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An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

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Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#121

Post by OJFord »

eimrine wrote: post #99
jonnycomputer wrote: post #81

It occurs to me that optimal keyboard layouts depend primarily on use cases: by human language, by activity, and so on. I might well imagine that a Perl-optimized keyboard layout would look different than one intended for writing fiction, and so on.

I have not seen from your comment where is the difference between layouts for different activities. Isn't Programmer Dvorak enough optimized for Perl? Because for writing some graphomania any Dvorak fits just perfect. I can not even imagine a reason for having several different layouts for same Latin letters.

Presumably not Latin letters so much as special chars used in the language syntax. I suppose there's room for optimisation in Latin chars used in keywords (if applicable) too though.

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#122

Post by Toorkit »

gotrythis wrote: post #106
AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #37

Alternative keyboard layouts are fascinating, but always raise a couple of questions for me and I wonder if anyone here can come up with actual experiences regarding the following topics: - I have been using standard german QWERTZ for about 42 years now, in average certainly not less than 3 hours every day. I was originally educated in proper 10 finger blind typing in a dedicated typing school as part of my typesette…

I'm 50 and learned to touch type years before there were personal computers. I switched to Colemak a couple of years ago and it took a year to get really proficient. I can no longer type in Querty, though I have no trouble using swipe keyboards on phones. I'm a faster typer now. But the real benefit is that it no longer hurts to type. Typing in Querty hurt my hands after a while to the point where I couldn't type or…

Everyone thinks I'm crazy. "Just use qwerty, don't be weird. My hands are fine."

But the pain after a few hours typing was horrible, until I moved to Colemak.

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#123

Post by readingnews »

After using a split spacebar for some time now, I just can not see the idea of a single spacebar being optimal.

I have two thumbs. Why not use them? My right spacebar is space, my left is enter. I have never done anything else so profoundly productive to my computer.

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#124

Post by NikolaNovak »

codedokode wrote: post #114

As we are discussing layouts, I would like to point to a bigger problem (in my opinion) with keyboards: they don't have enough keys. Let me explain. While Latin alphabet has only 26 letters, many languages have more of them. For example, Russian alphabet has 33 letters. Therefore, to fit these letters there must be 7 more keys. But we also need two keys to switch layouts - so in total there should be 9 extra keys. Sa…

>>Sadly, manufacturers (including Apple that claims to "think different", but in this case thinks exactly the same as PC vendors) don't want to add even a single key,

Realistically, it's the opposite - they look to reduce and minimize keys; Home/End/Pg keys, arrow keys, all are being mangled/reduced/moved/killed. Every manufacturer wants to make its own bespoke layout for every model they make seemingly, presumably in a valiant effort to make muscle memory thing of the past :-) . Standards are for wussies!

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#125

Post by celeritascelery »

readingnews wrote: post #123

After using a split spacebar for some time now, I just can not see the idea of a single spacebar being optimal. I have two thumbs. Why not use them? My right spacebar is space, my left is enter. I have never done anything else so profoundly productive to my computer.

Interesting. I was thinking of doing something similar, but replacing the other space bar with backspace. For me enter is a really easy key to reach, backspace is much farther. Either that or escape.

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#126

Post by cyounkins »

addandsubtract wrote: post #35

The problem with any non-QWERTY keyboard layout is that all app and web shortcuts go out the window. You want to save an image for the web? Good luck growing a third hand. Want to open the quick menu on a site using ⌘+/, but your / key is only accessible using the shift key? Tough luck. Need to change the font size in your editor? Just navigate down these 3 easy sub-menus, because the keyboard shortcut for that is al…

Many sibling comments dismiss this as a non-issue if you've ever actually tried an alternative layout.

As a Dvorak user on macOS for ~12 years, I do believe it's an issue. I use "Dvorak - QWERTY ⌘" as my daily driver and while it works for most applications, it's infuriating for those it doesn't. Sometimes keyboard shortcuts are control/option based without using command, so it's still in Dvorak mode.

In Gimp, the New Image shortcut is ⌘-N, which doesn't work. I have to press physical L, which is the key for N in Dvorak. This is common. The apps seem to do some lower-level key detection. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/3352 I think Fusion 360 does similar, though I don't have it installed at the moment. I have also had trouble with remove desktop applications, which is kind of to be expected but another downside.

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#127

Post by cyounkins »

V1ndaar wrote: post #43
addandsubtract wrote: post #35

The problem with any non-QWERTY keyboard layout is that all app and web shortcuts go out the window. You want to save an image for the web? Good luck growing a third hand. Want to open the quick menu on a site using ⌘+/, but your / key is only accessible using the shift key? Tough luck. Need to change the font size in your editor? Just navigate down these 3 easy sub-menus, because the keyboard shortcut for that is al…

This is an almost complete non-issue in practice. It sounds like an expectation someone has that hasn't actually switched to a different keyboard layout. I'm typing on neo [0] and it's no problem at all. [0]: https://neo-layout.org

Wikipedia says this project targets English, but I don't see any way to switch the website language to English so I can't read it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout)

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#128

Post by slim »

codedokode wrote: post #114

As we are discussing layouts, I would like to point to a bigger problem (in my opinion) with keyboards: they don't have enough keys. Let me explain. While Latin alphabet has only 26 letters, many languages have more of them. For example, Russian alphabet has 33 letters. Therefore, to fit these letters there must be 7 more keys. But we also need two keys to switch layouts - so in total there should be 9 extra keys. Sa…

I'd go even further and want a 200 key keboard. to each glyph a separate key. I don't want to switch (I write arabic/latin)

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#129

Post by jdc0589 »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #105

One issue I've always had with QWERTY (and probably this new layout as well) is that "similar" letters are often next to each other on the keyboard, making typo detection nearly impossible in English. For instance, in English, many short words with a "i" as the only vowel remain a valid word when the "i" is replaced by an "o" or a "u" -- pit/pot/put, bit/bot/but, tip/top/tup, pig/pog/pug, bitch/butch/botch, etc. This…

new idea, ai generated layout to intentionally create the most fun typos

Re: An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

#130

Post by linsomniac »

readingnews wrote: post #123

After using a split spacebar for some time now, I just can not see the idea of a single spacebar being optimal. I have two thumbs. Why not use them? My right spacebar is space, my left is enter. I have never done anything else so profoundly productive to my computer.

This. But on steroids. One of the primary reasons I went with the ErgoDox was to reduce the load on my pinkies and add some load to my underused thumbs. I have left thumb doing space/backspace, and right doing enter/tab.
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