Wanted: a "DAS keyboard" with ISO mechanical layout
Some people claim that AZERTY is a crime against humanity. I claim that if you're going to point and laugh at one layout in defense of another, you should have that other be something actually better, like the dvorak or Turkish F layout, not QWERTY.
One additional reason: the mechanical layout of a US QWERTY keyboard (the ANSI layout) is inferior to the mechanical layout of the AZERTY keyboards. This is a mathematical fact—the ISO layout has 102 keys, the ANSI one has only 101 of them.
In that light, I find it highly disappointing that Thinkgeek.com's Das Keyboard uses the ANSI mechanical layout, and that there is no ISO version of the same thing. If there were, I'd have bought one years ago.
(Yes, that's meant as a hint, in case you didn't catch that)
Update: apparently it exists, it's just that ThinkGeek doesn't have it. For those who want one, it's available here, amongst others.
I disagree a little — I'm British and using a Colemak layout combined with Swiss accent keys and a custom third level on top of an ANSI base keyboard, and find the wider shift key is actually slightly more comfortable. But it's pretty minor (the annoying part is the low enter key). But I have a far bigger gripe with both layouts: why are they predominantly right-handed? The further keys sloping to the left makes perfect sense w.r.t. the right hand, but just requires the left fingers to reach in an awkward manner.
Which key is the 102nd?
And is 102 really that much better than 101? Shoudn't about 60 keys not be enough?
Wouter, enlighten us. Where is key #102 ? From looking at both images, I seems as if the thinkgeek one actually has a key more, because it has 2 keys where the ISO one has 1 big enter key.
The ANSI layout does have one more key on the 2nd row (the one above enter, the backslash key), but it has one less on the 3rd row than the ISO layout (to the left of the enter key, where the mu, sterling, and grave are on a BE AZERTY layout). Both keys actually send the same keycode, and are called BKSL in the Xkb system.
The extra key is on the 4th row, to the right of the left shift button, and carries <>\ in the BE AZERTY layout.
Bottom row, far left.
And no, the more keys you have, the better. Every extra key is one you can map something useful to