21–30 of 233 posts
Is it just me or is it missing arrows entirely?
This isn’t a physical keyboard. The layout is just a mapping in software. The arrows are unchanged, so they’re not included in the diagram. Whether they actually appear on your keyboard is a separate question.
Is it just me or is it missing arrows entirely?
Not all keyboard layouts use arrows. Long time ago keyboards did not have arrows. Nowadays, some keyboards use function key to switch some keys to their alternative function, including arrows. This is true especially with 40% keyboards where there is just no real estate for arrows and to some extent with 60% keyboards.
I have been tempted to get a large ortho (lots of modifiers suck) and setup a split qwerty with a heap of symbols in the center columns between them. I type '"[]{}().= all day so I don't get why they should be marginalized. It is like expecting an accountant to use the 1-0 row instead of a numpad.
I recently made the switch from QWERTY to Dvorak, during a 2 week period while I was in between jobs, and it was one of the most frustrating things I've ever done. Over a month later and I'm back up to a plodding 60 WPM (from a glorious 120 with QWERTY). Not to mention how shot my vim keybindings are!
Maybe if I eventually switch again it will be less painful, but the experience has taught me that typing is almost 100% an exercise in muscle memory.
Anyway, my point is, I wish I could be the kind of person that could type fluently in multiple keyboard layouts, if nothing else then just for the heck of it, but I'm not sure I'll ever have the kind of time to make that happen. Cool project though! There are certainly words and bigrams that are needlessly hard to type in Dvorak.
I'd love to see a rigorous analysis of whether this type of keyboard layout really reduces repetitive stress injuries. The metrics presented are interesting, but the reduced finger movement could be a bug rather than a feature. Small micro-stretching by having to reach for keys could actually be beneficial.
Still an interesting article, none the less.
I'm using a similar layout (Norman) that was derived from the Workman analysis. https://normanlayout.info/about.html It was a bit easier to learn because most of the keys are on the same finger as on qwerty, but with the rows swapped. For me the biggest problem with using an alternate layout is that the hjkl vim movement keys are scattered.
I consider my .vimrc-fu as only beginner, but can't you remap the keys so NIOH act as HJKL?
(You could have some local shorthand to copy over your vimrc and explicitly start vim with a different copy, at which point you'll only have problems with shared tmux/screen sessions)
I usually shift my ring/middle finger around to compensate. If you asked me yesterday if I touch type "correctly" I would have said yes, but apparently I'm pretty sloppy with what fingers go where and my brain fills in the gaps without me realizing it.
An oversight in the layout, in my mind—the human hand is better at typing in certain directions… the hands very naturally roll towards the center, but it is less natural to rotate away from the center. This is… somewhat covered in the article under SHU… > It is much more efficient to ride the momentum of a single arm or wrist stroke and type a combo rather than just one key. Try ASDF versus FDSA on a QWERTY layout. A…
> Try ASDF versus FDSA on a QWERTY layout. ASDF feels much more natural, doesn't it? It doesn't for me. Is it significantly more difficult/awkward? Maybe I'm used to it from playing scales on piano?
Dvorak also favours hand alternation, which I find appeals to me more. Unfortunately, Dvorak is not well suited to my native tongue (due to differences in letter frequencies) so I ended up learning Colemak instead, which also heavily emphasises inward finger rolls.