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The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

workmanlayout.org

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Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#61

Post by deno »

Sit up straight (fix your posture) and stop gluing your wrists to the desk or wrist “support” and the layout doesn’t matter unless you’re going for typing records.

There is no magical layout that can eliminate the tension you’re artificially creating by stretching your fingers into unnatural positions instead of just moving the entire hand.

What healthy typing looks like (on a horrible keyboard no less): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2B5XRtr6k

Imagine you tried playing a piano the way you type on your keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqmH-o1cX0

The pain is letting you know you’re doing something wrong.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#62

Post by StreakyCobra »

lorenzhs wrote: post #55
StreakyCobra wrote: post #45

Anything other than [AQ]WERT[YZ] layout-based keyboard is already a big improvement for your fingers. The differences between Workman / Colemak / Dvorak and so on is mostly a matter of taste. One thing to note is that widely used layouts have more chances to be supported by software and by keyboard manufacturers (e.g. http://www.typematrix.com/ ). So it may be wiser to choose mainstream layouts that creating your own…

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…

I found the article that motivated me to switch to bépo back in the time. It also also suggests a method that I used to do the transition: https://ploum.net/216-le-bepo-sur-le-bout-des-doigts/ (in French)

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#63

Post by gedy »

AprilArcus wrote: post #7

The Colemak Mod-DH family of layouts incorporates the major insight of Workman (that QWERTY v and n are lower-effort positions than QWERTY g and h) without abandoning the better elements of Colemak (common left hand shortcut keys QWAZXC remain unmoved, good hand alternation, emphasis on inward rolls). http://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/

While I don't use the DH change, the angle mod mentioned where zxcv are shifted left one key has been amazingly helpful for me. It makes standard staggered keyboards a lot more comfortable to use correct fingers for left bottom row

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#64

Post by [deleted] »

edpichler wrote: post #54

I moved to Dvorak year ago. Very very happy with this. The pain of my hands, especially on the weakest fingers, just ended. The sad is that there are no available keyboards to buy in my country, so I always need to manually change and 'fix' my new laptops, risking to break it, and I always do it very worried and careful.

[deleted]

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#65

Post by Timpy »

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.

Agreed, a complete text is quite a different thing from editing text. Recording your typing session would be interesting, it would be interesting to see an analysis on where common typos keep happening.

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#66

Post by mherrmann »

I feel Carpalx has a less arbitrary, more rigorous solution to this [1]. I've been using its QFMLWY for years. It is hugely better than QWERTY. Though as a programmer, I'm still not fully happy with the Ctrl and Shift keys being in their standard location, and thus at the weakest (pinky) finger.

If anyone would like to give QFMLWY a go, let me know. I have scripts to install it on Win, Mac and Ubuntu.

[1] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#68

Post by brennebeck »

deno wrote: post #61

Sit up straight (fix your posture) and stop gluing your wrists to the desk or wrist “support” and the layout doesn’t matter unless you’re going for typing records. There is no magical layout that can eliminate the tension you’re artificially creating by stretching your fingers into unnatural positions instead of just moving the entire hand. What healthy typing looks like (on a horrible keyboard no less): https://www.…

Huh. I had no idea I typed pretty healthily. Thank you.

But... references? (It does make sense, though)

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#69

Post by chrismorgan »

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…

If you have keyboards with physically different layouts—e.g. one ergonomic, one typical laptop, one swipey touchscreen—and use them all at least occasionally, you’ll be able to develop independent muscle memories for each.

Go ahead and learn a different layout on a fancy keyboard, while keeping a stock standard layout (not even remapping Caps Lock to anything!) on a laptop keyboard, and I understand you’ll have little-to-no trouble with it.

(I’m only early on in this process myself, but have been told this by others and it makes sense to me. As one small example I have experienced, I automatically switch to using Cmd for shortcuts instead of Ctrl with no thought, as soon as I’m faced with an Apple keyboard—regardless of the OS, which has tripped me up a couple of times!)

Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

#70

Post by deno »

brennebeck wrote: post #68
deno wrote: post #61

Sit up straight (fix your posture) and stop gluing your wrists to the desk or wrist “support” and the layout doesn’t matter unless you’re going for typing records. There is no magical layout that can eliminate the tension you’re artificially creating by stretching your fingers into unnatural positions instead of just moving the entire hand. What healthy typing looks like (on a horrible keyboard no less): https://www.…

Huh. I had no idea I typed pretty healthily. Thank you. But... references? (It does make sense, though)

Practically all ergonomic studies start from the position of compromised wrist placement and measure what angle does least damage. That’s how you end up with split “ergonomic” keyboards.

This is the height you need for your monitor to not encourage slouching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S467Ck8uIsc . You also need to touch type which not everyone can. As a result most office workers have terrible postures.

I bet you would run into trouble just trying to find enough people that can both touch type and have good enough posture to do such study. But I would start with piano players.

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