Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Lexicon keyboard
Lexicon is a 65% "writing keyboard" designed by Ewen Cluney – with a layer full of whole words.
Published June 28, 2024
Ewen Cluney aka nekoewen of WeirdLittleKeebs made an interesting 65% keyboard. The Lexicon (or Lexicon 69) is designed to writing prose, with an extensive collection of shortcuts and special formatting commands.
I just (soft) launched a new keyboard I've been working on for a while […] this keyboard changes the experience of writing while maintaining a standard QWERTY layout […] It can’t make you a better writer, but it does put essential punctuation and shortcuts in easy reach – Ewen.
Ewen, while reading Shift Happens, ended up keeping a running list of keyboard ideas, and the most interesting and useful of these was to make a keyboard aimed at writing prose. The end result is this 65% keyboard with a ton of shortcuts for inputting whole words, common formatting commands, and extended punctuation.
Check out the user's guide which explains the keyboard's unique features in detail, e.g. a "words" layer, word combos, etc.
It gives you kind of a steno-light that can smoothly integrate with regular QWERTY typing.
As of writing this, the Lexicon is a closed-source design, though the author is planning to make it open-source at some point in the future. Right now it's available as a pre-build keyboard, ready to use out of the box, or as a kit.
It's also one of the few keyboards that has a mascot. If you look at the Lexicon’s bottom plate, you’ll see the artwork of Lexi, the keyboard’s mascot character, by retrotv5000. Lexi is a vivacious young typist from an idealized version of the 1960s, sporting a flip hairstyle and mod dress. Check your packaging for a sticker sheet with Lexi and labels for some keys.
Support Ewen or just experiment with the overall concept, maybe creating alternate keymaps for other languages or for coding!
Resources
- Github: https://github.com/nekoewen/lexicon/
- Lexicon User's Guide
- Lexicon product page on Etsy
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/nekoewen/status/1806385956175610228
Published on Fri 28th Jun 2024. Featured in KBD #168 (source).
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