21–30 of 46 posts
This article would be a lot more interesting if it also mentioned any of the downsides of switching to a non-default keyboard layout. They just mention switching to Colemark as if it's the obviously superior option and you'd be a fool for not switching. Depending on what you're doing, I hope you enjoy a lifetime of fighting with keyboard shortcuts, or having to constantly remap keyboard shortcuts for every single new…
Boy I can't wait to remap my entire vim/vscode config, relearn a lifetime of touch typing, and have my computer inaccessible to anyone else who wants to use it for a +30% typing efficiency
The entire article is moot, because the story of qwerty keyboards being layed out that way is a myth. Nothing more. People can type in an astonishing speed on normal layouts. https://wiredpen.com/2022/05/12/origin-myths-qwerty-and-dvor... .
The health and usabilty issues of the QWERTY layout do not disappear like a debunked historical myth. But yes, people can adapt to a lot of poorly designed interfaces!
This article would be a lot more interesting if it also mentioned any of the downsides of switching to a non-default keyboard layout. They just mention switching to Colemark as if it's the obviously superior option and you'd be a fool for not switching. Depending on what you're doing, I hope you enjoy a lifetime of fighting with keyboard shortcuts, or having to constantly remap keyboard shortcuts for every single new…
I have no doubt that the standard keyboard QWERTY layout is broken, but I really wonder whether it's broken in an way that's particularly important to most users of keyboards. I totally understand looking for a more ergonomic design of the physical layout - I've long used the relatively straightforward split keyboards, and find them physically more comfortable, and I can see for people who type a fair bit, going even…
after all, everyone starts without any skill at touch-typing, so why not teach them something better?
It's some old QWERTY keyboard that came free with a prebuilt my Dad bought 20 years ago and it's still going along just fine. It does what I need, when I need it, and I don't even have to think about it. It seems like you think about your keyboard quite a lot.
I would recommend not doing that.
I recommend using the standard QWERTY keyboard. Your typing skills will be easily transferable, as this is the keyboard layout you'll encounter on almost all other computers. It works great with the default key mappings and shortcuts for the majority of software out there. You'll spend exactly 0 seconds tweaking and adapting those shortcuts to your keyboard. And although you may type a little slower on your QWERTY keyboard, you'll still type faster than the speed of thought.
In this way, I think you'll find you have more free time to pursue more fruitful things.
- The physical device:
- The "key board": Keys that are aligned in straight lines are not aligned with your hands.
- The wrist bend affects people differently and can cause strains
- Physical design to lower wrist strain is an almost entirely separate research area than optimal keyboard layout.
- The optimal physical input device (in terms of input bandwidth) is hand-shaped but is more difficult to make.
- The layout:
- This article only discusses permutations of letters for increased bandwidth and less strain.
- Considering computer users can "easily" reach 80-120 wpm with QWERTY, speed is a moot point for non-competitioners.
- Few people learn a new layout and have a confirmation bias when they do; real usage data is scarce.
The layout is about much more than permutations of letters. Anyone who tried to or aspires to run Kmonad, Kanata, or Neo2 or who have a window manager with custom keybindings that control their environment, or who type with more than one kind of keyboard (e.g. pinyin, cyrillic, greek), or who need to type special unicode symbols that don't have a key combo in traditional layouts (math, emoji): The bar for keyboard input is higher, and I don't know any project that attempts to unify these. My "keyboard" is a combination of many open source tools, some of which work better than others, others have a steep learning curve, yet others are only documented in foreign languages.
[0]: https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad [1]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout) [3]: https://www.neo-layout.org/
Also loving the "QUERTY" is suboptimal; use "DVORAK". "DVORAK" is suboptimal, use "COLMAK". "COLMAK" is suboptimal, use "COLMAK_DH". Can't win!
This is all fine and good, but besides the mechanical legacy myths there is also the need to use diacritics, symbols, etc. I intend to try something different (an http://artsey.io left-handed keyboard, which seems like a decent thing to try using over Summer break with a minimalist on the go setup), but I’m much more interested in 60% QWERTY and a good window manager as a productivity booster.
I have been thinking about trying a one-handed layout lately, the one you link is intriguing!