Long macros in Oryx, now fully supported

Hi |FNAME|,

For once let's not bury the lede here: We had a good heart-to-heart with our lawyers and finally opened up long macros in Oryx. You need to be signed in and acknowledge a legal disclaimer (our first one in ten years of doing this), but once you do, bam! 24-character macros, with adjustable delays between steps. Who needs AI? The future is truly here. If you need more steps, please let support know — if enough people really want 32 or 50 steps or whatever, we may be able to do that as well.

Our other fun announcement is that you can now live-view your ZSA keyboard on typ.ing, just like you can do with Live Training in Oryx and with Keymapp. Just type "/i-have-one" in typ.ing to get started. Now, speaking of typ.ing, here are the top performers on the typ.ing daily challenge for the month of March:

#1: The mysteriously named y6oxz43p (yes, really), at 86wpm and 93% accuracy with the full 31 daily challenges completed
#2: allen, 116wpm and 95% accuracy (!) but "only" 25 daily challenges completed
#3: rmku, 67wpm, 96% accuracy, 31 challenges completed

And finally, a shout-out to "jakewaldrip" at #4 with 117 wpm and 98% accuracy (!) across 23 daily challenges.

In other news, I wrote a love letter to plain text and the immense power of using your computer to write words, and then maybe read them many years later. This month also marks our final instalment in our video series, Spaces. Did you like it? Did any of the videos stand out? Reply to this email and let me know your thoughts.

This is where I usually sign off with a "thank you for reading", but this month I want to thank you for supporting ZSA. We're a small Canadian business shipping physical goods from Taiwan, and not to be overly dramatic about it, the current environment is kind of intense. Your support is what lets us keep doing what we do. I don't mean just your money (that certainly helps) but also your kind replies to our emails, how pleasant most of you are when dealing with support, and the fact that you tell others about us. For all of that and more — thank you.

All the best,
Erez

Having all the different shortcuts and macros programmed into the actual piece of hardware so I could take it with me, go to a facility, plug it in, and have it work out of the box was key.

- Nat Jencks, Moonlander user, colorist

Announcing long macros in Oryx

With adjustable delays between each step

You can now create macros in Oryx that are up to 24 steps long and adjust the delay between each step. Read all the nitty-gritty in this comprehensive blog post by Robin, and try the feature out!

Live keymaps come to typ.ing

Connect your ZSA keyboard to typ.ing

typ.ing is all about practicing and mastering your keyboard, so why not display your Oryx keymap right there? By typing /i-have-one you can now connect your ZSA keyboard directly into typ.ing, and it will display your Oryx layout in real time, just like Keymapp and Live Training.

Featured User Interview

Stuart Hazley

Typeface Designer

I've been interested in typography forever, so it was lovely we got to interview Stuart. His interview offers a glimpse into the day-to-day of a typeface designer, sharing many of the tools of the trade.

"GlyphsApp is the backbone of my type design work. Several other specialized programs help out: Typeface, my trusted font manager; FontGoggles, which is perfect for font proofing; Font Proofer, as the name suggests, also used for font proofing; Eagle, excellent for organizing design files; and DTL OTMaster, great for quality control of typefaces."

Layout of the month

Blaze Split

The defining principles of my layout are to be minimal, simple and most of all ergonomic. I've accomplished this by reducing the 52-key layout down to 34 keys, putting more frequently used keys on the thumb clusters, implementing bottom-row mods to keep modifier keys close to the home-row, and creatively designing combos to add more functionality to the base layer.

Things we liked

Antinote →

Quick notes for macOS

Antinote is a $5 “scratchpad” for macOS. I have it bound to a global hotkey, and when I hit it, it pops up as a floating window. It autosaves whatever I write, and I can quickly search through my notes. It also has a bunch of other clever features like live math expressions (a bit like Soulver), variables, checklists, and more. Not a subscription — just a one-time purchase.

Clickens →

Which is more hard-working?

This cutting-edge website presents two random illustrations of chickens (side by side, always chickens) and asks you to click on the one that’s more “adventurous”, or more “elite”, more “meddlesome” and so on. You can browse the results, too— more than 45,000 votes are in so far.

Rush Hour →

A clean version of a classic puzzle game

This is a free browser-based version of Rush Hour which is both clean and sophisticated. You can get a random starting state which is guaranteed to be solveable, and each state comes with the minimum number of moves required to solve it. There’s also a deep technical dive into the engineering involved. Goes well with a physical version of Rush Hour for lots of extra puzzles.

Midlife Engineering →

A fun send-off

This is a wonderfully executed love letter to Teenage Engineering. It’s a mock-up of the OP-XY synth which plays peaceful loops of ambient music. The copy is delightful; scroll through the page. I recommend using a big monitor for this one, it’s just so nicely done.

1-bit.day →

Daily Pixel Art Challenge

Everyone gets the same prompt every day (for example, “Straw”). You have a grid of pixels (8x8, 16x16, or 32x32— your choice). You get one color (white). Do your best, and then hit Publish. If you’re signed in, it builds a gallery of your work over time. Even if you’re not into making pixel art, browsing other people’s work (via the Ranking page) is quite fun.