Some of you may have noticed that /dev/tty has dropped again. Waaaay sooner than I expected actually. As you know by now I don’t like to rush a product release and considering the round 1 hiccups, I would have liked a couple of weeks more to plan a good fight strategy.
Anywho. Device Terminal (that’s how you pronounce it!) round 2 is up and kicking. The official name would be /dev/tty1 (it’s 0-based) and we have approximately a month to fix the issues we encountered in the first iteration. Namely the drunken legends. MassDrop reassure me that they made so no more bold, tilted, not-centered legends will leave the factory. I hope they will let me check that before shipping to customers.
What’s new in round two
Small updates at each new drop are mandatory and are what make each revision unique. First of all of course we removed the limited edition “/dev/tty0” novelty key. Also the Cyrillic kit was removed and will be hardly repeated, at least in that form.
Last time we promised Ergodox compatibility and we delivered; a blank Ergodox kit is now available. Another fine addition are spacebars! We now support 7u, 6.25u, 6u, 4u, 3u, 2u spacebars in both Row 4 (angled) and Row 5 (flat). I hope next time to be able to add even more. We are still working on the stems position, they will be very likely centered.
I added a few keys here and there for a wider support of new and old keyboards and I believe a Tokyo60 specific set will be released at a later time.
Orange color will be fixed, it’s not how I wanted it, I’m sorry but it won’t match with the previous drop but all other colors will be the same! Including teal, which is a wonderful vibrant color that I 100% endorse and love.
The elves are coming!
They are snob, spoiled and bitchy but we can’t stop loving them.
I already worked on an Elvish kit for the Granite set in the past, but this time we brought it to the next level. The alphas are still compatible with Daniel Smith’s font and all extra keys and modifiers have been translated to Sindarin. Yes, I said “translated”. The Enter key for example reads minno, that means “enter” in Elvish, it’s not just a transliteration of the English word. Of course we don’t have an extended Sindarin vocabulary and we had to take some licenses but if you are curious about how all the legends were translated, here’s a quick reference:
Good match
- Enter > minno
- Escape > awartho (abandon)
- Control > tortho
- Insert > nest, abbr. of nestegi
- Home > bâ
- End > meth
- Pause/Break > daro (stop)
- Page Up > cebi am (leap up)
- Page Down > cebi dad (leap down)
- Caps Lock > pedi caun (speak loud)
- Scroll Lock > hebi yred (hold running)
- Num Lock > hebi gwenyd (hold numbers)
- Alt > eichiad (change), eichiad is a “neologism”, it doesn’t come from any original Tolkien lore
- Function keys > phui-1, phui-2, phui-3 … (it’s like literally saying Ef-1, Ef-2 Ef-3…)
- Shift > ortho (raise)
A bit of a stretch
- Delete > geli (shine clear)
- Back space > gwo dan (go back)
- Print Screen > teitho parf (write a book, yeah I know, but it’s cute)
- FN > esgail (literary veils, by ext. layers)
- Super (OS key) > orchal (superior)
- Menu > I can’t find anything so I phonetically transliterated the word “menu”
- Tab > sarf (table)
Regarding how to write in Elvish I suggest you to head to the post I wrote when we released the Elven Tongue kit for Granite.
Before I leave please let me stress on the fact that /dev/tty is not just another color scheme over an existing keycap profile. We designed a completely new high-profile keyset –named MT3– that is not just nice to see but great to type on. You are not buying some SA clone, you are buying months of research in trying to do the perfect tall keycap.
Comments
Came here to say, I am very happy with the colorway you settled on.
I bought one the morning it was on massdrop – Are you planning on bringing it to GMK or a standard profile anytime soon?
naaah, don’t think so! But thanks for stopping by!
Hi Matt3o,
Sorry to see the novelty key go..
would it not been an option to still include it but to have it say “/dev/tty1”
I don’t think this round will have special keys
aww that is understandable with the elvish kit
thanks for the reply :)
Is that a Narsil novelty? :D
Hard to tell from the image, but it kinda looks like the tengwar reads “Narsal” though
it is!
Could you please think of making ALPS stem in this profile? I am so desperate for sculpted spherical ALPS keycaps.
The only way I know of to get them is harvesting from certain typewriters but those ones pale in comparison to these ones.
alps never sell that well. we tried with Granite but it didn’t go that well. people are very passionate about it, but we have very few switches and keyboards…
Have you thought about licensing out the MT3 profile for the brave souls who want to try to make and sell an Alps set? I can’t remember if you’d talked about whether there would be licensing for this profile.
Thank you so much for producing this Elven kit :) It’s so amazing to have a big Lord of the Rings fan as a developer in this community. Since I’ve seen your Granite set I’ve wanted an Elven keyboard, and the fact that it now comes with translated mods is just icing on the cake. The effort you put into the whole process is so clear, I really appreciate it. I’ve ordered the set and cannot wait to try out your new profile. The Narsil mod is epic.
Do you think you’ll ever consider releasing an all green Elven modifier set, or another Elven set in a different colorway? I’m on a college student budget right now, but I’d like to slowly add keyboard to my collection, and I would love to have a whole suite suiting different versions of your Elven keycaps ;)
Thanks again for your hard work!
I dunno, maybe I will release an “elven only” set in the future. I briefly talked with Vortex about it, but nothing came out of it yet.
Similar question, I’m planning to join the next drop for mt3. I plan on dividing my purchase into two drops for economic reasons.
The thing I’m afraid is that sets being a single drop exclusive like the red Cyrillic. I think it’s a good idea to specify which set will be discontinued and which will stay.
Definitely hoping that device terminal will be staying for long. Loving the neutral timeless color scheme you have on them ;)
Is it possible to figure out the colorways you’re going to release beforehand? Having the reassurance that i can still get the set in the future would be great.
I know that designing process and all the things going on with massdrop often make things go sideways and unpredictable, so I understand if this isnt possible. just my 2 cents though, looking forward to your third drop, cheers!
Hey matt3o, questions for the future: do you already have other/new colorways planned for use with MT3? Are you open for collaborations, or should anybody interested in doing something cool with MT3 contact MD instead?
yes, we will work on more colorways. Yes, we can talk about a collaboration :)
Hi Matt3o, for future MT3 development, would you consider TMX stem? This would help all the Topre “peasants”, myself included, tremendously as there really isn’t any custom keysets for Topre right now.
adding more stems would be nice, but we are working on double-shot now
woah nice! the deskthority thread is still the best place to keep myself informed of progress right? you keep doing you man, you’re awesome!
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