The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
workmanlayout.org
The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
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Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#2Given that micro-movements can lead to RSI, shouldn't the goal be to make the hands move as much as possible instead?
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#3A 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.
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#4A 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.
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#5A 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 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).
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#6A 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.
From the dawn of time (1/1/1970) or perhaps even earlier, programmers have used home row keys for those actions. In vim for example we map h,j,k,l and so on for such movements...
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#7The 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).
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#8This looks interesting but the symbol still look very qwerty-ish. I type on Neo-2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo), which uses ISO keyboards and primarily targets German, even though the majority of my typing is in English. Its entire third layer is for symbols that are common in programming. Layer 3 is activated via either caps-lock or the key above Right Shift, and has \/{}* ?()-:@ as the home row, …_[]^ !=& above it and #$|~` +%"'; below it (there's a picture in the Wikipedia article linked above).
Layer 4 (right alt or the key to the right of left shift) is also pretty cool, it has lots of navigation keys and a numblock in convenient positions, but I somehow never got around to learning that. All the layers are shown on https://neo-layout.org/ (in German, but that doesn't matter for the pictures).
With a Trackpoint (Thinkpad USB keyboard), this means that my hands don't have to leave the home row at all. It's super convenient.
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#9As a full time developer who used to suffer terrible RSI pain, I solved the problem without changing keyboard layouts. After consulting with my doctor and an ergonomics expert, I realized my problems were cause by the setup of my workstation and the bad posture habits I had developed.
1. I would rest my palms as I typed. This turned out to be a major source of pain. Retraining myself to "float" my hands over the keyboard was a massive improvement.
2. My desk was too high / my chair was too low. Setting up my desk so that my keyboard is as close to my lap as possible was the next big improvement. When in a seated position, my hands are very comfortable when resting on my thighs. Putting my keyboard in a drawer that is just above my thighs helped a lot.
3. I also switched to a trackpad instead of a mount and a split keyboard. I found this allowed a more comfortable angle for my hands and less temptation to rest my wrist while mousing.
After making these changes, I have been pain free for over 10 years.
Re: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)
#10As a full time developer who used to suffer terrible RSI pain, I solved the problem without changing keyboard layouts. After consulting with my doctor and an ergonomics expert, I realized my problems were cause by the setup of my workstation and the bad posture habits I had developed. 1. I would rest my palms as I typed. This turned out to be a major source of pain. Retraining myself to "float" my hands over the keyb…
You hover? Doesnt that just move the strain to your upper arms?