Not a repeat of the "Keyboard For Programmers" question, though that one is certainly worth reading.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/687/keyboard-for-programmers
I know there are a few keyboards out there with programmable function keys, but let's say you've already found the keyboard of your dreams and it has no such feature. Ideally I'd like a device with the following qualities:
- Similar in size to the USB numeric keypads they sell for laptop users
- Each key can be remapped to a user-defined macro. Macros should at least allow combinations of keypresses (ie, "shift+control+B") and ideally should be able to allow pauses (ie, "shift+control+B (pause) F5") and even more ideally should be able to click menu/toolbar items that have no keyboard shortcuts
- Should have OS-specific software that allows different sets of macros to be active depending on the application that's active (ie, separate macros whether I'm in Visual Studio or my text editor)
I've found some products and software that are close in functionality. Kensington's Powermate peripheral and its software come pretty close, but I've found that thing to be pretty useless in practice thanks to its limited number of possible inputs. (Only three, or six if you count the click-and-hold gestures, though I find those inconvenient)
Possibilities include:
- A programmable keypad that does exactly what I want (I've looked and haven't found any, though maybe I just didn't look in the right places)
- Specialized "gamer" keypads (Saitek had a keyboard with a separate keypad that looked to be close to what I wanted a few years back)
- Software that would let a standard run of the mill numeric keypad have this kind of functionality. The software would have to distinguish between me pressing a button on my normal keyboard's numeric pad versus the external numeric pad, because I wouldn't want to lose the use of my normal numeric pad for entering numbers.
- Giving up on the hardware aspect and using mouse gesture software like Gmote to accomplish what I want
Basically, I'm just awful at remembering keyboard shortcuts. As a consultant who does a lot of maintainance work for various clients I have to switch environments constantly which compounds the problem. I can remember some keyboard shortcuts, but not keyboard shortcuts for fifty million different software packages.