2021-03-19

The number keys on my laptop have been gradually failing, so a couple of weeks ago I borrowed a trick from my split keyboard and put a virtual number pad under the right hand’s home position, activated by the right Alt key:

Dell XPS 13 keyboard with virtual ten-key number pad

This is accomplished using a keyboard configuration along the lines of:

partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "ralt_numpad" {
  key <AD07> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 7 ] };
  key <AD08> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 8 ] };
  key <AD09> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 9 ] };

  key <AC07> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 4 ] };
  key <AC08> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 5 ] };
  key <AC09> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 6 ] };
  key <AC10> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 0 ] };

  key <AB07> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 1 ] };
  key <AB08> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 2 ] };
  key <AB09> { [ NoSymbol, NoSymbol, 3 ] };

  include "level3(ralt_switch)"
};

It’s turned out to be delightfully convenient. I’ve added some adjacent punctuation and math symbols as well, and now prefer it to the number row.