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The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

workmanlayout.org

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Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#151

Post by deno »

screye wrote: post #149
deno wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take no issue with anything on that list. The pressure on lumbar is because of the positioning of your pelvis[1]. > Speaking of, an adjustable monitor arm is the best investment you can make. I use the Humanscale M2. I have my monitor on top of an entire hifi set and an old VHS player. But yeah an arm seems more sensible ;) [1] https://i.imgur.com/mp9uqLb.jpg

Wait ! So an anterior pelvic tilt when sitting is actually good for you ? That seems counter inuitive since it is bad for you to stand in that way .

The scan is from a book called “8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back” by Esther Gokhale which I recommend reading and makes the case for a J shaped spine (rather than S shape).

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#152

Post by kjeetgill »

citation_please wrote: post #74
jstanley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, it should be performed using a recorded vim session, rather than a full file. The keystrokes you use while editing are not the same as those that end up in the finished file.

But this brings up that some Vim hotkeys are more positional than mnemonic (J-down, K-up), while others are more mnemonic than positional (I-insert, X-exterminate(?)). Food for thought.

I think x is for cut because it looks like a pair of scissors. vim :help does not clear this up.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#153

Post by brandonmenc »

deno wrote: post #147
brandonmenc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree - that image looks painful, but I'd term that a "hunch" more than a "slouch" (not sure if ergonomics makes a distinction between the two.) My "slouch" is more of a reclining position, which I find quite comfortable.

> My "slouch" is more of a reclining position, which I find quite comfortable. Reclining is fine for relaxing but it’s not an ideal position for typing/work. For one thing you’re encouraging rounded shoulders, e.g. see: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/common-posture-mistake...

> you’re encouraging rounded shoulders

I lift weights regularly, which I'm guessing compensates. I agree that it would cause problems sans weightlifting.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#154

Post by SkyPuncher »

deno wrote: post #150
SkyPuncher wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly, strongly disagree that the layout doesn't matter. I was experiencing pretty bad pain from typing on a qwerty layout. Qwerty has high percentage of combinations that require jumping rows or contorting your hand. I switched to Colemak (which follows a similar philosophy as Workman) and my hands have significantly too less pain. I still get some from being a heavy typer, but I no longer experience the worst…

> Qwerty has high percentage of combinations that require jumping rows or contorting your hand. And my point is it doesn’t matter when your wrist is not glued to your desk. You don’t need to contort anything if your hand is free and relaxed over the keys. If something is far away, I just move my entire hand over there. Look, here’s me typing “nice” using two different methods: https://streamable.com/mlys1 (I’m just t…

That's a bad example because you don't follow standard keying methods. In you're nice example, you're using your pointer finger to press the "c" key. Standard recommendations say both "c" and "e" keys should be handled by your middle finger on qwerty.

You're also typing incredibly slow where you can physically move your hand to avoid contorting your finger. At faster speeds, which I personally hit frequently when slacking or typing up emails, I can't be moving my hands all over the keyboard.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#155

Post by SkyPuncher »

floatboth wrote: post #33

> Try typing “The” with the T capitalized on Colemak and hopefully you’ll see what I mean. Your right hand will move somewhat like this: you swing to the right to get the SHIFT key with your pinky, then you swing back to the left to get the letter ‘H’, and then you move to the right again to get the letter ‘E’. Why would you use the right shift here?? I shift with the left pinky in this situation and it feels fine. C…

I shift this way too on Colemak. I much prefer the slight shift down of the pinky than the whole arm/wrist shift to tackle the rights shift in many cases.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#156

Post by SkyPuncher »

QasimK wrote: post #5

A keyboard layout for programmers, which allowed the use of special characters on the home row, perhaps by using a mixed corpus of source code rather than just novels, would be interesting to see. Recently, I ordered the Ultimate Hacker’s Keyboard because I think typing is quite important for a programmer, especially if you consider health as the author of this article does. I’m a little bit weary of not using QWERTY…

Oh! I have an answer for this one on Mac. https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements

It let's you software remap keys. I've entirely disabled my caps locks key (I barely ever used it) and turned it into a combo esc/modifier key.

Holding caps plus a home row key types the corresponding symbol (e.g. "a" is "!", and ";" is ")". I also have u,i,o,p mapped to arrow keys (similar to vim). Then some misc. combos for things I commonly program (e.g. caps + m = "() => {}" - very helpful for JS)

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#157

Post by firethief »

citation_please wrote: post #74
jstanley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, it should be performed using a recorded vim session, rather than a full file. The keystrokes you use while editing are not the same as those that end up in the finished file.

But this brings up that some Vim hotkeys are more positional than mnemonic (J-down, K-up), while others are more mnemonic than positional (I-insert, X-exterminate(?)). Food for thought.

Positional key layout only matters pedagogically. I type dvorak and use emacs + evil (vim keybindings). To maintain the positional correspondence I'd have to swap bindings around and make my setup even weirder, so I just learned j=down, k=up, etc. Muscle memory doesn't care about rhyme or reason.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#158

Post by deno »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #154
deno wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Qwerty has high percentage of combinations that require jumping rows or contorting your hand. And my point is it doesn’t matter when your wrist is not glued to your desk. You don’t need to contort anything if your hand is free and relaxed over the keys. If something is far away, I just move my entire hand over there. Look, here’s me typing “nice” using two different methods: https://streamable.com/mlys1 (I’m just t…

That's a bad example because you don't follow standard keying methods. In you're nice example, you're using your pointer finger to press the "c" key. Standard recommendations say both "c" and "e" keys should be handled by your middle finger on qwerty. You're also typing incredibly slow where you can physically move your hand to avoid contorting your finger. At faster speeds, which I personally hit frequently when sla…

> In you're nice example, you're using your pointer finger to press the "c" key. Standard recommendations say both "c" and "e" keys should be handled by your middle finger on qwerty.

Do you mean in the wrists down example? I used natural fingers and it was still horribly unpleasant.

> You're also typing incredibly slow where you can physically move your hand to avoid contorting your finger. At faster speeds, which I personally hit frequently when slacking or typing up emails, I can't be moving my hands all over the keyboard.

How do you figure that? I can easily hit 100 wpm and that’s way above my thinking speed already.

I take typing seriously. We can race and I’m going to win. Guarantee it. In addition, I can sustain that speed for an hour. Can you?

What do you think moving my hand entails anyway. It’s not going to the other room to pet the cat, it’s literally 0.5–1.0 cm that I don’t even think about… It’s what the brain figures out makes more sense than “contorting” fingers when you have the ability to do so, i.e. if your wrists are not artificially glued down to your desk.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#159

Post by lorenzhs »

StreakyCobra wrote: post #60
lorenzhs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I use neo2, which is the German equivalent of bépo. It's shipped with pretty much every Linux distro, which means that all I need to do is "setxkbmap de neo". It definitely takes several months to achieve a decent speed on a new layout, but I wouldn't say years. I did a full switch after deciding I wanted to learn neo. That means that from that day on, I didn't use qwertz at all , and forced myself to type ev…

Year s is a little bit too much yes. I also did a full switch after 1 month of "klavaro" [1] training, but I think it took me nearly one year to be "fully" adapted. By "fully" I mean not thinking anymore about QWERTZ: not for french, nor for english, nor for coding and for beating my previous QWERTZ capabilities. [1] http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

Interesting. I don't really remember how long that took me, it's been some eight years now since I switched. I used ktouch to practise, which has lessons for neo2 and, apparently, BÉPO.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#160

Post by deno »

deno wrote: post #158
SkyPuncher wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad example because you don't follow standard keying methods. In you're nice example, you're using your pointer finger to press the "c" key. Standard recommendations say both "c" and "e" keys should be handled by your middle finger on qwerty. You're also typing incredibly slow where you can physically move your hand to avoid contorting your finger. At faster speeds, which I personally hit frequently when sla…

> In you're nice example, you're using your pointer finger to press the "c" key. Standard recommendations say both "c" and "e" keys should be handled by your middle finger on qwerty. Do you mean in the wrists down example? I used natural fingers and it was still horribly unpleasant. > You're also typing incredibly slow where you can physically move your hand to avoid contorting your finger. At faster speeds, which I…

Or another way to think about it is it’s the home row moving around. Each hand has a dynamic offset, units being keys.

It’s like JIT compilation for your typing… Instead of having AOT plan how to hit each key, with what finger, etc., the brain just figures out which finger is best positioned to hit the key at any given time, which varies depending on context.

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