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Your keyboard layout is broken

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Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#31

Post by cout »

I've never been convinced by the home row argument. I type by using key combos, so what matters to me is that common letter sequences can easily be pressed with two separate fingers without effort. For example, English has a lot of words starting with consonant+R+vowel, such as the word "crash". That's a particularly bad word for me to type on qwerty, because I have to stretch one finger down and one finger up then roll by hand upward. To make matters worse, my pinkies are not particularly strong, so I tend to use my ring finger to press the A. I wish there were a less commonly used letter in that home row position.

Colemak looks slightly better than qwerty for some key combos, but not better enough to switch. If there were a layout that optimized typing of common letter sequences, I might be tempted to try it.

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#32

Post by cout »

sshine wrote: post #28

There are several aspects to keyboard interfaces that the article does not catch: - 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 te…

Race conditions are a good point. I remember on DOS I had a batch file DRI.BAT because I would often type DRI or IDR instead of DIR. Oddly I have no problem with ls and rarely type sl even though L and S are hit with different hands; either my typing has improved or there is something different about those key positions.

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#33

Post by paulryanrogers »

_c3ag wrote: post #26
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #16

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…

maybe it is more for future generations hoping the computer train? after all, everyone starts without any skill at touch-typing, so why not teach them something better?

Because there must be a coordinated effort to change the default or at least increase the diversity of layouts. Otherwise it's like teaching esperanto, putting them into a very small minority for little benefit.

Even as a technical user for decades I find it too burdensome to swim upstream with a niche layout, and I already have remapped copy-paste.

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#34

Post by _c3ag »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #33
_c3ag wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe it is more for future generations hoping the computer train? after all, everyone starts without any skill at touch-typing, so why not teach them something better?

Because there must be a coordinated effort to change the default or at least increase the diversity of layouts. Otherwise it's like teaching esperanto, putting them into a very small minority for little benefit. Even as a technical user for decades I find it too burdensome to swim upstream with a niche layout, and I already have remapped copy-paste.

well, all we can do, is all we can do…

if swimming upstream is that hard (and i agree that decades of professional usage on a X layout is hard to give up); at least when teaching someone you could say something: “here is the layout you should use! i know mine is different and i can type typewriter with one row in case i want to impress someone but yours is better, like minor chances of getting a RSI and general efficiency when typing stuff…”

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#35

Post by jacknews »

All these alternate layouts seem to be optimized to minimize finger movement in English, but that's not really how things work in practice.

For one thing, there's more than English.

Then, it's not just about finger movement, but about easy movements. For example 're' seems common in English, and is really easy to type as a 'roll' in qwerty.

'n', 'u', 't' 'v' are all really easy to reach with the index finger in qwerty, so it's not just about the home row, but about easy-to-reach keys.

Also a lot of keyboardists are programmers, so there's the whole story of punctuation. Let alone software keyboard shortcuts etc.

I've found it's better to configure your software than to change your keyboard layout. For example I'm learning Janet (a lisp-like) currently, which allows kebab-case variable names. Wow, it's such a blessing to be able to type without shift-modifyer, 'vector-embedding' instead of 'vector_embedding' or 'VectorEmbedding', and [1 2 3 4 5 6] instead of [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], etc.

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#36

Post by alanbernstein »

nemo1618 wrote: post #23
eviks wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I'm skeptical that QWERTY causes RSI (or at least, causes more RSI than any other layout). I struggled with RSI for over a year and tried all sorts of things. Today I'm typing this comment on a QWERTY laptop keyboard in a position that would cause an ergonomics expert to faint, with no pain at all. Evidently the layout was not the problem.

What's the position? I use a steeply tented split keyboard for neutral wrist position.

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#37

Post by dillydogg »

ArchieMaclean wrote: post #7
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #4

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 use Colemak-DH (modified version of Colemak that has less lateral hand motion - found I was getting slight wrist strain with normal Colemak). I find it more comfortable than Qwerty. I have not had any issue with keyboard shortcuts - Ctrl-Z/X/C are in exactly the same spot and Ctrl-V is shifted over by one key. Most shortcuts are placed to be memorable (e.g. Ctrl-F for Find), not to be ergonomic, so the keyboard lay…

You can rebind caps to backspace in GNOME. I think you use GNOME tweaks. I've done it on all of my computers.

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#38

Post by ArchieMaclean »

dillydogg wrote: post #37
ArchieMaclean wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Colemak-DH (modified version of Colemak that has less lateral hand motion - found I was getting slight wrist strain with normal Colemak). I find it more comfortable than Qwerty. I have not had any issue with keyboard shortcuts - Ctrl-Z/X/C are in exactly the same spot and Ctrl-V is shifted over by one key. Most shortcuts are placed to be memorable (e.g. Ctrl-F for Find), not to be ergonomic, so the keyboard lay…

You can rebind caps to backspace in GNOME. I think you use GNOME tweaks. I've done it on all of my computers.

I did this initially, but I believe it didn't work for all applications - some were still registering it as Caps Lock (e.g. VS Code IIRC).

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#39

Post by dillydogg »

ArchieMaclean wrote: post #38
dillydogg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can rebind caps to backspace in GNOME. I think you use GNOME tweaks. I've done it on all of my computers.

I did this initially, but I believe it didn't work for all applications - some were still registering it as Caps Lock (e.g. VS Code IIRC).

Oh shucks, I should have known you would have tried it. Sorry, I was hoping I had a silver bullet for you.

Re: Your keyboard layout is broken

#40

Post by walnutclosefarm »

_c3ag wrote: post #26
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #16

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…

maybe it is more for future generations hoping the computer train? after all, everyone starts without any skill at touch-typing, so why not teach them something better?

Maybe, but all that kind of assume you will only type on personal devices, or at least do 99.9% of your typing on personal devices.

When I worked in Europe for roughly 1 week of every month, I was largely flummoxed by the occassional need to use a foreign keyboard mapping (a German keyboard has y and z reversed from the English layout, as I recall). Just that and a few other differences for symbol keys meant that every time I had to use a keyboard not my own when in Germany, I went from being a fluent touch typist, to a hunt and peck typist. Same for French keyboards, which had several key re-arrangements relative to English that I no longer remember. If I taught my kids on Dvorak (which I considered, as they were home schooled), that would have been their experience on every device they encountered outside our home. I'm sure they would have loved me for it.

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