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A different kind of keyboard

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Re: A different kind of keyboard

#131

Post by cvak »

stronglikedan wrote: post #124
hundchenkatze wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was experiencing the same – narrow hand position causing lots of back pain. Keeping my arms/shoulders in a natural position seems to have fixed it. There's also tons of split keyboards available now. https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

All of those beautiful split keyboards, and not a single one with a proper layout. Shame. Looks like I'm sticking with my Surface Ergonomic, because it's the only one I've found that has super keys on both sides, and a context key on the right side. I just wish they'd make a mechanical version.

A lot of those keyboarda uses QMK fw, you can do a lot of things with layouts with them.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#132

Post by goodpoint »

smallpipe wrote: post #119
ruffrey wrote: post #118

I applaud any effort to rethink keyboards from first principles. After years of shoulder, neck and back pain I discovered that the root cause was the standard keyboard design. It causes rounded shoulders. Perhaps my shoulders are just too wide. This pinched all sorts of muscles, tendons and nerves. Doctors and physical therapists just failed to identify the issue. Weight lifting didn't help all that much, even with a…

Are you aware of split keyboards? I use a mistel barrocco (essentially two normal keyboard halves tied together with a USB cable) and j can’t recommend it enough

When you can buy 2 everyday keyboards for 30 euros in total it's difficult to justify the shocking prices of split/mechanical/ergonomic keyboards.

I could buy an ErgoDox but it feels too much like a status symbol rather than a working tool.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#133

Post by goodpoint »

bodge5000 wrote: post #42

I've always thought it was a bit odd that for touchscreen phones we just decided to grab the near exact keyboard layout we use with physical keyboards, and just stick them on a tiny touchscreen. Sure, everyone knows how to use it and its fine for early smartphones, but it seems like a really terrible place for a full keyboard to go; imagine using a keyboard the size of your phone keyboard (so about the third the size…

> grab the near exact keyboard layout we use with physical keyboards, and just stick them on a tiny touchscreen

Add to that the sad story of the QWERTY layout: proven to be inefficient and yet still widespread.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#134

Post by yathern »

rualca wrote: post #65
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about “one day I'll be able to walk around in the forest while working”?

Why not just walk around in the Forrest? I mean, why do you feel it's desirable to shoehorn doing work into any and all type of human activity? GP has a good point: that sounds terribly dystopian.

Nothing is stopping you from walking around without work. But if one must work (and one must) - walking around in the forest is a nicer setting than sitting at a desk, at least for some subset of the work.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#135

Post by aasasd »

macNchz wrote: post #127
aasasd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wueLXCbm_KY

Thanks for the link, super interesting to watch. Over the years as a programmer I've picked up knowledge about web accessibility from a mechanical, standards/implementation focused point of view, but this video is helping me realize that my understanding has been lacking a level of depth and empathy for the real people using these tools. Looking through some of her other videos I found this demonstration of camera-to…

Magic stuff indeed, I didn't see that vid before—gotta rectify this with her other videos.

Personally I only used recognition with photos a couple times, to identify some things. Now, that right there is a power user of the feature.

How does the phone even process the images that quickly? I was under the impression that generic models to recognize a wide variety of things require beefy processing and plenty of memory or disk. Or, are latencies on mobile networks that low in the US or wherever she is? And, do people really use mobile internet all day long—especially transferring dozens of photos?

P.S. While we're on the topic of magnifiers: MacOS has the feature where the onscreen magnifier can be shown temporarily with the keys ctrl-alt, and follows the mouse. I have rather moderately poor vision (so far), but I'm using this quite often to gawk at smaller things on the screen, instead of bending myself closer to the monitor or trying to zoom the webpages. This especially works wonders with hi-dpi screens, where zoomed-in areas just have the old-dpi resolution—so I really can see small details in images, as if having separate images of those parts. With landscape photos, the effect is great.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#136

Post by aidenn0 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #124
hundchenkatze wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was experiencing the same – narrow hand position causing lots of back pain. Keeping my arms/shoulders in a natural position seems to have fixed it. There's also tons of split keyboards available now. https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

All of those beautiful split keyboards, and not a single one with a proper layout. Shame. Looks like I'm sticking with my Surface Ergonomic, because it's the only one I've found that has super keys on both sides, and a context key on the right side. I just wish they'd make a mechanical version.

Yeah every split I've seen puts the arrow keys where the 4 modifier keys go on a typical keyboard. Annoys the heck out of me.

The UHK can be mapped to a proper layout easily (it has proper widths for modifier keys on the right, so you just need to move the Fn somewhere else and you can get a standard set), but it's not cheap.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#138

Post by matznerd »

throwaway23091 wrote: post #61
dom111 wrote: post #52

I'm really keen on things like this. I love (in theory at least) the concept of being able to work from literally anywhere, and the concept of some sort of smart display (glasses, lenses, etc) but having a physical keyboard to type out code is always a major barrier. Something like this starts to edge towards that vision which is cool. I wonder as well if there's a way to have some sort of bracelet (but probably some…

Zack freedman made a video [0] last year where he created a wearable glove that tracked hand movements to achieve something similar to what you describe. Seemed really cool, and I'm sure we will get something better than this in the not-too-distant future. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6raRftH9yxM

Zack is a good guy, I ran into him at a conference years ago, where I was wearing my own mobile setup with a HUD and a Twiddler and we hit it off b/c we were both trying to solve the same problems, however his design was way better!

I'm glad to see this iteration, as it looks like it is getting closer and closer to reality. He is definitely on the cutting edge of these things in terms of usability.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#139

Post by david_allison »

aasasd wrote: post #128
aasasd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wueLXCbm_KY

By the way, besides the wacky keyboard blind people also have another, erhm, ‘perk’ in their use of phones: they, pretty obviously, keep the brightness at zero. Gonna last a long time on a charge. I keep thinking occasionally that some things that I do with the phone could be done with a small one-handed wireless remote/controller and audio output—so I could trigger them while doing something else, e.g. walking outsi…

> Anki already supports either a specific remote or bluetooth remotes in general, and has TTS.

Have you considered a gamepad designed for phones? I use a GameSir T1s for my Anki reviews while out walking.

Only downside is the screen is lopsided in the controller due to the volume buttons, but this could be fixed with a more expensive gamepad which wraps the sides.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#140

Post by girvo »

bserge wrote: post #64
girvo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite mobile-device keyboard was that of the Sony Ericsson M600i/P1i https://www.cnet.com/a/img/oje2OkhPIKnnKkJDXCAYnXJBst0=/1200... Its a rocker-key design: hit the left side, Q, right side, W. The U-shaped key made it super easy to hit the right letter, I could type amazingly quickly on this janky phone from 2006. Once the capacitive-touch revolution happened, the closest keyboard that really took advantage…

Hmmm, I actually remember some of Android keyboard like that, it had two letters per key, so one tap - first letter, 2 taps - second letter. Allowed for bigger key size. Worked a lot like a good old phone numpad, just faster. Crashed a lot.

Likely TouchPal: they supported Windows Mobile and Android back in the day :) It supported the "tap N times" feature too, as like a fancier QWERTY-ish T9
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