My favorite keyboard improvement is Ten Key Less (TKL), and buying a separated numpad. Your hand will be nearer the mouse. Less movement is more comfortable.
Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
191–200 of 233 posts
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#192Very nice work, I'd like to see the result not with books, but with programming languages. The problem is but you loose a very valuable thing: the ability to use any keyboard. You won't be able to pair program. You'll be very slow when using your mother's computer. The ability to use any keyboard is more valuable than increasing your WPS.
Typically alternative keyboard layouts are installed as a mapping at the operating system level, I don't think the author is proposing a keyboard with that hardware layout. And most modern OS's allow for switching key maps on the fly with little effort.
I worked in a lab with a guy who typed exclusively in Dvorak and there was no issue with pair programming along side him nor for him to get his key map on shared workstations.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#193I too suffered from wrist pain and fatigue in the past. The experimentation with different layouts helped a little but it felt like micro-optimization. What actually resolved the problem was switching to an unorthodox ergonomic keyboard where none of the keys required straining or unnecessary effort (kinesis advantage, using a different one these days). Also, most common problems were caused by placement of special k…
It's possible to improve ergonomics with a standard keyboard by abandoning the notion that you must type with your hands locked in place by moving your fingers only. My hands are all over the keyboard when I type to avoid finger strain, and yes I can still touch type this way. Human fingers were optimized for gripping and are poorly adapted to move laterally to strike a key, so if you need to strike a key that's not within comfortable striking range, move your hand slightly.
It's one of those little ergonomic things, like "use both hands to avoid Emacs pinky", that vastly improve life.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#194Agree with Workman's criticism of Colemak, that the letters D and H are placed sub-optimally.
I find moving O to reduce the use of the right pinky to be pointless, and self-contradictory since A is not moved, and remains under the left pinky.
I also find the movement of C and V to be a non-starter for me.
It looks like the Norman layout tries to address the DH issue of Colemak without messing up common shortcuts.
Although the DH issue is not enough for me to abandon Colemak. Probably because I have large-ish hands and thus don't make any wrist movement when typing HE, as the Workman author does.
Although, for those still on QWERTY, switching layouts in general is just not worth it. Remap capslock to a backspace and be done with it. And maybe get an ergonomic keyboard that doesn't mess too much with the placement of modifier keys.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a truth here. But doesn't it sound like don't install applications, don't customize your system? It is a personal computer. And defaults are bad. I can hardly type QWERTY and it is fine. On the other hand - Dvorak, swapped Ctrl and Alt, Caps Lock to switch language. And that's in tiling WM on minor Linux distribution. When you break things you can break them hard.
I would argue pretty strongly with "defaults are bad"! Defaults are what you should use until you can very clearly explain why a customization is significantly better (and sometimes that is the case!). It's a boring, lowerst-common-denominator attitude that goes against the things that most of us here enjoy doing, but customizations are more things to think about and maintain, and ways in which my system operates dif…
It was not philosophical statement "all defaults are bad". I value defaults - my VIM setup become empty over years. I choose Linux distribution with defaults that match me. My setup worth a lot of trouble and costs a lot of skill. It is not universal.
But some defaults are bad. QWERTY is one of them. I have no experience in Workman but I'm suspicious of design process - author penalized hand alternation and middle column. As long time Dvorak user I can't agree. Just looking at Carpalx [1] and Neo Layout [2] - vowels in one hand home row - it can be good. QWERTY derived layouts best asset is compatibility, yet ZXCV lost to ZXCMV. I can't explain that, QGMLWB makes much more sense.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#196An 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…
I've been using workman for a few years now, and that hasn't bothered me at all.
I agree with not setting caps by default, since you can just use 'setxkbmap -o ctrl:no_caps'. I've been using a keyboardio model01 for the past year or so, and haven't bothered putting capslock into my firmware layout.
Having m between x and c did make learning more difficult, but I rather like it now that I am used to it.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#197A lot of keyboards optimize the wrong things at least as far as programming is concerned. All the optimizations seem to focus on letters but most of the time an editor or shell can auto complete keywords or identifiers. A ridiculous number of symbols seem to be a very long way from the home keys on weak fingers with modifiers required to access them. If I had to write huge amounts of plain prose and had RSI I think I…
I think the general fear of modifiers is that the traditional keyboard puts them in a terrible place.
I've been using a keyboardio model01 for about a year now. Having modifiers under my thumb had made them much more appealing.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#198Agree with Workman's criticism of Colemak, that the letters D and H are placed sub-optimally. I find moving O to reduce the use of the right pinky to be pointless, and self-contradictory since A is not moved, and remains under the left pinky. I also find the movement of C and V to be a non-starter for me. It looks like the Norman layout tries to address the DH issue of Colemak without messing up common shortcuts. Alt…
After years of using qwerty, I've gotten used to having 'a' on left pinky.
Switching to workman has been absolutely worth it to me.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#199Looks very interesting, but re-learning how to type is so painful, not to mention devastating to my productivity at work, that I think I can only afford to do it once in a lifetime... 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…
I gave up on vim after learning workman. The ability to completely remap normal mode is the single feature [neo]vim is missing.
Emacs is a great editor, and I've been looking into creating my own modal keymap for it.
Re: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)
#200Keyboard layouts are incredibly fascinating. For the amount of typing that is done today it feels like we are collectively still in the Dark Ages of textual input. A while ago on HN there was link to a talk from a stenographer (the people who do court reporting and other live transcription). They achieve the highest WPM by using a smaller keyboard and pressing "chords" of multiple keys at the same time, which map to…
One argument goes: Stenographers need to optimise for input speed, almost everyone else doesn’t have that requirement. Another argument goes: we don’t know what creativity might be enabled if everyone had that option / ability. I’ve always thought fingertip and finger joint implants would make good contacts for chord-like input. Ideas are cheap though.
Stenography had the same problem that phone keyboards have: dictionaries.
There is still nothing that replaces a keyboard for unambiguous typing.