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The Joys of Unix Keyboards

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Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#121

Post by pge »

JdeBP wrote: post #54
i_am_proteus wrote: post #36

> I can't imagine why anyone thought Caps Lock should have had this prominent of placement. Caps Lock was originally Shift Lock on typewriters, and was adjacent to the Shift key because it was literally a mechanical locking device to hold the Shift key down.

The headlined article talks about "the Caps Lock key's usual position". What it is overlooking is that to a fair number of people the position of Caps Lock on an IBM Model M keyboard was, conversely, the Control key's usual position , because that's where it was on the Model F for the XT, and where it was on quite a number of home computer keyboards in the 1970s and 1980s. Fun fact: Some home computers had both caps…

Another data point - Ctrl was also in the same place (where caps lock is today) on the Apple ][ keyboards. There was no Caps Lock key at all.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#122

Post by ianai »

barbs wrote: post #113
knorker wrote: post #96

I don't understand the commenter saying they don't want to spend $200 on a keyboard. That's a $200 investment on something you'll likely spend more time with than your bed, your car, and your sofa. Over 10 years that's maybe 0.9 cents per hour of use. It's worth having your perfect keyboard. I have a custom print 88 key wasdkeyboards.com one. Yes, your work should buy you your perfect keyboard, but if they don't then…

Are common keyboards really that bad? I don't really think there's enough benefit in investing the time and effort and money in working out and purchasing your absolute perfect layout if it only deviates from the standard by a small amount. Even the keyboard in the article only deviates from the standard by a few keys. It's all subjective of course, but personally I'd prefer to be able to use any keyboard anywhere wi…

I’ll never leave my kinesis keyboard. It has multiplied how useful my thumbs are by placing more useful keys near them than just space (but including space). It’s great for rsi too

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#123

Post by m463 »

dogweather wrote: post #119

> I can't imagine why anyone thought Caps Lock should have had this prominent of placement. Typewriters need the caps lock there because it's literally a locking mechanism, keeping the shift button pressed down.

I'm glad "they" don't take it out - I remap it to control and "they" would probably use it for something silly.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#124

Post by saurik »

SkyBelow wrote: post #80
terofle wrote: post #3

> The ~ and \ have moved to the usual location of the Backspace. Working exclusively on UNIX systems now, I don't mind the \ being harder to reach. I could understand a Windows user finding this irritating. This guy has clearly never used LaTeX. I mapped my \ to a more accessible location and it improved my typing speed by factor 2 or so.

>it improved my typing speed by factor 2 or so. Is it odd that I've never found my typing speed to be a bottleneck worth optimizing? Maybe I haven't thought about it enough. While I overall type slower than I think, the difference is very slight and the result is more time to think about how to phrase things. I often find my hands freezing for .5ish seconds while my brain get stuck deciding on what the next appropria…

I type very very fast, and yet I know I can speak faster. Not all typing is careful crafting, and even to the extent to which it is seeing it printed out and then erasing parts and replacing them is a very effective way to test things out and save state. Most of my typing is just conversing, where typing notably slower than I can speak, as opposed to merely a bit slower, would be crippling. (And even if I am in a situation where I am waiting on someone else, well, then I can type fast enough to talk to two or three people at once.)

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#125

Post by kjs3 »

zzo38computer wrote: post #115
kjs3 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and remember the IBM PC was originally intended as a "business PC". So they modeled the keyboard on previous bushiness machines (typewriters, 3270 terminals, etc) so that those bushiness users IBM saw as their primary customers would have a familiar keyboard to work on. Definitely a consideration in a time where keyboard skills were considered important enough there was often a high school class devoted to it.

My opinion is, the original PC Model F keyboard is good, except it doesn't have lights. I do sometimes use caps lock, when writing many words in all uppercase (used sometimes in computer programming; even in other text it may sometimes be used for titles and so on). (I also use num lock, both on and off. And also scroll lock, too, sometimes. I use all of the keys on the computer, sometimes.)

The F is a classic; I did time one one. Not sure how important lights are.

Remember that back then there were lot's of things where caps were meaningful. In early Fortran (and as I recall Algol and COBOL) reserved words were all-caps, so it wasn't weird to hit the caps lock and type for a while.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#126

Post by grymoire1 »

As I recall, the Sun keyboards (and OS) had many other features and advantages that I miss.

While many keyboard of the time was limited to two "Meta-" keys (Control- and Shift-) the Sun keyboard had 5 meta-keys, so you can type A, Shift-A, Control-A, Alt-A, LeftMeta-A, RightMeta-A, or any combination, like Shift-Alt-RightMeta-A, etc.

I think one of the possible uses was to have a Delete key to delete a character, Alt-Delete to delete the last word, Control-Delete to delete to the beginning of the line, and if you added a Shift key- the delete works in the opposite direction - if you wanted this type of key binding.

Another of the ideas I thought great was having dedicated keys for Cut, Copy and Paste. You didn't have to remember Control-whatever - the name's right there. A second advantage - having a dedicated key didn't ever conflict with a program that already had bindings for Control-whatever.

Third, you could add Meta-keys to these, so that you can have variations in cut, copy and paste.

One action I used frequently was a quick insert - I saw characters in another screen that I wanted to paste into the current window. I pressed the copy key down - and held it down, and then moved the mouse to the second window and double or triple clicked to select a word or line. Then I released the copy key and the words were pasted into the the first window.

Also - you could move the cursor around - using the keyboard - while holding down the copy key down.

Crazy stuff, but flexible.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#127

Post by j74k »

knorker wrote: post #96

I don't understand the commenter saying they don't want to spend $200 on a keyboard. That's a $200 investment on something you'll likely spend more time with than your bed, your car, and your sofa. Over 10 years that's maybe 0.9 cents per hour of use. It's worth having your perfect keyboard. I have a custom print 88 key wasdkeyboards.com one. Yes, your work should buy you your perfect keyboard, but if they don't then…

OTOH, UNIX tradition is the reductio ad eruditionem of every recurring expression.

This is not the perfect consonance with recent idolatry of UNIX keyboards that I imagine a number of proponents believe it to be.

Has there been a study of the ergonomic and productivity effects of various keyboard designs?

I type in the region of ten thousand words every day and I have no adverse physical symptoms, after almost three decades of continuing typing. Not continuous. I suppose continuous typing is inadvisable.

I hope you don't take my comment as derogatory, it's merely suspicious of the whole rigmarole that keyboards are involved in, and I have spent many more days in search of the ideal keyboard,myself. I have serious doubts about my chances of overcoming the importance of screen input devices, so far as my own use is concerned. Really, I can't believe it is impossible to produce a superb quality mechanical keyboard, even inside the tolerances of a laptop. Business margins are desperately short sighted in this regard. I will tell anyone unfortunate to be within earshot, how the first manufacturer of such a laptop will take my programmatic heart until I am thoroughly retired.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#128

Post by j74k »

radeklew wrote: post #114
barbs wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are common keyboards really that bad? I don't really think there's enough benefit in investing the time and effort and money in working out and purchasing your absolute perfect layout if it only deviates from the standard by a small amount. Even the keyboard in the article only deviates from the standard by a few keys. It's all subjective of course, but personally I'd prefer to be able to use any keyboard anywhere wi…

The way I see it, common keyboards are underpriced due to extreme competition, and top-shelf keyboards are overpriced because they're a niche market. So common keyboards aren't that bad , even if they're very cheap, but I think it's definitely worth it to spend ~$100 on a keyboard, which I think is a lot more palpable to people whose job involves typing. I'm going to make up some arbitrary numbers, hopefully they'll…

Bloomberg keyboards have no competition, but I understand that enormous energies are expended on their design.

I order HPE workstations for the front desk, because they invest in the thermal fluid dynamics and sound energy diffusion of their cases. The default benefits are tangible.

Keyboard quality is a factor more when it is the standard you encounter. High quality consistent keyboard experiences would be significant in broad effect, at least I'm convinced that would be the case.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#129

Post by m463 »

grymoire1 wrote: post #126

As I recall, the Sun keyboards (and OS) had many other features and advantages that I miss. While many keyboard of the time was limited to two "Meta-" keys (Control- and Shift-) the Sun keyboard had 5 meta-keys, so you can type A, Shift-A, Control-A, Alt-A, LeftMeta-A, RightMeta-A, or any combination, like Shift-Alt-RightMeta-A, etc. I think one of the possible uses was to have a Delete key to delete a character, Alt…

On linux all that is still around.

I think meta_l and meta_r are treated the same, but you can do all kinds of craziness with keymaps:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux_console/Keyboard_...

I wonder if there's a way for apps to look for meta_l in particular

Also one level up, you can set up key bindings for the command line:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Readline

It helps to learn the basic emacs keys, as they work most places in macos and linux.

examples would be: ctrl-a beginning of line, ctrl-e: end of line, ctrl-p: previous line, etc...

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#130

Post by m463 »

j74k wrote: post #127
knorker wrote: post #96

I don't understand the commenter saying they don't want to spend $200 on a keyboard. That's a $200 investment on something you'll likely spend more time with than your bed, your car, and your sofa. Over 10 years that's maybe 0.9 cents per hour of use. It's worth having your perfect keyboard. I have a custom print 88 key wasdkeyboards.com one. Yes, your work should buy you your perfect keyboard, but if they don't then…

OTOH, UNIX tradition is the reductio ad eruditionem of every recurring expression. This is not the perfect consonance with recent idolatry of UNIX keyboards that I imagine a number of proponents believe it to be. Has there been a study of the ergonomic and productivity effects of various keyboard designs? I type in the region of ten thousand words every day and I have no adverse physical symptoms, after almost three…

I think most typing problems could be cured with a good wrist rest and good posture.

The wrist rest should keep your wrists straight and keep them off the cold desk and its sharp edges.

Posture should keep your head balanced over your neck, not holding it forward or backwards. The monitor height should support this, and it should be straight in front of you. Your shoulders should be relaxed and your elbows should be around 90 degrees to help your wrists.

By the way, laptops are not ergonomic. There are no OSHA approved laptops.

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