Mechanical Keyboards

The ultimate in Musa text entry is a dedicated mechanical Musa Keyboard. I used to use a Gherkin that I had made for $150, including the keycaps. I also spent 20€ on a nice wooden frame. But it only works on Windows.

Nowadays, there are several other keyboards available, and the newer ones conform to the HID spec, so they work on Windows, Mac, and maybe elsewhere. Here's a selection: my Gherkin on the bottom, and two HID keyboards above, one of which is split.

If you would like your own, you'll find P30 (30%) HID keyboards online for less than $40. The keycaps are twice as expensive: ask me about them and I'll send you an SVG file to have them printed. Much cheaper is just to print out this image, cut it up, and glue the shapes on the keys.

These keyboards connect via USB in parallel with my normal keyboard, allowing me to type in Musa whenever I want ... as long as I'm running the Musa Keyboards Agent, which you can download here for free. It works on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

The only trick is that we use twin single keys instead of the standard double keys for Ya and Enter: press either one (but not both!).

The key mapping we're using to link the keyboard to the agent uses the extended function keys from F13 to F19, in combination with Shift, Ctrl, and Alt/Option. If you find a conflict - if you press a key and get a popup window or any response other than a Musa shape, please let us know so we can work around it. Here it is:

If you buy an HID keyboard, like this nice one from Ali Express (the fourth item), you'll have to program this keymap into it using VIAL - easy! You can just use VIAL web - no need to download it if you're only going to use it once. Here's the VIL file for Musa (rename it musa.vil).