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The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

workmanlayout.org

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Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#31

Post by tezza »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #4
tezza wrote: post #3

A large portion of coding is moving the cursor left, right, up, down, page up, page down, home, end The arrow keys are not even shown on the layout. And the selection of prose corpus (es?) is again not related to programming [Tom Sawyer]. We need underscores, braces, semicolon, context menu. Perhaps a better metric would be the hoc compiler source from The Unix Programming Environment.

> A large portion of coding is moving the cursor left, right, up, down, page up, page down, home, end > The arrow keys are not even shown on the layout Nothing that learning Vim keybindings can't solve.

Navigation required in all apps, very few which support vi keybindings. Photoshop. Unity. Premiere. 3DS Max etc.

Only discreet keys cover these

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#32

Post by gregn610 »

reacweb wrote: post #16

He uses the wrong test. Testing on "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is meaningless for developpers: tests should be performed using real usages like "source code of linux kernel" or "mailing list of linux kernel" to have a better balance between code and text.

Very much this. This is the results for my personal bread and butter, python and SQL. Workman tested very much mid-pack.

http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/load/FKcXzlQ2

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#33

Post by floatboth »

> 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.

Colemak is just fine, and it's already included in most operating systems.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#35

Post by QasimK »

hobofan wrote: post #11
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…

> I’m a little bit weary of not using QWERTY because of the high cost of switching, so if I did switch, I’d want to select a layout that was basically perfect for me long-term (which sounds very tough to do). Similar to programming languages, after learning a second keyboard layout the switching cost will be much lower for each additional one. I switched from QWERTZ (German) to QWERTY (US/international), because it i…

That is good to hear! I didn’t realise until just now that I just assumed each additional keyboard layout would take an equal amount of effort. Plus, minor variations may be much easier to adapt to.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#36

Post by QasimK »

leg100 wrote: post #29
EduardoBautista wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A large portion of coding is moving the cursor left, right, up, down, page up, page down, home, end > The arrow keys are not even shown on the layout Nothing that learning Vim keybindings can't solve.

What about using a browser, terminal usage outside of vim, and insert-mode in vim? Do you use vimium in chrome and vim-mode in bash?

I suspect the answers would be: use non-arrow keybindings for browsers (e.g. vim-like plug-ins, or alternative keyboard shortcuts), remap your terminals keys (maybe, use a different terminal entirely?), use insert mode for only inserting text.

I use a “vimium” plug-in for Firefox and I quite like being able to go up/down with j/k. Though I still use the arrow keys for my terminal.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#37

Post by bitofhope »

diimdeep wrote: post #28

Kudos for effort. But changing layout is not enough. Current mainstream keyboards design is fundamentally flawed [1] and IMO obsolete because of [4]. Hopefully there is science [2] and much alternatives to choose from [3] [1] http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_problems.html [2] http://xahlee.info/kbd/ergonomic_keyboard_science.html [3] https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

The first link references the myth of QWERTY being meant for slowing typists down. It merely spreads most common letters out so them being pressed together doesn't jam the typewriter.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#38

Post by ObscureScience »

amelius wrote: post #2

Given that micro-movements can lead to RSI, shouldn't the goal be to make the hands move as much as possible instead?

That's an interesting question. Then, dvorak or similar (alternating hand) layout would probably be a good starting point.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#39

Post by yiyus »

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…

> special characters on the home row

In my opinion, the best setup would be an ortholinear keyboard with not many keys and multiple layers (let's say something like a Planck), but instead of using key combinations to change layers, use pedals.

I know there has been some attempts to do something like this, but I've never tried it. Has anyone here used a similar setup?

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#40

Post by etatoby »

eggie wrote: post #20

The author doesn't even learn dvorak before deciding that it doesn't work for them. They mention don't like how it behaves on the consonant-heavy, qwerty-optimized commands used in unix. (I have to say this is a fair evaluation, but in practice the layout somehow doesn't encourage RSI despite the apparent awkwardness of typing unix commands on it.) In result they don't seem to understand that the dvorak layout is opt…

Yes, that was my impression too. I find Dvorak so natural, with the alternation and the inwards rolling motion. Plus it's already supported by every OS ever.
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