141–147 of 147 posts
I understand "keyboard layout" often means just changing the position of the keys on existing hardware, but perhaps we shouldn't be so limited, particularly when we can experiment with alternative layouts on touch devices.
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.
It also doesn't consider two-key combinations, which are key for developers (not just EMACS folks). Apple's CMD-C/CMD-V is one of the least ergonomic patterns I've encountered in keyboard design compared to CTRL-C/CTRL-V. Yes, I know you can remap keys from within macOS, but it is a nightmare if you are using VNC + Windows Remote to access other machines (granted, that isn't a common use case, but it is mine). Pinky-…
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.
That reminds me of keyboard heat maps for programming languages: https://g-liu.com/blog/2013/09/reblog-programming-languages-... (the winner being, obviously, LISP :-))
Why is the enter key and backspace out of scope for optimization? Makes no sense to exclude those.
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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.
Same. Pinky/ring finger RSI lead me to split ergos for this same reason, landing on the Moonlander by ZSA. I've got Space, Bk Space, Shift/(, and Alt on left thumb cluster; Enter, Tab, Shift/), and Esc/Ctrl on the right thumb cluster. Pinkies have far less to do now.
I really should do something better with the thumb cluster, particularly that third easy to reach key.
I have Win/Esc left of 'a' and Win/' right of ';', and Ctl/z and Ctl// in the z// positions. The whole lower row is basically unused. Win because I use i3wm and use Win a lot for window navigation.
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I think you bring up really great points, and it's probably the main reason there isn't more heterogeneity. There is a nice middle ground though, in customizable keyboards with macro buttons. I have the ErgoDox which is a split keyboard with these columns of three keys on each side of the split, and a cluster of thumb buttons. Really is nifty (once you get used to it) for programming. Even simple things like having o…
> I have the ErgoDox This keyboard sure looks extremely nice! The price tag, though! On the other hand, the keyboard is my main tools of trade, and the perfect solution is certainly worth a price between 250 to 400 bucks. I would want to try the hardware before doing the investment. That could actually be a business: renting out keyboards for evaluation.
It also alleviated some RSI for me (which was why I bought it originally). It's excessively customizable—I honestly probably don't get as much use out of it as I could. You can basically assign a key to anything, including compound keys, macros, etc. And then on top of that, there are several layers you can swap between. So you have a button to press, and it swaps out the entire arrangement for some other keymapping (either momentarily or toggled). I got the RGB version too, so on top of that, you can customize per-key colors, which is helpful to map out keybindings when you're switching layers. (e.g. mine switches from blue to purple when I switch to my second layer).
It's really neat, and I would definitely invest if you're typing 8+ hours a day like me.