[HN Gopher] An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)
Author : michidk
Score : 154 points
Date : 2022-03-18 08:32 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| readingnews wrote:
| After using a split spacebar for some time now, I just can not
| see the idea of a single spacebar being optimal.
|
| I have two thumbs. Why not use them? My right spacebar is space,
| my left is enter. I have never done anything else so profoundly
| productive to my computer.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| Interesting. I was thinking of doing something similar, but
| replacing the other space bar with backspace. For me enter is a
| really easy key to reach, backspace is much farther. Either
| that or escape.
| linsomniac wrote:
| 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.
| ajford wrote:
| 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.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| can AI design keyboard layouts individually for the most popular
| programming languages please?
| jtian wrote:
| AI decides that ctrl is still there? Look at many Japanese made
| (ANSI) keyboards: they simply put ctrl where caps lock locates.
| This is a life changer to me, and inspires me to change all my
| keyboards: no new layout required.
|
| Even though they can claim movement is decreased, having little
| finger hitting ctrl at the original location for hundreds to
| thousands of times is never a fun. It's ergonomically bad.
| ajoy wrote:
| Something I was developing on my spare time :) :
| https://github.com/aj0y/fitjoy
|
| The main difference with other layouts is that I take finger
| length into account. (Eg. the pinky is usually much shorter than
| your ring finger, so putting them all on the same row means your
| ring finger need to curl up more and less relaxed). Also tried to
| reduce changes to the most common shortcuts we (programmers) use.
|
| Feedback welcome!
| kortex wrote:
| Has anyone already learned Dvorak and made the switch to some
| other "more efficient" layout, such as Colemak, Workman, Neo,
| this new one, etc? Has it actually been more ergonomic,
| efficient, and/or faster than Dvorak?
|
| I have a Moonlander and have it totally tricked out so I have no
| problem with qwerty hotkey locations. It's basically just the
| time delta to grind a new layout. When I learned Dvorak around
| 2009, it took me about a month to reach parity. It might be even
| faster this time around since I'm constantly messing with my
| layout with small tweaks and having to relearn muscle memory.
|
| Also if you aren't using some kind of layer scheme to map things
| like ~./()= up/down/left/right to home keys, you are really
| missing out :p
| rstacruz wrote:
| Me! I was a Dvorak user for around 6-8 years, but switched to
| Colemak mod-DH. I found it to be worth it. Colemak mod-DH is
| more ergonomic for ortholinear keyboards, less "alternate hand"
| keys, more balanced left/right hand ratio, and overall (for me)
| more pleasant to use.
| dpwm wrote:
| Interesting to compare it to my preferred keyboard layout, BEPO
| [0][1].
|
| In Halmak, the vowels are clustered around the right hand rather
| than the left. Like BEPO, the punctuation is reachable with index
| fingers. There is some difference with the home row consonants,
| but otherwise this looks like an interesting layout.
|
| Although BEPO is a French layout, I've found it works well for
| English - despite giving space to accented characters that are
| not often used in English.
|
| [0] https://bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil (in French) [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%89PO
| sylware wrote:
| dtx1 wrote:
| i rarely find myself in a situation where my typing speed on a
| regular layout is the limiting factor for input speed. When
| coding I don't type a lot and i'd likely get the same input speed
| on any reasonable layout after a while and when typing normal
| text i'm much more bound by how fast i can think about what i
| want to write. The only time i feel limited is when trying to
| transcribe while someone is talking but that's also a solved case
| since Shorthand and special typing equipment for that exists. I
| doubt you can type on any ascii based layout as fast as someone
| can on a shorthand typing system with equal training when it
| comes to natural language transcription.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Increased typing speed is the secondary purpose.
|
| Improved comfort is the primary purpose.
| moss2 wrote:
| Looks cool :) Can't use it cause my alphabet has three more
| letters than the English.
| hans1729 wrote:
| fwiw, I speak German and find the german layout to be
| insultingly unusable, especially for coding. So I use the
| american hardware layout (which lack three german letters) and
| type Umlaute aou with alt+u+{a|o|u}. It doesn't feel like it
| adds significant overhead, I've built the muscle memory within
| minutes. Any acceptable operating system should allow for such
| mappings, on macos this is active by default.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I use EurKEY [0]. It has Ctrl+Alt+o for o and also a ton of
| other characters.
|
| [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
| brainzap wrote:
| why does it not use the thumbs
| mkl wrote:
| Because it's designed to be used on existing hardware, where
| the spacebar is really big and taking up the space where thumb
| keys would be, and where there's no row of keys below that.
| socar wrote:
| But it is still a slab of plastic with buttons...
| medstrom wrote:
| Y'all need to know the background of past efforts [1], people
| keep making the same observations over and over again as if
| they're new. In the area of computer-generated layouts, there's
| been lots of rich discussion on the AdNW [2] and MTGAP [3]
| projects.
|
| For "improving Dvorak", that was solved back in 2004 with
| Capewell-Dvorak [4].
|
| To the author: what is supposed to be AI here? I don't see a
| mention of a ML method or neural network here, is it "just" an
| evolutionary algorithm like CarPalx, AdNW and MTGAP (not that
| it's bad)?
|
| [1] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts
|
| [2]
| https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Ad...
|
| [3]
| https://mathematicalmulticore.wordpress.com/category/keyboar...
|
| [4]
| https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Ca...
| mkl wrote:
| They probably mean ML. They're mutating keyboard layouts with a
| simple genetic algorithm. "Just" an evolutionary algorithm, but
| still arguably ML.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| I agree that I would love a discussion by OP acknowledging
| previous efforts and comparing approaches.
|
| Having multiple minds working at the same problem is great, but
| not engaging with prior art diminishes the value of their own
| work IMO.
| ddalex wrote:
| Am I the only one that finds that the typing speed doesn't
| matter... it takes me way longer to figure out what I want to
| write then actually writing it...
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Evolutionary algorithms are a form of machine learning and an
| established branch of artificial intelligence research. See
| e.g. wikipedia page with box "Part of a series on Artificial
| Intelligence":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm
|
| Are you using "AI" to mean "deep learning"?
| aivisol wrote:
| What about digits?
| xcambar wrote:
| the very top row of the very first screenshot has what you're
| looking for.
| aivisol wrote:
| I see that. I mean why they are not shuffled
| riidom wrote:
| Yea wondered about that too. No idea why this got downvoted
| eimrine wrote:
| Dvorak touchtyper since 2010 is here ^_^ I appreciate any
| attempts to make August Dvorak's work even better. For example,
| that claster of wovels is not AI's work but Dvorak's. BTW there
| is one strange claim from my POW:
|
| > QWERTY - 0% (baseline)
|
| > Dvorak - +77%
|
| > Colemak - +84%
|
| > Workman - +101%
|
| > Halmak - +134%
|
| If author considers Colemak and Workman more efficient than
| Dvorak, I should not even to give this layout a try :) because I
| have tried these and can not report such experience. Probably it
| is because I am a piano player since 2016 and the fingers which
| are weak on average people are not that weak for me. Another
| rebuke to mention is that Halmak is not compatible with
| Programmer Dvorak. That idea of 7531902468 and three pairs of
| brackets, braces, parentheses (all paired symbols except diamond
| braces) is extremely handy while programming.
|
| AFAIK, 7531902468 is also August's gem of mind, can your
| AI/HAL/whatever to design a layout with that row and at least
| [{}(=*)+] cluster untouched?
| danpalmer wrote:
| You make a good point about finger strength, not something I
| had considered.
|
| Another issue is the dataset used for evaluation here. If they
| used a sample of the regular English language, that's likely to
| differ from the sort of typing that a programmer does, not just
| in punctuation, or it's likely to differ for those who type
| other languages.
|
| It's a shame the cost of learning a new layout is so high,
| because there's so much scope to optimise for each person, what
| they type, how they type.
| eimrine wrote:
| > It's a shame the cost of learning a new layout is so high
|
| Haven't you mean the cost of _creation_ a new layout?
| Learning is super easy for any non-QWERTY person because
| since you have managed to realize that default layout is bad
| - you have all freedoms possible to fix this obstruction.
| Sometimes the number of freedoms is too high, that's why it
| is so hard to create a layout which will be really used by
| anybody. What about learning a new layout per se - the cost
| of getting rid of QWERTY in my opinion is doubling for every
| year of touchtyping QWERTY or QWERTY-like layouts. Layout is
| something that you will be carrying in all your muscles for
| the rest of your life but after your first switch you will
| not consider switching layout that hard especially if you
| really love your new one.
|
| > Another issue is the dataset used for evaluation here.
|
| A beauty of a layout is kind of a beauty of a girl - it must
| be measured by heart, not by numbers. Layout is something
| that you will be carrying in all your muscles for the rest of
| your life. I do not respect any attempts to fix QWERTY (like
| Colemak and Workman) because QWERTY is so broken that there
| are no reasons to fix it (coining more and more of fancy
| metrics usually) except if QWERTY sits too deep in your
| muscles. And there is not much difference in using three rows
| of symbols when somebody either programs or writes a letter
| to his lovely ones.
|
| > You make a good point about finger strength, not something
| I had considered.
|
| Maybe yes but maybe I haven't disclose my opinion fully. I
| used to touchtype Dvorak way before some musical instruments
| gave additional strength for my fingers and I do not remember
| any desire to rearrange any letters.
|
| There are lots researches going on for enhancing QWERTY,
| based on rearranging as few keys as possible. They usually
| are based on: the datasets, somebody's opinions about finger
| strength, some ideas of alternation of fingers or hands, now
| AI has joined to the army of fancy metrics. I do not respect
| any attempts to fix QWERTY (like Colemak and Workman) because
| QWERTY is so broken that there is no good reason to fix it,
| except of for users who have QWERTY sitting too deep in their
| muscle level.
|
| The Halmak's idea of punctuation in the middle of the board
| is really interesting, I haven't see this idea on any layout
| I have tried. But my message is that layouts must be created
| not by complicated calculation's call but by heart's call.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > Probably it is because I am a piano player since 2016 and the
| fingers which are weak on average people are not that weak for
| me
|
| This reminds of my situation. I'm not a piano player, and I
| used to type with basically two fingers (plus thumb for space
| and pinky for ctrl/alt/shift). Since I've started trying to use
| more fingers, I've noticed that using a traditional, non split
| keyboard, is more painful, because it requires me to twist my
| wrists sideways. With my old way of typing, I would move the
| whole hand instead, so the wrist angle would stay roughly the
| same.
| eimrine wrote:
| > I've noticed that using a traditional, non split keyboard,
| is more painful, because it requires me to twist my wrists
| sideways
|
| I have never used a split (which almost always is an
| ortholinear and not requires any twist) but my experience
| tells me than I am twisting not a wrist but only one finger,
| while 9 others just resting on a home row. I do not
| understand how it is possible to touchtype while you are
| twisting your wrists because if your index fingers lose the
| home row - you have to look at kbd to find it again.
|
| BTW I have noticed that touchtyping on laptop may be harder
| than on dedicated kbd because comfortable position of display
| may require an uncomfortable position of wrists and touchpad
| (if enabled) does even bigger mess.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| The split I use is the MS Sculpt, which is regular, not
| ortholinear.
|
| The only way I've ever used a laptop with a position of the
| display kinda comfortable while also being able to type was
| with a bed tablet [0]. I've always actively avoided laptops
| with numpads, so the keyboard was always well-centered, at
| least as much as a desktop one, so no issue with staying on
| finding the home row.
|
| [0] Something like this: https://www.amazon.fr/Cooper-
| ordinateur-portable-r%C3%A9glab...
| minimilian wrote:
| > 7531902468
|
| I've been using this (almost) and had forgotten it was from the
| programmer's Dvorak, but surely it must be:
|
| 7531980246
|
| Surely programmers start counting from 0 and use 0 more often
| than 8.
| eimrine wrote:
| > Surely programmers start counting from 0 and use 0 more
| often than 8.
|
| So interesting that me and you are using the same
| argumentation for different positions of all even digits.
| Maybe it is just a matter of habit, for example my layout for
| my mother language is heavy modified for some reasons I do
| not want to put on debate.
| minimilian wrote:
| Not sure what you mean, but don't you agree that, if we
| take 0 to come before 1 and not after 9, there's an
| asymmetry between the left and the right hand?
| eimrine wrote:
| Both yes and not. There is some asymmetry in wrist's
| angle but there is kind of a symmetry that you have two
| keys left from our 7 and two keys right from my 8 (your
| 6). If I understood your POV correctly then you seems to
| consider the position of [ and ] symbols in Programmer
| Dvorak as symmetric for you.
| minimilian wrote:
| No, on a regular keyboard I regard 4 as corresponding to
| 7, since they are both pressed by the index finger
| directly above the home position. I see the numbers as
| split in odd and even between the left and the right
| hand.
|
| 75319 80246
| AlphaGeekZulu wrote:
| Alternative keyboard layouts are fascinating, but always raise a
| couple of questions for me and I wonder if anyone here can come
| up with actual experiences regarding the following topics:
|
| - I have been using standard german QWERTZ for about 42 years
| now, in average certainly not less than 3 hours every day. I was
| originally educated in proper 10 finger blind typing in a
| dedicated typing school as part of my typesetter apprenticeship.
| I am typing really fast. Today I am even using "daskeyboard
| ultimate" - a completely unlabeled keyboard. Is it really
| possible to improve 42 years typing practice with a new layout?
|
| - Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at the
| same time? I have a partial answer myself. For one, I managed to
| learn standard Emacs shortcuts (a lot of them!) some of which
| contradict common OS shortcuts (like copy/paste etc) and I have
| both sets in muscle memory and I can seamlessly switch between
| both sets as I switch applications (most of the time that is).
| And I use three computers with three OSs (Linux, Win, Mac) with
| one keyboard per Synergy software. Same layout for the standard
| characters, but different OS specific layouts for special
| characters like "@", "EUR" etc. I can seamlessly switch between
| them as well and that is the reason for the unlabeled keyboard. A
| labeled keyboard would show only one layout and puzzle me if I
| had to enter special characters for another. So, while I know I
| can handle some number of characters in alternate layouts in
| muscle memory - will this be possible for the entire character
| set as well?
|
| - If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout, isn't
| it a problem if you have to use some other computer (where you
| cannot change the layout) for whatever reason, for example in an
| Internet cafe?
| carapace wrote:
| Simple answer is: use (self-)hypnosis.
|
| The motor cortex can be "reprogrammed" (that's a metaphor)
| pretty easily. You already have the muscle memories, you just
| need to lay in a new "key map" (that's also a metaphor.)
|
| I'll give you an example of what's possible: I was playing
| ukulele and a friend of mine said something about playing left-
| handed (I'm a righty.) I paused, went into a light trance,
| "rewired" my motor skills from left to right and vice versa,
| and then opened my eyes, turned over the uke, and started
| playing left-handed. It took maybe twenty seconds.
|
| (I'm not saying the above to show off. I'm not special. Anyone
| can do this, you just have to learn how to operate your own
| nervous system.)
| kortex wrote:
| That's really impressive. I'm a bit skeptical at first but
| then I recall I've done similar feats (nowhere near as crazy)
| from time to time, I call it "jedi mode" when I seemingly
| just have a huge jump in motor cortex symmetry e.g. when
| juggling or spinning poi. I also taught myself to write left
| handed over about a few hours of bored free periods in high
| school. Quality is noticeably worse though.
|
| Still, switching hands is super impressive. Were you already
| ambidextrous?
| carapace wrote:
| Cheers! I really can't emphasize enough that I'm not
| special, I think anyone could learn to do this sort of
| thing if they took the time and studied. I just read some
| books on hypnosis and experimented.
|
| > Were you already ambidextrous?
|
| Nope. I'm right-handed.
|
| Subjectively, I "went in", went through the fingers one-by-
| one remapping the motions, then opened my eyes, turned over
| the ukulele, and started playing. It was a little rough
| compared to the other way for a few moments and then it
| tightened up and was the same quality. My friend who was
| watching me was pretty impressed too, but I swear it was
| easy.
|
| Same thing with martial arts. A friend of mine ran a kung
| fu studio for many years. I came by to visit one day and
| participated in an intro class. I could "lay in" the
| movements he was teaching by imitation and then repeat them
| perfectly. Again, everyone was impressed and said things
| like, "I've never seen anyone learn so fast." but it wasn't
| really learning the way people do it. Just like a computer
| doesn't need to "learn" a program, it just loads and runs.
| The real learning already happened back in the day when I
| learned-to-learn using hypnosis.
|
| It's pretty cool to be able to do this stuff, but as with
| everything, there are trade-offs: my problems now are
| boredom and loneliness. I lot of days I feel like a time-
| traveler from the future. If only people would get a clue
| and stop running around doing things the hard way...
| godshatter wrote:
| As for being proficient in two keyboard layouts (I call it
| "bikeyboardal"), it's definitely possible. I type extensively
| at work in QWERTY and extensively at home in dvorak. I can
| mentally switch without taking a hit. Sometimes I'll come into
| work on a Monday and start furiously typing in dvorak and have
| to delete it and switch. It's just a mental on/off switch,
| though. Once I remember to type in the correct layout, I'm just
| as fast.
|
| It took me a long time to get there, though. As soon as I
| started learning dvorak I lost most of my proficiency in qwerty
| and for a long ramping up time measured in weeks, I would be
| terrible in both. Muscle memory is strong. I kept having to
| figure out which layout I was using at the muscle/nerve level.
| So learning a new layout, especially when you've been typing so
| long, will be a hit on your productivity and will be a lesson
| in humility (at least it was for me as I naively assumed it
| would be easy). I'm a touch typist who doesn't look at the
| actual keys much, if that helps.
|
| The only thing that bothers me about typing in dvorak is that a
| lot of games or programs want to use WASD or hjkl to control a
| game or to move the cursor around. I have learned to use dvorak
| in vim without issue, but if I'm playing a roguelike (angband,
| for example) I'll switch back to qwerty to make it easier. On
| the plus side, it completely solved the problem I was having,
| which was pain in my pinky fingers and the side of my hand.
| That went away after I added dvorak and never came back.
| prirun wrote:
| I saw a post on HN a while back and the poster was talking
| about using pinky for backspace because that avoided twisting
| the wrist. While that is true, it requires stretching the
| hand and fingers. To avoid this stretch, you have to move
| your whole arm.
|
| I hit backspace with my ring finger because while it does
| require flexing the wrist a bit, it doesn't require any
| stretching or arm movement (on my hand). I play piano, and
| figuring out which fingers to use is a big deal to minimize
| stretching that can lead to tension.
|
| So for anyone stretching their hand or fingers to reach keys,
| I'd suggest you give a longer finger a try. I touch type
| also, but never use my pinkies for anything on the number
| row.
| godshatter wrote:
| Interesting. I'll do that. I can't hit the key without
| removing my finger from the 'J' key but I can still do so
| if I move my wrist and not my arm.
| prirun wrote:
| You want to remove your finger from the J key. If you
| don't, you're back to stretching your hand.
|
| Here's an experiment: stretch your hand out as wide as
| you can and try to move your fingers up and down. Doesn't
| work so great. Now leave your fingers relaxed, like they
| are laying on a ball and try the same motion. Much
| easier!
|
| When I hit Backspace, my index finger is on the bottom
| edge of the 0 key, where 0, O and P intersect, because my
| index finger is shorter than my ring finger. While
| hitting Backspace, all my fingers are straight - no hand
| stretching. I do have pretty big hands, so that's a
| factor too. If I wanted to (I don't!) I could leave my
| index finger on J and reach backspace with my pinkie by
| twisting my wrist. Or I can leave it on J and stretch to
| reach BS with my ring finger, but that's an uncomfortable
| stretch that would put my head in an uproar within a day.
| siver_john wrote:
| Just to add my two cents as someone who recently switched to
| Colemak-DH after getting a moonlander (I used a das ultimate
| for years though), but I am currently typing this on my laptop
| using QWERTY.
|
| I feel like switching between the two isn't always 100%
| painless with a small lag time especially if I've been away
| from one or the other a few days while using the other one
| predominantly. But generally it's not too bad. The worst of it
| being typing on my laptop, messaging friends late at night and
| having a sudden forgetfulness which is easily overcome by just
| looking at the keyboard for a moment while typing till my hands
| remember.
| eimrine wrote:
| > Is it really possible to improve 42 years typing practice
| with a new layout?
|
| Definitely NO, the reasons I have written down in another
| branch of this topic. Maybe your grandkids would have a chance
| to get rid from a layout with "typewriter" word on an upper row
| for some marketing goals.
|
| > - Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at
| the same time?
|
| I know a guy who uses Programmer Dvorak for emacs and QWERTY
| for rest of his life. It is hard to understand why he is doing
| so but I know this is possible. Maybe he just wants to get rid
| of anything except emacs :)
|
| > - If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout,
| isn't it a problem if you have to use some other computer
| (where you cannot change the layout) for whatever reason, for
| example in an Internet cafe?
|
| Yes, typing QWERTY is a problem for me, but there are not any
| Internet cafes nowadays. I mean if I need to enter my email
| into somebody's device I will do it in one-finger mode while
| everybody thinks I am kidding. If it is needed to write more
| than one line on somebody's PC there are always some ways to
| negotiate.
| adamhp wrote:
| 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 one of the
| thumb buttons be a macro to enter "=>" which I use heavily in
| JavaScript is really nice.
| AlphaGeekZulu wrote:
| > 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.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I value my input devices, for they are the tools with which
| I interface to the world.
|
| If you want to dip your toes into custom keyboards, I'd
| recommend finding some 60%-ish board with hotswap switch
| sockets, since that will let you experiment with the choice
| of switches before you have to worry about soldering
| anything. Plenty of 60s are available as kits, or just
| interchangeable parts.
| vollmond wrote:
| I use a Keebio Iris [0] which is similar to a stripped-down
| ErgoDox. Careful part selection (especially keycaps) could
| have one for <$150, though you do have to solder it
| together yourself. I enjoyed the experience.
|
| [0] https://keeb.io/collections/iris-split-ergonomic-
| keyboard
| gotrythis wrote:
| I'm 50 and learned to touch type years before there were
| personal computers. I switched to Colemak a couple of years ago
| and it took a year to get really proficient.
|
| I can no longer type in Querty, though I have no trouble using
| swipe keyboards on phones. I'm a faster typer now.
|
| But the real benefit is that it no longer hurts to type. Typing
| in Querty hurt my hands after a while to the point where I
| couldn't type or use a mouse. Typing in Colemak fixed that,
| even though most of my work is on my non-ergonomic Macbook
| keyboard.
| Toorkit wrote:
| Everyone thinks I'm crazy. "Just use qwerty, don't be weird.
| My hands are fine."
|
| But the pain after a few hours typing was horrible, until I
| moved to Colemak.
| vbrandl wrote:
| I learned typing on German QWERTZ, too. I started using eurkey
| [0] a few years ago. For me it hits the sweet spot between good
| position of special characters used for programming (it's
| effectively QWERTY in that regard) but with common European
| special characters easily available. So instead of dedicated
| keys for a/o/u, it became AltGr+a/o/u.
|
| The switch was not to hard and in the beginning I kept using my
| QWERTZ keyboard. After about a year I decided to stick with it
| and bought a QWERTY keyboard.
|
| Having to switch back to the QWERTZ layout of coworkers is a
| little awkward but it's not too bad.
|
| [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
| ajdude wrote:
| About 12 years ago, I quit qwerty cold turkey on an unlabeled
| das keyboard ultimate for Dvorak and my typing speeds went from
| about 102wpm to 5. I printed out a label of the layout and put
| it on a wall a good distance from my chair and referenced it to
| find the correct keys. It took me about 2 weeks to get back up
| to 40wpm and another year later I was typing at my normal
| speed.
|
| I still think it's one of the best layouts; others bring up the
| home row but Dvorak had a lot of other factors at play too. If
| you're interested, I highly recommend this 1972 article[0] on
| the layout, it's quite a story.
|
| One benefit of learning blind without ever using labels was
| that I can jump on any computer with a qwerty keyboard, switch
| to Dvorak, and just start typing. I have never ran into a
| computer that actively prevented me from switching keyboard
| layouts, and I even have a word processor that comes with
| Dvorak as an option. Bear in mind, I am still typing on a
| QWERTY keyboard, but if I type the letter Q, it outputs on the
| computer a comma.
|
| Most modern games can detect alternate layouts and remap keys
| automatically, and for those that can't it's not difficult to
| remap them.
|
| Back to the question of switching though. I went five years
| exclusively using Dvorak and not QWERTY, and for me that was
| fine. I will papers, I was programming, and I would simply just
| switch to Dvorak when I went on a computer that was not my own.
| The few times I did have to use QWERTY, I would just hunt and
| Peck. However, I ended up getting a job where they did a lot of
| deskside support for various clients, and of course I could not
| just change the keyboard layout on them. At some point, I
| realized, that I was able to switch my mindset when typing in
| qwerty, and suddenly I was just as proficient as I used to be
| in Corti then in Dvorak. You have to have kind of an active
| change in your brain similar to if you are speaking in a
| different language. If I'm on a qwerty keyboard I'm in "qwerty
| mode" and on Dvorak, default mode.
|
| I must warn you, even after two weeks and 40 words per minute,
| I found Dvorak so comfortable I didn't even care about my
| typing speed anymore and stopped doing typing drills.
| Consequently, while I am capable of using a qwerty keyboard for
| short periods of time, I find typing on one so uncomfortable
| that if given the opportunity I just switch to Dvorak.
| Obviously I would not do this on a client's computer, but an
| Internet cafe is fair game.
|
| I must also warn you that since Dvorak actively spreads the
| load across all fingers, your pinky may get sore when you first
| start only because those muscles aren't used to being used. If
| you're interested in reading my experience, I wrote about it in
| 2010[1].
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190125034817/http://infohost.n...
|
| [1] https://aj.ianozi.com/2010/12/switched-keyboard-
| layouts.html...
| Jiejeing wrote:
| > Most modern games can detect alternate layouts and remap
| keys automatically, and for those that can't it's not
| difficult to remap them.
|
| I have a wildly different experience, most games never manage
| to detect my AZERTY keyboard, and some don't even let me
| remap easily (case in point, stranded deep does not even let
| you remap or see controls during the tutorial, which was a
| truly awful experience). Nowadays I force qwerty during games
| to avoid issues caused by developers not understanding that
| there are different layouts out there.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| That approximately describes my switch to Dvorak. It is so
| important to leave the keycaps qwerty or blank, and have the
| Dvorak reference strictly external.
| abecedarius wrote:
| I also used the external reference while learning (taped a
| printed-out layout to the top of my screen).
|
| One regret: like the parent commenter, I stopped drilling
| early when "fast enough". Then I asymptoted to comparable
| speed to my qwerty days (and greater comfort), but worse
| accuracy. Years later some further drilling was worthwhile
| to end up actually better at typing than in qwerty.
|
| Overall I'd say the Dvorak/qwerty diff was enough to
| justify choosing Dvorak when you start to learn touch
| typing, but probably not for switching later.
|
| The increment of improvement from Dvorak to a newer layout
| seems considerably smaller still, and I'd weigh that
| against universality of support.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. Learned Dvorak on a blank keyboard.
| Even when I was still building muscle memory and typing
| slow, it was and still is more comfortable than QWERTY.
| V1ndaar wrote:
| To give my personal impression, as someone who switched to neo
| [0] about 2 years ago. To be fair I only had about 20 years of
| QWERTZ & QWERTY experience before that.
|
| 1. For me it took about a year or so until I surpassed my
| QWERTY typing speed with certainty. I typed about 80-90 wpm on
| QWERTY and currently type at about 90-100 wpm on neo.
|
| 2. Yes, it's not a big issue. I rarely type QWERTY nowadays,
| but whenever I have to it clicks after a few minutes and I can
| type at maybe 70% the speed I typed at before. I'm certain were
| I to use it more, I would be able to type both at my "native"
| speeds. I also relearned all my emacs shortcuts pretty quickly.
| Using emacs is harder on QWERTY now, but fortunately I pretty
| much never have to do that now.
|
| 3. Due to 2, it's not really a problem. The actual problem is
| the other way round. You cannot easily give someone else access
| to your computer. It can be a bit annoying to change keyboard
| layouts each time someone else wants to quickly use your
| computer.
|
| Hope that gives some perspective.
|
| [0]: https://neo-layout.org
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| As someone who switched to Dvorak 6 years ago, I understand
| there is potential for a lot to be gained by switching to
| non-QWERTY layouts. I do wonder about what I should try next.
| Neo is one that looks especially interesting to me.
| AlphaGeekZulu wrote:
| > I typed about 80-90 wpm on QWERTY and currently type at
| about 90-100 wpm on neo.
|
| This is really fast and a true improvement. I am currently at
| 90 wpm and do not feel I could improve that much (German has
| special characters aouss and a lot of capitals).
|
| > I rarely type QWERTY nowadays, but whenever I have to it
| clicks after a few minutes and I can type at maybe 70% the
| speed I typed at before.
|
| Interesting, so it might actually be possible to have
| multiple sets of muscle memory for the same thing!
|
| > It can be a bit annoying to change keyboard layouts each
| time someone else wants to quickly use your computer.
|
| Someone else will face much more difficulties using my
| computer than just the keyboard layout. 30 years of
| customization have made my computer very individual. ;-)
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| vonunov wrote:
| Look up Sean Wrona -- one example of typing skill that can't be
| improved by changing keyboard layouts. People looking into
| Dvorak are often warned that it isn't a magic bullet to make
| them faster, only possibly more comfortable.
| AlphaGeekZulu wrote:
| > Look up Sean Wrona
|
| Yeah, insane!
|
| > People looking into Dvorak are often warned that it isn't a
| magic bullet to make them faster, only possibly more
| comfortable.
|
| That is an important point!
|
| First, being fast in a competition is not only a question of
| fast finger movement, but also endurance and ability to
| focus. I would classify myself as a "burst" typer - pretty
| fast (about 460 characters per minute), but only for a short
| time. Because my typical typing operation is throwing out
| emails, short reports, jotting down notes and typing junks of
| code. I am lacking endurance when it comes to continouos
| typing. Sean Wrona certainly has everything it takes!
|
| And then, of course, comfort is a coequal factor. Comfort
| means health! Because, when I look at Sean Wrona's shoulders
| I see a serious malposition. It might not originate from
| typing, but if it does than the comfort factor has been
| neglected.
|
| So you are right! Improvement in comfort/health might justify
| an alternative keyboard layout, even if some speed is lost.
| dangerface wrote:
| > Is it really possible to improve 42 years typing practice
| with a new layout?
|
| In my experience with dvorak no after testing for two years I
| had the same wpm as qwerty. If you can touch type you have
| maxed out your speed, the tiny reduction in travel time for
| your fingers just doesn't add up to anything measurable.
|
| > Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at
| the same time?
|
| I can switch between mac and pc layout no problems, but when I
| learned to touch type on dvorak I forgot how to do it with
| qwerty. When I used a friends computer with qwerty I was
| searching for every key with two fingers hovered over the
| keyboard like a raptor. Maybe others can do it but I defiantly
| couldn't and found it very embarrassing to not be able to touch
| type.
|
| > If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout,
| isn't it a problem if you have to use some other computer.
|
| Yes! You look like its your first day using a computer. Once I
| could touch type I didn't really care what the key caps said
| and its fairly easy to switch between dvorak and qwerty on
| windows and I don't use other peoples computers often so it
| wasn't a deal breaker.
|
| The only benefit I seen from using dvorak was that no one else
| could use my computer, as soon as they realised it wasn't
| qwerty they ran.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > I can switch between mac and pc layout no problems, but
| when I learned to touch type on dvorak I forgot how to do it
| with qwerty. When I used a friends computer with qwerty I was
| searching for every key with two fingers hovered over the
| keyboard like a raptor. Maybe others can do it but I
| defiantly couldn't and found it very embarrassing to not be
| able to touch type.
|
| It takes practice. I switched to Dvorak around 2001/2002, and
| my QWERTY typing speed dropped from 50-60wpm down to about
| 10. But I then spent a lot of time in offices and labs where
| I didn't have control over the computers, they were closer to
| "kiosk" systems (single-user). I _could_ have added Dvorak,
| but it would have been a bit rude. If I forgot to change it
| back it would create confusion. If I had a keyboard shortcut
| to switch layouts, it could create confusion. And having to
| manually change it was too tedious to bother with, for me. So
| I just sucked it up and used Dvorak on my own workstation and
| at home, and QWERTY in the lab environments. I got my QWERTY
| speed back up to 50-60, and my Dvorak speed never dropped
| below 100.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| 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.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| 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-C/Pinky-V/Pinky-Esc is a valid pattern for I would guess
| lots of developers who were raised on Atom/Sublime/VSCode.
| mormegil wrote:
| 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 :-))
| tgvaughan wrote:
| Really cool, but these heatmaps seem to be compiled from
| source code. I wonder how much the _actual_ distribution of
| keys pressed would differ. (I use paredit to write scheme
| code, and I'm assuming IDEs would skew the distribution in
| other languages.)
| bclnr wrote:
| I have compared keyboard layouts over several (human, European)
| languages, and it doesn't vary that much in practice:
| https://github.com/bclnr/kb-layout-evaluation
| eimrine wrote:
| I have not seen from your comment where is the difference
| between layouts for different activities. Isn't Programmer
| Dvorak enough optimized for Perl? Because for writing some
| graphomania any Dvorak fits just perfect. I can not even
| imagine a reason for having several different layouts for same
| Latin letters.
| MayeulC wrote:
| APL has had dedicated keyboard layouts since its inception,
| but that might be a bit unusual.
|
| If you lisp, you might want easily accessible parenthesis. In
| C, semicolon is useful. Bash uses dollar and sharp a lot.
| OJFord wrote:
| Presumably not Latin letters so much as special chars used in
| the language syntax. I suppose there's room for optimisation
| in Latin chars used in keywords (if applicable) too though.
| baxtr wrote:
| I love the prominence of the "Swedish Road sign" aka "Command
| Key" aka "Apple Key".
|
| [?]
| pirkko wrote:
| Actually "Finnish road sign"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square
| lancebeet wrote:
| Now that the doors of pedantry have been opened, the sources
| used in the article don't actually specify that it was a
| Finnish "road sign" first, only that it was first suggested
| as an official symbol by the Finnish national local history
| association in the 1950s (having been used in all of the
| nordics in an unofficial capacity a lot longer), and that it
| started being used in all of the nordics in this official
| capacity in the 60s. The sources that say where Susan Kare
| got the inspiration more specifically than "from the
| nordic/Scandinavian countries" all seem to state a Swedish
| road sign, though exactly where she/apple got the inspiration
| (if they even remember correctly) is probably unimportant.
| progre wrote:
| "Swedish road sign" as this is the sign for interesting old
| stuff near the road. Various dictionaries like translate
| "fornlamning" to "ancient site" or "ancient monument". I think
| americans have the term "heritage site"? I think thats a better
| translation.
| js8 wrote:
| Interesting that ETAOIN SHRDLU seems to be on highly symmetric
| positions.
| penjelly wrote:
| people are saying it takes a year to reach proficiency with a new
| layout. tbh that seems like a really long time for a for someone
| who types for a living. + 10-15 wpm isnt worth it for me
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This feels like over fitting if it's not allowed to make basic
| changes like a capslock being control when held and escape when
| used on its own.
|
| There's a bunch of things like that which would have a bigger
| impact if they could be measured but are ignored by this
| methodology.
|
| I use standard Dvorak, but thumb keys are the real game changer
| (the Kinesis introduced me to them) so CMD keys that act as
| backspace and enter when used alone are good, as is using space
| as a shift key to get numbers and symbols.
|
| Two keys (j+k) at once for esc and : and home row mods are other
| quantum leaps.
|
| Oh and the data is from non-ortholinear keyboards, so will be
| skewed for non staggered keyboards.
| [deleted]
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| CarpalX [1] is also a keyboard modeling approach that includes
| typing effort and corpus loading. I would love to hear about the
| difference in typing effort modeling and approach for CarpalX.
|
| CarpalX is a linear parametrized model with configurable
| parameters and weights for different types of strokes, so you can
| weigh the effort. You on the otherhand have made measurements of
| your hand movement. Very impressive and valuable! In the
| explainer [2] you mention the datasets briefly skipping over
| specifics:
|
| - Are the hand-movement metrics a measurement of the center of
| the hand from an video-based object detector?
|
| - Do you have individual finger detection too (doubt it is very
| precise due to occlusion)? My guess is relative hand movement is
| a good approximation of overall finger movement though.
|
| - Any typing effort model based on this data will not be
| applicable to ortholinear or alternative layout boards such as a
| split hand (Ergodox, Corne, Moonlander or Plank).
|
| - You briefly mention removing any manually determined effort-
| based objectives (like those in CarpalX) from the genetic
| algorithm optimization. You say they are highly similar to the
| purely trigram data-driven approach, but I am still very curious
| to see the results with these objectives included.
|
| I am not trying to put you down though: It is still very
| commendable to research a better layout for the most common
| staggered 60% lay-out. I have been keylogging myself for three
| years now and will definitely try out your approach though, looks
| very promising!
|
| 1. http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ40gmfDFfQ
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| One issue I've always had with QWERTY (and probably this new
| layout as well) is that "similar" letters are often next to each
| other on the keyboard, making typo detection nearly impossible in
| English. For instance, in English, many short words with a "i" as
| the only vowel remain a valid word when the "i" is replaced by an
| "o" or a "u" -- pit/pot/put, bit/bot/but, tip/top/tup,
| pig/pog/pug, bitch/butch/botch, etc. This means if you go to hit
| the "i" key but accidentally hit the "u" or "o" keys, the typo
| won't necessarily look like a typo to either to the author or the
| reader.
|
| Similarly with "s" and "d" -- pretty much every verb can be
| conjugated to end with either an "s" or a "d", so if you press
| "d" when you meant to press "s" or vice versa, it probably
| remains a valid verb, and thus is harder to catch.
|
| For these purposes, my ideal layout would have interchangeable
| letters sufficiently far apart from each other to make typo
| detection+resolution easier. The most commonly used letters
| should be surrounded by the least commonly used letters so that,
| for instance, if you "jqb" I know you meant "job" and not, say,
| "jib".
|
| This would also make swipe typing on phones far easier to use, as
| it would be much less ambiguous which letters you were aiming
| for.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I've had a number of, perhaps inappropriate, typos in work
| messages thanks to the letters directly to the left or right.
|
| I'd never thought of optimizing a layout so that typos are
| obvious nonsense. At the same time, I think I'd find a way
| regardless.
|
| Some real examples include:
|
| "Any update on your free/busty time?" instead of busy.
|
| "It is just milf kitty indigestion" instead of mild.
|
| You just have to hope your client or coworker makes typos too,
| and finds amusement in it.
| njsubedi wrote:
| New idea: AI generated least-error prone swipe keyboard.
| jdc0589 wrote:
| new idea, ai generated layout to intentionally create the most
| fun typos
| yewenjie wrote:
| I am planning to switch to Colemak soon. I would love to know
| experience reports of users who use this layout as their daily
| driver.
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| I've done Colemak for 2 years and have switched to Colemak-DH
| since, which is a rather small change. It is not a problem.
|
| The only problem is that if you also use a non-latin layout, it
| will do a remapping to the latin one for shortcuts. This latin
| layout was always qwerty under macOS. So, in the end, I've
| built with Ukulele a custom layout and that was it.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I learned QWERTY in high school, and by the end of college was
| up to around 100wpm. As I started getting older, I had some
| wrist trouble, mostly from mouse, but also from keyboard, and
| decided to switch to a more ergonomic layout. It took me a
| month or so (not full-time use) to get my Colemak speed up to
| 40wpm (minimal usable), and a couple more months to get it up
| to 80wpm. I've never really regained my 100wpm speed (been
| using Colemak for 8 years now), but my wrists thank me. I'm
| still able to touch-type QWERTY, but I have to look at the
| keyboard to give me the "context" for it, and my QWERTY speed
| is today only about 40wpm.
|
| Lately, I sometimes think about going back to QWERTY just to
| simplify my life; mouse avoidance has been more important to me
| than keyboard layout switching, I think. But at this point, it
| would be as much a pain to go back as it was to switch in the
| first place.
| frisia wrote:
| I switched late high school to exclusively use Colemak and have
| since. It's harder to reflect now about the difference of it as
| it have just became the new normal for me, but I remember my
| initial reactions after getting fluent in colemak was that: 1.
| for me personally it didn't improve typing speed significantly
| 2. It felt much more ergonomic. I don't move my hands as much.
| 3. this was an unexpected side effect, but I noticed how
| horrible the symbol layout is for programmers on the default
| swedish layout. colemak symbol layout is much more similiar to
| the english qwerty which is so much better.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| As a chronically fat-fingered typist working in English, all
| those vowels next to each other gives me the willies - far too
| easy to get the wrong one and for autocorrect to not spot the
| error. The adjacency of U, I and O on qwerty gives me enough
| aggro in this regard already.
| [deleted]
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I like it just because it will annoy fellow vim users who brag
| about never having to leave the home row to move around a buffer.
|
| (You can remap, but you must also remap your muscle memory)
| alemelis wrote:
| fwiw, running the same evolutionary algorithm on Julia, Python
| and C++ files returned this layout ` 1 2 3 4 5 6
| 7 8 9 0 - = c l r b z ; q u d j [ ] \ s h n t , .
| a e o i ' \n f m v w ? y g x k p 11 7 13 14 13 13
| 9 19 , 45 | 55 Symmetry: 61 Evenness: 81 Overheads:
| F:37%, H:12%, S:9%
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Now do Perl scripts. (:
| namanyayg wrote:
| Apart from the technical merits, I always appreciate "hacker"
| naming of software.
|
| "The name is a combination of HAL-9000, as a reference to the
| layout being designed by an AI. And, Dvorak as a gratitude to Mr.
| Dvorak for his dedication to the layouts optimizations process.
| The letter m in between is just to make it sound nicer. Or is
| it!?..."
|
| I suppose the "m" is for MadRabbit, the author. Nice touch.
| Findecanor wrote:
| > I suppose the "m" is for MadRabbit, the author.
|
| My first thought was that he had put "Colemak" into the word
| mix. (<https://colemak.com/>)
| airstrike wrote:
| Also kinda makes it sound like "hallmark" which makes the name
| catchier
| bloopernova wrote:
| I'd like to see that AI project ran on different codebases. For
| example, a C++ corpus is going to be weighted differently than a
| Python one.
| minimilian wrote:
| Wonder how this compares to QGMLWB, which is also designed by a
| program.
|
| http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization
| verisimi wrote:
| Not as good as this! https://www.charachorder.com/
|
| 500wpm apparently!
| mkl wrote:
| 500wpm for a few seconds to type in a single massively
| practised sentence. Big discussion from a couple of months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827461
| xcambar wrote:
| Is this for real?
|
| To me, it looks way too error prone (3D movement per key...
| wat) and english only.
|
| I honestly wondered whether it was a stunt from Cards Against
| Humanity or The Onion.
|
| But if not, you got me curious.
| verisimi wrote:
| I know what you mean.. but apparently you can buy one! I
| haven't, so I can't verify it.
|
| And there seem to be training manuals etc.
| ivanche wrote:
| They need to check marketing copy. "500% less keystrokes" is
| mathematically impossible. "80% less keystrokes" is.
| mertnesvat wrote:
| Dvorak is one of the well-known layouts and even now we can't
| have it on the iPad, so I don't think keyboard layout is only
| about efficiency it's also popularity and availability.
| codedokode wrote:
| As we are discussing layouts, I would like to point to a bigger
| problem (in my opinion) with keyboards: they don't have enough
| keys.
|
| Let me explain. While Latin alphabet has only 26 letters, many
| languages have more of them. For example, Russian alphabet has 33
| letters. Therefore, to fit these letters there must be 7 more
| keys. But we also need two keys to switch layouts - so in total
| there should be 9 extra keys.
|
| Sadly, manufacturers (including Apple that claims to "think
| different", but in this case thinks exactly the same as PC
| vendors) don't want to add even a single key, instead they put
| extra letters onto keys with symbols, so you have to switch
| layouts to type those symbols. Furthermore, several characters
| like period or comma are located on different keys in different
| layouts. Guess, how easy it becomes to make a mistake.
|
| Switching layouts is inconvenient. Instead of having two
| dedicated keys for switching to each language, OS vendors add
| single switching combination like Shift + Alt (Windows) or Cmd +
| Space (Mac). Also, on keyboard itself there is no indication that
| these keys can switch layout.
|
| One could argue that it is difficult to find more space on
| laptops. Well, I think that this can be solved somehow. For
| example, one could add an extra row. But it is absolutely
| possible on desktop PC keyboards, and yet nobody is doing this.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>Sadly, manufacturers (including Apple that claims to "think
| different", but in this case thinks exactly the same as PC
| vendors) don't want to add even a single key,
|
| Realistically, it's the opposite - they look to reduce and
| minimize keys; Home/End/Pg keys, arrow keys, all are being
| mangled/reduced/moved/killed. Every manufacturer wants to make
| its own bespoke layout for every model they make seemingly,
| presumably in a valiant effort to make muscle memory thing of
| the past :-) . Standards are for wussies!
| slim wrote:
| I'd go even further and want a 200 key keboard. to each glyph a
| separate key. I don't want to switch (I write arabic/latin)
| ekianjo wrote:
| Why is the enter key and backspace out of scope for optimization?
| Makes no sense to exclude those.
| eigengrau wrote:
| An interesting related project is the AdNW (http://www.adnw.de/)
| layout, which was created by defining metrics based on Dvorak's
| ideas and running a genetic optimization algorithm on a corpus of
| German (50%) and English (50%) text.
|
| The symbol layers were copied from the Neo2 layout, which afaik
| were arranged manually.
| perihelions wrote:
| Does there exist any project like this, but for chords and chord
| sequences?
| hans1729 wrote:
| After having tried Dvorak for a couple of days (weeks?) a couple
| years back, I found my peace with the american default layout.
| Typing on dvorak was fun, and the learning process was really
| fun, too - fighting two decades of muscle memory was quite the
| experience.
|
| But at some point I realized that I now have to adapt all the
| bindings - without a solution to this, I'm not willing to try out
| different stuff. I need vi to work out of the box, especially
| because I also use the vi-bindings in tmux, zsh and firefox.
| Sigh.
|
| Looks really interesting though.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Is it possible to use a keyboard layout when typing text, but
| revert to QWERTY when doing ctrl+V or other key combinations?
|
| At the most basic level, you could simply have the keyboard
| layout change whenever Ctrl, Alt, or Meta/Super is pressed...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yes, Mac OS has this built in as one of their Dvorak options.
| kschiffer wrote:
| I'm three months into colemak now, together with learning touch
| typing (and switching to vim as main editor).
|
| I've managed to get up to around 50 wpm coming from 75 wpm with
| normal qwerty without touch typing (just 6 finger freestyle).
| I've still some time to go to get over my initial typing speed. A
| really cool thing about colemak for me is replacing caps lock
| with backspace, which in itself is getting rid of so much
| finger/hand-travel, but that can obviously also easily be hacked
| into qwerty as well.
|
| To this point, I don't know if I would recommend switching to
| anyone for the following reasons:
|
| - You will slowly use muscle memory of normal qwerty, which can
| become quite awkward whenever you forced to use another computer.
| It's not like you cannot type it anymore, but you will be quite
| slow and inaccurate when typing. However, these situation barely
| exists for me in everyday life.
|
| - Learning the new layout is quite a feat that takes time and
| daily dedication. I decided early on to use the new layout in my
| job (frontend dev) which definitely speed up adoption for me but
| also slowed me down considerably for some days. Even then it will
| take quite some time to get back to your initial speed.
|
| - Depending on your profession, typing speed may not at all be a
| bottle neck. This is true for me as a software developer, where
| you spend the most time thinking about how to solve problem
| before typing them in small chunks.
|
| - Wrt touch-typing, I weirdly found out for myself that it can
| actually cause some wrist and hand strain rather than protect
| from it. To me it feels that by using a lot more muscles to type
| it also increases chance of wear-and-tear. This is especially
| true for the pinkies for me, which I never used much for typing
| before.
|
| Good thing about colemak wrt keyboard shortcuts is that it only
| changes letters (no symbols, punctuation, etc.) and then as few
| letters as possible to still achieve the best finger travel. In
| practice that means that many shortcuts stay the same, e.g. the
| common ones as CTRL-Z/X/C/A/Q/W etc.
|
| I sort of did the switch as a self-experiment after being
| intrigued by all the science behind optimized layouts, and also
| to challenge myself to learn a new skill for the new year. I
| wanted to learn touch typing after decades of freestyle typing
| which I increasingly noticed was very error-prone. I figured that
| learning a new keyboard layout at the same time is a very good
| opportunity.
|
| Not sure if I will stick to colemak permanently but so far it's
| still fun to try to gradually improve on it.
| dangerface wrote:
| I used dvorak for two years got no benefit from it. It was no
| more comfortable than touch typing on qwerty, words per minute (a
| pathetic 80) and accuracy was the same.
|
| Switching between dvorak and a qwerty keyboard was impossible
| even tho I knew how to touch type on both.
|
| The big win from my dvorak experiment was learning that when
| coding typing speed doesn't matter. I spend more time thinking
| about my code than implementing it, removing shortened non
| descriptive variables or functions with long winded names has
| improved my productivity immensely.
| andai wrote:
| I used the QGMLWY layout by Carpalx[0] for a year or so. The site
| is really interesting, worth a read. Afaik they made a list of
| the most common trigrams (three letter combinations) then used a
| genetic algorithm to optimize the layout for most of the same
| factors listed in OP's GitHub Readme (minimizing same finger
| sequences, certain kinds of movement).
|
| In the end I switched back to qwerty for 3 reasons:
|
| 1. keyboard shortcuts ending up in weird places and behaving
| inconsistently between programs (at least on Windows, some of
| them seemed to respond to the physical key rather than the
| letter).
|
| 1b. so for games i'd be used to WASD but WASD ended up in
| different places so I'd either have to remap the keys in every
| game, or switch to QWERTY while using them. Same with browsers,
| the Ctrl+N and Ctrl+T ended up in weird places I somehow never
| got used to.
|
| 2. different preferences in terms of how my hands work and how
| comfortable each key is to access. (e.g. i'd rather move up a row
| than reach to the middle of the keyboard. Minor but it adds up
| with use.)
|
| 3. frequently switching devices. I think there was no QGMLWY
| support for MacOS (but I also recall rearranging my keyboard keys
| -- perhaps I had switched to Colemak at that point because it was
| built in.)
|
| [0] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/
|
| Also somewhat related, regarding programming comfort
| specifically, something I thought was cool is swapping the
| numbers and symbols in Vim, so you can access symbols without
| Shift. I don't use Vim but I kind of wish there was a system-wide
| toggle for that kind of thing. (Maybe with AutoHotKey, and then
| porting it to HammerSpoon or whatever the cross-platform one was
| called :)
| jonplackett wrote:
| Semi-colon gets pride of place (presumably for coding) but no
| sign of a hash key
| nolok wrote:
| I'm not sure ; is due to coding, this keyboard would be
| terrible for coding (# ? ! % * + | [] { } ...)
| ZephyrOhm wrote:
| If there's ever an Android keyboard app, I'd love to give it a
| shot
| addandsubtract wrote:
| The problem with any non-QWERTY keyboard layout is that all app
| and web shortcuts go out the window. You want to save an image
| for the web? Good luck growing a third hand. Want to open the
| quick menu on a site using [?]+/, but your / key is only
| accessible using the shift key? Tough luck. Need to change the
| font size in your editor? Just navigate down these 3 easy sub-
| menus, because the keyboard shortcut for that is already
| reassigned to alleviate one of the other 300 broken shortcuts.
| gumby wrote:
| I've been an emacs user for more than 40 years and have used
| almost every combination of bucky keys with glyph keys. This
| just isn't a big deal in practice.
|
| In addition: I see you're a Mac user. The kind of person
| willing to try this layout is probably willing to reassign all
| those keystrokes, which is easy (but tedious) on the Mac.
| f1refly wrote:
| > Want to open the quick menu on a site using [?]+/, but your /
| key is only accessible using the shift key?
|
| Welcome to the wonderful world of everyone whose countries
| native layout doesn't have a dedicated key for /, like most of
| europe.
| ihateolives wrote:
| Issue is amplified by every additional key needed for the
| shortcut. Some shortcuts that require 3 keys on US keyboard,
| may require 4 on non-US and some are downright impossible,
| because keys cancel each other.
|
| For example I can't do Ctrl + ] because I need AltGr to
| produce ] and that won't work with Ctrl. Also I cant do Ctrl
| + ` because ` is dead key for me (it appears only after I
| type space or any other character).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's definitely some issues, but since lots of normal people
| already use different keyboards for language reasons, this
| isn't as bad as you make out.
|
| The built in Dvorak on the Mac has an option to let the keys go
| back to normal for CMD usage, though I prefer learning them as
| typable letters than physically located chords.
| blacklion wrote:
| Problem with shortcuts is much deeper if you have more than one
| layout (say, English and Russian).
|
| It is problem both for MacOS and Windows, my examples will be
| for Windows, but MacOS has exactly the same problem.
|
| Imagine, you have two keyboard layouts installed: English
| (standard one, QWERTY) and Russian (standard one, ITsUKEN, but
| it doesn't matter).
|
| Typical shortcut for "Open File" is Ctrl+O (O is English O).
| This key in QWERTY is on top row, on the right part of
| keyboard. Russian layout has letter Shch on same key. You can
| press Ctrl+O when English layout is active or you can press
| Ctrl+Shch when Russian layout is active, it will work the same:
| activate Ctrl+O shortcut, and shows you "Open File" dialog.
|
| Now Imagine you have combination of English Dvorak layout and
| same Russian ITsUKEN layout.
|
| Open File shortcut now uses DIFFERENT KEYS in DIFFERENT
| LAYOUTS. When Dvorak is active you need to press Ctrl+O, where
| "O" is in the middle row, on the left. This key is Russian "Y"
| in ITsUKEN layout. Sounds good so far. But when Russian layout
| is active you need to press... Can you guess? No, not Ctrl+Y
| (where Russian "Y" in ITsUKEN is same key as English "O" in
| Dvorak), but Ctrl+Shch, as if your English layout is still
| QWERTY.
|
| It is sick. It makes using shortcuts almost impossible -
| shortcuts become dependent on current active language!
|
| And what is worse, some programs (Google Docs is one example)
| refuse to use Ctrl+Ins/Shift+Ins and requires Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V
| for clipboard operations.
| V1ndaar wrote:
| This is an almost complete non-issue in practice. It sounds
| like an expectation someone has that hasn't actually switched
| to a different keyboard layout.
|
| I'm typing on neo [0] and it's no problem at all.
|
| [0]: https://neo-layout.org
| cyounkins wrote:
| Wikipedia says this project targets English, but I don't see
| any way to switch the website language to English so I can't
| read it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout)
| avindroth wrote:
| This is something people have thought about because it's an
| obvious inconvenience to anyone trying out, say, Dvorak.
|
| On a Mac, you can use [?] keys as QWERTY, but have Dvorak for
| everything else. Like the other comment, this sounds like
| someone who hasn't given an alternative keyboard layout a
| serious try.
| rak wrote:
| Yeah out of the box they are poof but I wonder if people would
| be comfortable with just accessing some of these useful
| shortcuts in the same positions in another layer?
|
| I experiment around with my layouts and keyboards a little bit
| so I am probably out of touch.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| There really should be a keyboard-shortcut standard. Some sort
| of configurable mapping of common actions/intents to key
| combinations that is set by the OS and shared between all apps.
| cyounkins wrote:
| Many sibling comments dismiss this as a non-issue if you've
| ever actually tried an alternative layout.
|
| As a Dvorak user on macOS for ~12 years, I do believe it's an
| issue. I use "Dvorak - QWERTY [?]" as my daily driver and while
| it works for most applications, it's infuriating for those it
| doesn't. Sometimes keyboard shortcuts are control/option based
| without using command, so it's still in Dvorak mode.
|
| In Gimp, the New Image shortcut is [?]-N, which doesn't work. I
| have to press physical L, which is the key for N in Dvorak.
| This is common. The apps seem to do some lower-level key
| detection. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/3352 I
| think Fusion 360 does similar, though I don't have it installed
| at the moment. I have also had trouble with remove desktop
| applications, which is kind of to be expected but another
| downside.
| ajford wrote:
| This is where programable keyboards win out when using
| alternative layouts.
|
| When the layout is at the hardware level, the OS only ever
| sees the actual keycode for the N key, instead of an "L"
| which is later transcribed into "N" by the OS's layout map.
| kortex wrote:
| I ran into this and I run some flavor of Dvorak on everything.
| Once I got my Zsa keyboards (first an Ergodox then a
| Moonlander, I love both but slightly prefer the moonlander) I
| added a level shift which makes it issue Command+<qwerty
| letter>. You can do the same with a regular keyboard in linux
| (haven't tried but I know it's possible with xkb) or mac
| (karabiner I think?).
|
| I have 16 layers of possible keys activated by thumb chords
| (though in practice my brain runs out of awareness of different
| combos far before my ~1000 unique keys). So I just dedicate a
| layer to this pseudo-qwerty.
|
| Need to get around to writing that emoji layer...
| unkoman wrote:
| Having a dedicated capslock key seems a bit much.
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