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The keyboard layout project

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Re: The keyboard layout project

#11

Post by techiferous »

mistercow wrote: post #4

For years, I've toyed with a similar idea to this. I feel like a lot of work on this has relied on some pretty crude heuristics like "rolls" and "alternation". I think it's dangerous to overgeneralize about these, and I think it's also short-sighted because there are probably more specific patterns that affect typing speed. So my idea was to collect data on all keystroke transitions. There are 1,089 of these on the p…

Being a dvorak user, I must say, the "rolls" are extremely comfortable and fun.

I love typing the words church, tenth, school, etc.

Re: The keyboard layout project

#12

Post by blackRust »

mistercow wrote: post #5
dsego wrote: post #2

How about this - The Workman Keyboard Layout http://viralintrospection.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/a-differe... But the layout is just one of the problems. The key staggering is also not very ergonomic. There are two cool keyboards featuring symmetric key positioning: - Truly ergonomic keyboard http://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/index.php - Type matrix http://typematrix.com

Out of curiosity, do you have any references to support non-staggered keys are superior? I ask because (100 - ε)% of claims about ergonomics are completely unsupported by scientific research.

(100 - ε)%

I like this very much. Another more accurate description that comes to mind is describing where you live: CountryA XOR CountryB

Re: The keyboard layout project

#13

Post by stinky613 »

techiferous wrote: post #10
guylhem wrote: post #8

Just what we need - yet another standard! Maybe it will be marginally better (like all the others attemps before - gogole around to see the approaches and results) - but still not enough to fully replace good old qwerty. Dvorak, with a larger support failed. How do you think it can succeed? The advantage of being first in the market, and now having a large use based, let me think you'd need to have a solution at leas…

"Dvorak, with a larger support failed." If by failed you mean widespread adoption. But I have been using Dvorak since 1999 on a variety of platforms without a problem. It's a personal success for me. "the trouble it is for them to manage different keyboard layouts in their head. I wonder if that's the same for dvorak layout users." It's only on extremely rare cases that I've been forced to use QWERTY (such as at a pu…

That's great that it works for you, but 'widespread adoption'? Really? If you were to take a random sample of 100 computer users how many do you seriously think have adopted Dvorak?

Re: The keyboard layout project

#14

Post by vinodkd »

moonboots wrote: post #7

I question whether these keyboard layouts are ideal for programmers. On Qwerty, Colemak, Dvorak, and Workman, the symbol keys are pushed to the periphery of the keyboard. To improve practical typing efficiency, I created and use http://typing.io , which allows you to type real code instead of prose.

Nice interface, although it took me a moment to figure out that the orange background was the caret.

One nit, however: although I'm a touch typist (having learnt typing on a typewriter), I've long since trained myself to type the braces together and then cursor-left to fill in the details. This I do for ()'s, {}'s, []'s and 's; as well as quotes. Similarly I type the C-style /* * / comments as the pair of /'s first, cursor-left, then two *'s, cursor left and finally the comment text. It started out in this mode only when I wrote code, but now I find myself doing the same even with normal text.

Not sure how many there are like me (a senior early in my novice days showed me the practice and it stuck), but it always seemed like a simple way to ensure no dangling parens (assuming you're using "just an editor" like I do).

Could you allow for cursor-lefts to correct instead of just backspace?

Re: The keyboard layout project

#15

Post by roryokane »

stinky613 wrote: post #13
techiferous wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dvorak, with a larger support failed." If by failed you mean widespread adoption. But I have been using Dvorak since 1999 on a variety of platforms without a problem. It's a personal success for me. "the trouble it is for them to manage different keyboard layouts in their head. I wonder if that's the same for dvorak layout users." It's only on extremely rare cases that I've been forced to use QWERTY (such as at a pu…

That's great that it works for you, but 'widespread adoption'? Really? If you were to take a random sample of 100 computer users how many do you seriously think have adopted Dvorak?

I think you misunderstand techiferous. This is what he said:

> “Dvorak […] failed.” If by failed you mean widespread adoption. But […] it’s a personal success for me.

I think by that, he meant, “yes, I agree that Dvorak failed, if ‘failed’ means not having widespread adoption. But I don’t agree with that definition of failure. Dvorak is actually not a failure, because I have used it successfully personally.”

Re: The keyboard layout project

#16

Post by tome »

stinky613 wrote: post #13
techiferous wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dvorak, with a larger support failed." If by failed you mean widespread adoption. But I have been using Dvorak since 1999 on a variety of platforms without a problem. It's a personal success for me. "the trouble it is for them to manage different keyboard layouts in their head. I wonder if that's the same for dvorak layout users." It's only on extremely rare cases that I've been forced to use QWERTY (such as at a pu…

That's great that it works for you, but 'widespread adoption'? Really? If you were to take a random sample of 100 computer users how many do you seriously think have adopted Dvorak?

techiferous means it failed to get widespread adoption but succeeded for him personally. In fact my story is remarkably similar. I adopted Dvorak around 1999 and have had no problems using it since. If I use a computer long-term I change the keyboard layout (but not the hardware). If I use a computer short-term I hunt and peck. For me personally it's been very successful.

Re: The keyboard layout project

#17

Post by moonboots »

vinodkd wrote: post #14
moonboots wrote: post #7

I question whether these keyboard layouts are ideal for programmers. On Qwerty, Colemak, Dvorak, and Workman, the symbol keys are pushed to the periphery of the keyboard. To improve practical typing efficiency, I created and use http://typing.io , which allows you to type real code instead of prose.

Nice interface, although it took me a moment to figure out that the orange background was the caret. One nit, however: although I'm a touch typist (having learnt typing on a typewriter), I've long since trained myself to type the braces together and then cursor-left to fill in the details. This I do for ()'s, {}'s, []'s and 's; as well as quotes. Similarly I type the C-style /* * / comments as the pair of /'s first,…

Thanks for the feedback. Occasionally I also find myself typing opening brace, closing brace, left arrow, inner text, and right arrow. However, it's very inefficient to jump to the arrow keys, so I want to discourage this typing pattern.

To keep braces/quotes balanced, I've been using editor plugins like smartinput[1] and paredit[2] that automatically insert closing symbols. Even with the assistance, I've found it's easiest to continue typing through the closing symbols (as opposed to right arrowing).

The javascript is also less hairy without needing to handle typing braces together:)

[1] http://thechangelog.com/post/20172996073/vim-smartinput-smar... [2] http://emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit

Re: The keyboard layout project

#18

Post by stinky613 »

tome wrote: post #16
stinky613 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great that it works for you, but 'widespread adoption'? Really? If you were to take a random sample of 100 computer users how many do you seriously think have adopted Dvorak?

techiferous means it failed to get widespread adoption but succeeded for him personally. In fact my story is remarkably similar. I adopted Dvorak around 1999 and have had no problems using it since. If I use a computer long-term I change the keyboard layout (but not the hardware). If I use a computer short-term I hunt and peck. For me personally it's been very successful.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thank you. Personally I don't see any keyboard layout displacing QWERTY. It's so entrenched in hardware, software, and people's minds. I think, if anything, it's more likely that voice recognition and things like Swype will displace traditional QWERTY typing. I can barely get family and friends to keep their phone or computer up to date despite it only taking a click here or there. A new keyboard layout? I may as well ask them to learn high level calculus. Even if we start by trying to teach an alternative layout to young children I just don't see it catching on.

Re: The keyboard layout project

#19

Post by mixmastamyk »

moonboots wrote: post #7

I question whether these keyboard layouts are ideal for programmers. On Qwerty, Colemak, Dvorak, and Workman, the symbol keys are pushed to the periphery of the keyboard. To improve practical typing efficiency, I created and use http://typing.io , which allows you to type real code instead of prose.

Agreed. I'd like to try the colemak layout, but the various brackets and braces need to be handy for programming. Say what you will about qwerty, but at least on the US version the punctuation is decent and reasonably logical on the right.

Re: The keyboard layout project

#20

Post by mifrai »

dsego wrote: post #2

How about this - The Workman Keyboard Layout http://viralintrospection.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/a-differe... But the layout is just one of the problems. The key staggering is also not very ergonomic. There are two cool keyboards featuring symmetric key positioning: - Truly ergonomic keyboard http://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/index.php - Type matrix http://typematrix.com

I personally don't suggest the truly ergonomic. While it's well designed from the outset, the underpinnings are a bit lacking. The existing firmware is buggy and has issues with Mac; and the programmable software has been promised for a while now but was never delivered. To boot, the company's support is nearly non-existent, except for - thankfully - their return process.

As mentioned by gokfar, I really look forward to the ergodox group buy

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