panel (a competitive price from the shop). Even at volume (which an enthusiast keyboard won't be) it's still very expensive.
The ED133UT2 is also available from E Ink directly and from other shops, but I haven't seen a significantly better price. There are also some other boards with the same controller around. An alternative to using the IT8951 is to hook the display up to an MCU with an adapter board for the flex cable directly and then drive the waveforms from the MCU, this is more complicated however and a little controller talking SPI is quite nice to have.
There's also a 10.3" with an even higher resolution that is very nice for various applications.
The cost of the panel makes me cry but there's nothing like e-ink :)
I have indoor and outdoor air quality sensors in my apartment; the outdoor air quality monitor is an LCD and the indoor one is e-ink. I kind of like the LCD better, but have to use a feature to turn off the screen at night so it's not illuminating the entire room with its backlight. The e-ink doesn't emit light, but it also doesn't update as frequently, so it's often displaying information that's out of date. Because of the various pros and cons, neither technology seems like a "win" over the other; the product designer has to pick one and hope the market agrees. LCDs get the nudge because of cost, though.
Except perhaps product designers wanting to make a flashy product that draws attention all the time, 24/7, pushing through '''features''' that leverage (force) full screen animations in the driver software.
I am bitter, yes, I met too many excellent hardware ruined by stupid, oversized, look-before-function attitude software. Making it grand and flashy (eventually overcomplicated and ugly) not because it is useful but because they can.
And yeah, I totally get what you mean about the Apple TouchBar and stuff like that. It might look cool, but it's just another thing that takes your attention away from the main screen. We need interfaces that are designed to help us be more productive, not ones that are just flashy and distracting.
I have one. Somewhere. Because the keys need to be as close as possible, it's less than ideal as a keyboard, and because even though the keys are right next to each other there are still gaps between the keys, it's less than ideal as a touchpad.
That's when it worked. It wasn't reliable for me.
[0] https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb...
The only problem is that I use a split (ergo) keyboard :/
https://www.keymouse.com/catalog/keymouse/keymouse-track-3d-...
If I could buy a prebuilt, I think it'd be my endgame.
I don’t use it and know little about the project, I just remembered that it’s a split keyboard with an optional trackpoint attachment.
Anecdotally, around 2010 I’ve worked for a company that used Thinkpad laptops, the majority of people would always choose touchpad over trackpoint.
Unsolicited advice: you should definitely never visit /r/mechanicalkeyboards.
I did in fact find a keyboard like that online -- some noname brand, and the promise was good, but not the execution. A high quality version would be welcome.
[1]: https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/blob/master/docs/feature...
I would appreciate something which could understand both my keyboard firmware and whichever app has focus, and summon a hotkey helper on screen which mirrored my key layout.
[1] https://www.daskeyboard.com/daskeyboard-4-ultimate/
People hated on Apple for the touch bar, but this is the natural evolution of the keyboard, why stick to fixed physical keys when you can have them digitalized to be context aware
The problem will be the price
Mechanical keyboard market already is a scam where 90% of products are greatly overpriced, that will not encourage them to offer a reasonable price unfortunately
EDIT:
The keyboard will cost between US$299 - $350 after discounts for pre-orders with a retail price of US$450.
Yeah, the price of a console-tier GPU, way too overpriced to be a successful product
I really like how it's Not derivative. It doesn't look like an Apple knockoff product or some other coattail riding project. Refreshing.
Keep at it! This is the kind of innovation we need!
but, them not treating the screen as a display I think significantly limits the utility of this. You have to go through their software to customize the screen, layout, and customizations. Many of us know how hit-and-miss esoteric keyboard software tends to be.
If they stuck to making it an external display managed by the OS, polling the keyboard layout from the OS, and maybe just have their app apply custom functions like emojis and tool graphics I would have some confidence.
They are trying to tie up too much to their software which they will eventually stop supporting, like my DX1 paperweight.
I'd actually rather not have to worry about how my OS treats the extra "display" - plus I don't want running my keyboard to eat into my computer's resources in any significant way.
For me, this approach is better. Although I do have some concerns about the software eventually going EOL unless they open source it.
This is precisely why I probably won't buy one despite it looking honestly very cool.
Hardware manufacturers these days seem to be allergic to telling their customers how to actually talk to their gadgets, in favor of proprietary bundles of software that inevitably go unsupported within a few years.
I also think software companies should/should have to open-source products when they discontinue them like Dropbox did with Zulip (the only example I can think of offhand), but I understand why the profit motive discourages it. But surely for hardware even that tenuous rationalization goes out the window.
I think I love everything about that sentence.
An easy-to-clean keyboard could definitely find its uses in dirty environments. Even if the screen is glass, the keys should protect it pretty well. Depending on how scratch-resistant they are. For CNC, being able to customize the keyboard seems really useful.
It's interesting that they say you can play video on it due to the built-in 8 GB storage, but it's not available as a display to the host. Their point that the "mouse cursor could get lost on the keyboard" is a nice rationale, but it does feel like an odd limitation for such a powerful device.
I wonder how complicated it would be to allow customization based on SPAs. Their list of initially supported applications suggests they are not tackling web apps at launch. E.g. the Google Docs/mail suite would be interesting to me.
Honestly, I don't think I need an LCD in my keyboard but I'd quite like to have a go on some mAgLeV hall effect switches! On that note, if you like magnets and/or keebs you might be interested in Void switches[0] -- 3D printable hall effect switches
[0] https://github.com/riskable/void_switch
Ed: Untested Void Switch Reference PCB Implementation [2]
[0] https://github.com/riskable/void_switch_kicad
[1] https://github.com/riskable/riskeyboard70
[2] https://github.com/riskable/void_switch_65_pct
My stationary computer has Slovenian layout (which is where I'm from), Chromebook has German (where I also bought the laptop) layout because I couldn't find the same model for anywhere close to the same price in Slovenia (which is very common, most electronics I've bought have been from Germany or elsewhere just not Slovenia, because even including the shipping it's still cheaper.
But I still set the software keyboard layout to Slovenian, which means that the stuff that's printed on the keyboard is useless to me...
If anyone is looking for an excellent website to compare prizes and find products in Europe, I highly recommend geizhals.eu, the filter options make it so that you can basically build your own laptop, they are really amazing!
Of course, this does nothing to help if your position relative to the keyboard changes more dynamically throughout your usage.
Rough outline to get you hacking: Run `setxkbmap -print | xkbcomp -xkb - -` and edit super/hyper/meta keys to your liking. Install result with `xkbcomp my-cool-layout.xkb $DISPLAY`.
IMO APL is best implemented as a new input method rather than a layout, add a new .mim file into /usr/share/m17n.