I agree with this article, standardisation of keyboard layouts would be better. If there was an industry organisation that got companies together to agree on things, the situation might be much better, although I don't hold out much hope for home and end!
I feel that a lot of people copy apple because it's designs and hardware are great, but they copy things that aren't really that good at all, such as removing Home and End keys. I like to call this cargo-cult design, people blindly change things to the apple way for no clear reason. I'm looking at you gnome 3.
Here are my personal preferences. I don't really care about caps-lock, but I do use it occasionally. I'm more likely to go back and use a keyboard shortcut to change a whole word to upper-case when doing sql programming.
I personally want the 6 delete-insert-home-end-pgup-pgdn buttons separate in a way that mirrors the desktop pc keyboard. I quite liked this layout from microsoft keyboards of about 8 years ago which has gone out of fashion:
Home End
Ins Pgup
Del Pgdn
I want the arrow keys to have spacing around them so I can feel the triangle without looking at them, no pgup or pgdn touching them, just a gap.
I want a laptop keyboard that is sufficiently close to the desktop keyboard that I don't have to adjust as much as I currently do. My T410 isn't too bad in that respect, except for the arrow keys as mentioned above.
As with many standards, you can find an unofficial 'final committee draft' for free if you look around. It doesn't prescribe a layout for keys other than the cursor arrows.
ISO9995 has been responsible for a lot of nonsense from a programmer's point of view — for instance mandating Control in the lower left rather than beside A. Similarly its sister ISO9241, despite nominally being concerned with ergonomics, helped drive some of the best key switches off the market.
I feel that a lot of people copy apple because it's designs and hardware are great, but they copy things that aren't really that good at all, such as removing Home and End keys. I like to call this cargo-cult design, people blindly change things to the apple way for no clear reason. I'm looking at you gnome 3.
Here are my personal preferences. I don't really care about caps-lock, but I do use it occasionally. I'm more likely to go back and use a keyboard shortcut to change a whole word to upper-case when doing sql programming.
I personally want the 6 delete-insert-home-end-pgup-pgdn buttons separate in a way that mirrors the desktop pc keyboard. I quite liked this layout from microsoft keyboards of about 8 years ago which has gone out of fashion:
I want the arrow keys to have spacing around them so I can feel the triangle without looking at them, no pgup or pgdn touching them, just a gap.I want a laptop keyboard that is sufficiently close to the desktop keyboard that I don't have to adjust as much as I currently do. My T410 isn't too bad in that respect, except for the arrow keys as mentioned above.