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Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

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Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#51

Post by toss1 »

The best solution for me was to type with the left hand and switch from a mouse to a Logitech MX Ergo thumb-trackball — the key advantage is it can sit inside the sling and instantly give me full functionality.

My use case was shoulder surgery that kept my dominant right hand in a sling for two+ months, but I could use my fingers after a week or so, and much of my work is CAD.

It took only a few hours to completely get used to it, and I never went back to a mouse. While left-hand-only typing speed obviously went down, this was significantly mitigated by having a full function point-&-click device.

It turns out this setup is also really helpful when working in tight spaces where a mouse is near-impossible, such as airplanes or tight luncheon booths.

Even typing emails and multi-page documents left-handed was tolerable for 10 weeks, but if it had been longer, I probably would have looked into a chorded one-handed keyboard solution, as the learning cost would have been worth it.

I hope this helps, and good on you for helping your friend, and I hope they get well fast!

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#52

Post by behnamoh »

idahoduncan wrote: post #49
lburton wrote: post #6

This will depend a bit on the person but for me when I injured my right arm I found that my touch typing muscle memory worked surprisingly well with a toggle key to flip the left side of my keyboard to become a mirrored version of the right side. Each finger was still hitting the same key like it would if I was using my right hand to hit the key but on my left hand. This was fairly easy to accomplish on a QMK firmwar…

I have this set up using kmonad[1], and the following config. Many punctation marks are obviously missing, but I'm sure they could be added with a little thought. The mirrored layout is toggled by holding the space key. (defalias lhs (tap-next-release spc (layer-toggle ytrewq))) (deflayer ytrewq _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ bspc 0 9 8 7 6 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ p o i u y _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ret ; l k j h _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _…

kmonad:

    written in Haskell
    config in Lisp
Best of both worlds!

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#54

Post by Findecanor »

There is Edgar Matias's "Half Keyboard" layout, where the right hand's keys of a regular keyboard are mirrored on the left hand when holding a modifier key with your thumb. The idea is that if you have learned touch-typing then muscle memory for the right hand should be available also on the left.

Matias wrote an article [1] about it and then made it into a commercial product [2], but the concept should be possible on any programmable keyboard. Perhaps it would be possible with a AutoHotkey (MS-Windows) or Karabiner (MacOS) script otherwise.

There is a large scene for more-or-less DIY "ergonomic" mechanical programmable keyboards with various different physical layouts, but common themes are 1) that they are split in a pair of two physical keyboards and 2) that they have multiple thumb-keys for modifiers / Return / Space. You could build and program just one half of such a pair. Many years ago I programmed an ErgoDox with the HalfKeyboard layout, just to try it out, and that ErgoDox I had built on a budget from mostly salvaged vintage components.

[1]: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/One-Handed-Touch-Typin...

[2]:https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#55

Post by kelnos »

~25 years ago I injured my right (dominant) hand and wasn't able to type with it for about 2.5 months. I figured the time was short enough that I would just use a regular keyboard, one handed, and live with the slowdown.

It was annoying, certainly, and while I did get faster typing only with my left hand, I of course never got close to full speed. But it was fine, I survived, and I don't think it would have been worth spending the money, as well as the time to learn a new keyboard setup.

Remember that a one-handed keyboard (or some other arrangement) isn't going to bring you back up to full speed immediately. It's probably going to take a few weeks to learn, and you might not even get back up to full speed at all.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#56

Post by xupybd »

bshacklett wrote: post #31

Perhaps I missed it, but I’m amazed I didn’t see any mention of Maltron here: https://www.maltron.com/store/p19/Maltron_Single_Hand_Keyboa... They’re expensive, and the other options mentioned may be better, but I feel like they should be included for completeness’ sake at the very least.

That was my first thought. If you have an injury like this the Maltron's are built for disability.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#57

Post by haiku2077 »

faizshah wrote: post #23
lburton wrote: post #6

This will depend a bit on the person but for me when I injured my right arm I found that my touch typing muscle memory worked surprisingly well with a toggle key to flip the left side of my keyboard to become a mirrored version of the right side. Each finger was still hitting the same key like it would if I was using my right hand to hit the key but on my left hand. This was fairly easy to accomplish on a QMK firmwar…

I had the same experience, my typing speed with two hands is 90-120 but with one hand i can still get 50-70. The hard part is punctuation but with AI these days you could try just prompting and let the AI deal with syntax for you.

Right, you could run your text through an LLM that adds punctuation and then fix up the result manually. Would probably save time + fatigue

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#58

Post by bombcar »

I don't know the current versions, but years ago I remember a "chording keyboard" for the HP Palmtop - it was IIRC a handheld device with five or six keys that you typed by pressing keys at the same time.

The guy was able to type pretty darn fast with it, one handed.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#59

Post by TurkishPoptart »

Findecanor wrote: post #54

There is Edgar Matias's "Half Keyboard" layout, where the right hand's keys of a regular keyboard are mirrored on the left hand when holding a modifier key with your thumb. The idea is that if you have learned touch-typing then muscle memory for the right hand should be available also on the left. Matias wrote an article [1] about it and then made it into a commercial product [2], but the concept should be possible o…

Looks cool, but not sure why it's $600...

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#60

Post by synack »

Last year I had an injury that left me one handed for a few months. I managed to hunt-and-peck my way to a patched QMK firmware for an Adafruit Macropad I had lying around. I set it up with the artsey.io layout and set the cheatsheet as my desktop wallpaper.

I found the Learning Artsey book from Discord helpful and managed to get up to 15 WPM in about a week with regular practice. Still quite tedious for coding, but good enough for emails and IRC.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128

https://github.com/JeremyGrosser/qmk_firmware/tree/artsey_ma...

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/artseyio/artsey/main/layou...

https://discord.gg/UAMMaASc

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