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Workman Keyboard layout

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Re: Workman Keyboard layout

#21

Post by melling »

scholia wrote: post #18

Seems a little strange to concentrate so much on keyboard layouts rather than switching to a split or ergonomic keyboard....

Why wouldn't you want both? An efficient layout means that your figures move less. You can remap most keyboards to get a more efficient layout, even the $20 keyboard. You can analyze the distance your figures travel for a given text here:

http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main

I've got resources for the various keyboard layouts on Github:

https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/keyboa...

Some information on split and tenting keyboards can be found here:

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/the-model-01-an-heir...

Re: Workman Keyboard layout

#23

Post by copperx »

rohansingh wrote: post #20
JelteF wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just letting you know, learning two layouts is not doable. The muscle memory of one will always be more powerful. I cannot type querty anymore after I have switched to dvorak programmer [1]. [1]: http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/

It's completely doable. Took me a little bit of fumbling to use QWERTY again after learning Dvorak, but it's easy to pick back up and do both.

I switch between both every day with no problem, except I've noticed that I prefer QWERTY for programming and Dvorak for writing prose. It's been 7 years since I learned Dvorak.

Re: Workman Keyboard layout

#24

Post by pklausler »

20 years ago or so, I ran an evolutionary algorithm that permuted keys in a layout, evaluated them against a corpus of English texts from Project Gutenberg and the Linux kernel sources, and a home-grown cost function that penalized finger motion and especially double-hits by the same finger. The best layouts all had the property that the vowels were on the home row under the left hand, and the common consonants were on the home row under the right hand. That's basically Dvorak, and I considered the experiment as being kind of a confirmation of that design's principles. And so I stuck with Dvorak, since it's available everywhere.

Re: Workman Keyboard layout

#25

Post by K_REY_C »

vityaz_ wrote: post #11
yadakhov wrote: post #3

Changing keyboard layout isn't an option. I tried a few times and gave up.

Same. It's very tempting, but if you ever use keyboards other than your own it's not very doable imo.

That's the main issue. I switched to Dvorak a year ago and it's been great, but being on other machines is difficult. The most egregious issue I've seen is a colleague who took the GRE and was forced relearn QWERTY. The best writer I've ever met score lower on that portion of the test due to keyboard layout.

That said, I'm happy I switched. Keyboard shortcuts in design applications took longer to mentally remap than the layout itself for daily typing. There are trade-offs (as with everything).

Re: Workman Keyboard layout

#26

Post by flogic »

scholia wrote: post #18

Seems a little strange to concentrate so much on keyboard layouts rather than switching to a split or ergonomic keyboard....

Yeah personally, I like my split keyboard. Until, I got a split keyboard I couldn't really touch type. I think the problem is the arrangement of keys for the left index finger on traditional keyboards. So now that I have a split keyboard, I can touch type. Though, I'm still slower than I would like.

All that said, I fully encourage any mucking about with keyboard layouts. There are quite a few variables that can be tweaked.

Re: Workman Keyboard layout

#27

Post by pklausler »

scholia wrote: post #18

Seems a little strange to concentrate so much on keyboard layouts rather than switching to a split or ergonomic keyboard....

You can split QWERTY up all you like, but it carries its problems along. Way too much finger motion off the home row.

Re: Workman Keyboard layout

#28

Post by pklausler »

jdbernard wrote: post #6

> Typing ‘HE’ forced the hand to make a very unnatural sideways twisting motion from the wrist and then back again. Really? On my keyboard, I can simultaneously place my index finger on the Colemak position of H and my pinky on Shift without any movement of my wrist. I'm on a full-size keyboard with a tenkey and I have smallish hands. Personally, I've found that even on a qwerty keyboard the speed at which I type is…

It's not about speed, it's about comfort, at least for me.
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