How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is • Hacker News Board

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#121

Post by opan » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #48

scoofy wrote: post #9

I switched to Dvorak in my 20's. I don't think i got faster, but my right-hand wrist which would irritate me and was one reason for the switch, definitely was more comfortable after, and hasn't given me any problems since. That said, switching was a huge pain in the ass.... like horrible for the first two months, and i promised myself i'd keep typing in both. However, i eventually lost the ability to type in qwerty,…

I've never had issues with typing. It's the mouse that irritates my wrist. I swap it from side to side to alleviate the problem. i do have wider hands...

A split keyboard with a trackball placed in the space between the halves may be worth considering.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#122

Post by pnutjam » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

opan wrote: post #121

pnutjam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had issues with typing. It's the mouse that irritates my wrist. I swap it from side to side to alleviate the problem. i do have wider hands...

A split keyboard with a trackball placed in the space between the halves may be worth considering.

I actually swap between a split keyboard and regular keyboard. I find the variation helps.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#123

Post by pnutjam » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

blarg1 wrote: post #118

pnutjam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had issues with typing. It's the mouse that irritates my wrist. I swap it from side to side to alleviate the problem. i do have wider hands...

Could try a ball mouse, the one I use, has the thumb on the ball, and the normal fingers for the buttons.

I tried one of those, but you can only use them with left or right hand and the wheel still aggravates my wrist. Swapping from left to right seems better. I also add in a little weight training and I don't have any problems.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#124

Post by opan » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #32

Personal anecdote, but I know a few people who got RSI/CTS and had a chance to watch them type --- and what they all had in common was how "stiff" their typing posture was, and the strength at which they hit the keys. They weren't fast either, probably in the 50-70wpm range. One of them, before he got RSI, even commented on how bad my posture was and how it'd "make it easier to injure myself". I find that relaxing, a…

I'm just gonna say that as someone typing 120+wpm for years now, I hate to see high actuation force vilified like this. It's my preference and I quite enjoy the higher force needed. Fewer accidental presses, and you can even lightly drum on your keys without them activating, which is fun and relaxing.

I went from cherry mx blues to cherry mx greens to kailh box navies and I love them to pieces.

I find that the people who swear by very light linear switches rarely type as fast as me, take that as you will. I think they fell down a strange rabbit hole.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#125

Post by opan » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

xjrp wrote: post #66

The bigger problem is not the layout it’s the keyboard itself, if you have rsi switching to an ergodox can improve the situation, if this is not enough something like a dactyl manuform or a kinesis advantage 360 should do the trick. This combined with light switches like tactile (MX brown) or linear (red) will reduce your pain immensely.

It is absolutely the layout, but ergonomic keyboards are still great. I built a Pinky4 split keyboard and it didn't solve pain in my right hand caused by Dvorak. After learning Workman (50/50 balanced hand usage unlike any other layout I know of), the pain is gone.

The split helps by moving stuff like modifiers, space, and backspace to thumb keys, it just wasn't "enough" on its own.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#126

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 11:24 PM UTC

rsfern wrote: post #37

chillacy wrote: post #12

> One week or so ago I switched from Colemak to typing on QWYRFM due to the reduced load it places on the pinkies. I typed Dvorak for 10 years before I started getting RSI again in my right ulna. It turns out that the 'S' key being hit by the pinky in Dvorak caused me a lot of pain. I ended up switching to BEAKL, a pretty obscure layout which is specifically made to alleviate stress on the pinky. It moves the relativ…

That’s interesting. I guess I never really thought about it, but on dvorak `ls` is a double tap with the right pinky, and it’s often immediately followed by [enter] with the same pinky… I type that key sequence a lot

I added

  alias h=ls
  alias hh='ls -l'

to my .zshrc about 10 minutes after I started using Dvorak, 18 years ago. "ls" on its own is OK. It's not an especially common bigram (wails, fills, also, Welsh, whilst), but I can't find any English word matching ls[rlvz], which is the pattern of "ls -l". Compulsive, compulsory, falser, impulsive, maelstrom, pulsar, wellspring come closest.

I believe LSZ is all with the pinky in the usual method[1]. There's no other option on the keyboard I bought a couple of years ago, which also has several thumb keys.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Dvorak_keyboard_l...

[2] https://imgur.com/gallery/UIZ8Jz3

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#127

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #116

> Uncomfortable pinky movements Any keyboard layout that leads to more ulnar deviation is simply a no-go for me. So Dovrak and Colemak are out, evidently (never tried them, but TFA says they use the pinky more, so if I believe that then I must not use them). Ideally the pinky should not be used at all for typing. I've had to teach myself to not use one-handed modifier keystrokes that involve ulnar deviation. The key…

I think if you rule out Dvorak and Colemak due to pinky use, you should also rule out Qwerty. The best option would be to buy a keyboard with multiple thumb keys, so you can press e.g. enter and backspace with your thumb.

(Not using one-handed combinations is the general advice on any typing course -- A and M should use the shift keys on the right and left hand, respectively, as should ^A and ^M.)

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#128

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 11:57 PM UTC

psanan wrote: post #103

My own experiments with this point to similar conclusions. QWERTY is not laid out that badly, really, and for me (with no RSI problems, yet) the benefits of using the default, especially being able to type on other people's computers, far outweighed any benefit from the alternate layout (Workman). However, the excursion was completely worth it for me - I switched in the first place because I never learned to touch ty…

Qwerty is laid out terribly.

The fourth and fifth-least frequent English letters have the first and second-best location on the right hand, and a rarely-used symbol (;) has another.

Of the most frequent letters (ETAOIN), only one (A) is directly under a fingertip at a resting position, and two of them require the longest stretches (T, N).

Dvorak, by comparison, puts the least frequent letters on the bottom row: ;QJKX BMWVZ (PYGF are less frequent than M and W). It has all of ETAOIN on the middle row.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#129

Post by hnlmorg » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 12:02 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #115

hnlmorg wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The part that is a myth was that they prevented jamming by “slowing typists down”. What they did is moved commonly adjacently pressed letters apart from each-other so they wouldn’t be pressed at about the same time. This was not done explicitly to speed or slow typists (at the time, there was no established typing technique and there were no expert typists), except insofar as a constantly jammed keyboard was extrem…

There are an awful lot of people who develop RSI from keyboard use, nearly all of which is preventable. Better training would help a lot, but better designed equipment would also make a big difference. Changing the QWERTY association between keys and letters shouldn’t be the highest priority, but the advantage it has is that it can be done in software, without change to physical devices. Reshaping the keyboard to bet…

> There are an awful lot of people who develop RSI from keyboard use, nearly all of which is preventable.

I'm not saying there aren't. What I'm saying is it's not directly because of the keyboard layout. You go on to say this yourself in the very same post as your point above:

> Changing the QWERTY association between keys and letters shouldn’t be the highest priority,

People talk too much about keyboard layout with regards to RSI and totally blank out all the other factors that contribute.

If the problem was only related to the keyboard layout and QWERTY is as bad as HN commenters make out, then we'd hear a lot more cases of RSI. But it isn't, which statistically suggests the problem is more nuanced. ie type of keyboard (mechanical, chiclet, even down to the specific manufacturer and the parts they've used), position of keyboard in 3D space relative to the operator, position of hands on keyboard, typing style, health of the operator, operator's workflow, etc. There are so many variables at play that blaming the keyboard layout had always struck me as a massively lazy deduction.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#130

Post by Symbiote » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 12:02 AM UTC

csdvrx wrote: post #80

ziml77 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if anyone has studied the effects of different weights of switches. Personally I've always liked the lighter ones. The heavier ones felt uncomfortable and tiring. But I see people in the mechanical keyboard community praise the heavier switches, so I've always assumed that my hands are just weak. The worst ones I used were ones that I got because the MK community doesn't consider browns to be able to be in t…

> I wonder if anyone has studied the effects of different weights of switches. Personally I've always liked the lighter ones. The heavier ones felt uncomfortable and tiring. But I see people in the mechanical keyboard community praise the heavier switches, so I've always assumed that my hands are just weak I don't know about studies, but I prefer membrane keyboards for this reason: far less strength is required.

Since changing to a mechanical keyboard, I've realized the opposite. A traditional membrane keyboard seems like much more effort. (I measured it at some point, by balancing coins on a key until the key activated, but I don't have enough coins to hand to repeat this.)

Laptop-style keys can be lighter -- I think too light -- but there are mechanical keys with similar weighting.

Next time you're in an electronics shop, see if there's a mechanical gaming keyboard on display with "Red" switches. (Note you probably don't need to press the key all they way to the bottom to activate it.) Switches lighter than this are available, but probably wouldn't be on display on a keyboard in a normal shop.