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What I think would be really interesting however would be to dump the results of a keylogger with a weeks worth of data into it. Would definitely be more accurate, and maybe interesting to see where my hands spend most of their time during the week.
http://www.michaelcapewell.com/projects/keyboard/index.htm#T...
Roughly quoted:
* Minimize finger movements.
* Maximize the use of 'combos,' i.e., multiple keys hit on the same hand with one comfortable movement
* Minimize the use of uncomfortable combos
* If a key in one of the centre columns is used, have the keys typed before and after the key be typed by the other hand
* Minimize use of awkward positions on the keyboard
I'd also add cadence: it's important to have a nice rhythm when typing normally. This plays into the combos and lack of awkward keys. I suspect that in some ways, it's better to sacrifice a little average speed so long as variance is not very large.
At any rate, all the layouts other than QWERTY and Personalized were within 10 percent of each other for meters traveled.
How do they determine the "best layout" at the top? I pasted in a couple hundred lines of code and it claims that Colemak is the best, but Arensito (hadn't heard of it before) has fewer meters traveled and more home row usage (where Colemak is beat by everything except QWERTY). At any rate, all the layouts other than QWERTY and Personalized were within 10 percent of each other for meters traveled.
I learned Colemak with it in about two weeks, it's perfect. Still using Qwerty till I master vim, though. I found the latter is more of a productivity enhancer than the former, and it's difficult to do both simultaneously.
What's the followup here? I'd like to give this a shot at some point, just for a few days to see how it goes. I have been typing long enough that I definitely don't need to look at a keyboard, so I'm guessing I'd need to pop off all the keys, reconfigure, then find some sort of software that remaps the keyboard? Or is something like this built into Windows and Mac?
My experience (I switched to Dvorak about 6 months ago) is that you really need to be typing a lot before you get to type as fast as what you used to type. Even after 6 months I'm still not as fast in Dvorak as I am in Qwerty. I have to say it's definitely easier on the wrists though :)
Here's what I did to switch:
- Switch all the keys on the keyboard of just one of my computers
- Only that pc was dvorak for about a month
- Lots of typing on typeracer (at least half an hour every single day)
- Slowly start putting stickers on the keys (to force myself into touchtyping with dvorak
- After a month I installed DVAssist at work (this way I can quickly switch between 'this needs to by typed _now_ (qwerty) mode' and 'Typing a bit slower gives me more time to think about the solution mode')
- I think after four months I switched entirely. (I still use DVAssist but that's mostly for pair-programming.)
I found the following things to be the most difficult:
1) Passwords (I barely 'know' my passwords, I just know the rythm...)
2) Windows (When using DVAssist it's always a surprise what keyboard layout is in use at the logon screen)*
* This does not happen if you just set two keyboard layouts in windows. You can switch to other layout with a keyboard shortcut (CTRL+SHIFT).
There's more to "best layout" than finger travel distance. Capewell's website suggests some of them: http://www.michaelcapewell.com/projects/keyboard/index.htm#T... Roughly quoted: * Minimize finger movements. * Maximize the use of 'combos,' i.e., multiple keys hit on the same hand with one comfortable movement * Minimize the use of uncomfortable combos * If a key in one of the centre columns is used, have the keys t…
The best solution I have come this far is creating my own custom layout, based on us-intl, but squeezing in those two extra letters. But this approach has one large problem: using any other computer than my home desktop becomes a lot harder. And as I happen to use a lot of other computers, it also hinders me from learning and using my own layout properly.
Also, I have not yet found a reasonable solution to create my own keyboard layouts in Linux, so that it would reliably work all around the system. So my custom layout experimenting has so far been limited to windows only, which is kinda sad.
An image of my layout is available at http://zokier.net/stuff/nappaimisto.png If someone is interested, I could upload the keyboard files as well.
