BEAKL – Theory and observations to find the optimal keyboard layout (2017) | Hacker News Reader

BEAKL – Theory and observations to find the optimal keyboard layout (2017)

deskthority.net

38 pointsO_H_E24 comments

As someone who's learnt both colemak and dvorak in the past, it is my opinion that the utility of being able to use qwerty anywhere, at any computer, without having to adjust settings or install and configure keymaps, far outweighs any purported advantages of either colemak or dvorak or any other exotic layout.

That said, other people's situations will differ from mine, and I can see why you would switch if you were say, writing slabs of prose in seclusion, or lived in a country that is majority non-qwerty already.

Would say the best reason to try something weird is if the normal approach just isn't working. I never managed to touch type on a normal keyboard. Now that I'm using a split layout, I've learned to touch type. That makes it worth the weirdness for me.

The reason I learned Dvorak was because I saw my own fingers doing so much work when typing over 100 wpm on querty. Typing fast on Dvorak looks and feels effortless. Although I never got up to 100 wpm, I stayed with Dvorak because it is so much more comfortable. And yes, it's a pain to remember both Vim and Emacs keybindings in both layouts. Not to mention other program's shortcuts. I don't regret it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone else to go through the pain of switching.

I learned Colemak on my work machine while using QWERTY on my home machine. It made typing in general rough for a time, but forcibly transitioning back and forth has eventually gotten me to the point that when using my work laptop, my fingers instinctively go into 'Colemak mode', and when using my home laptop, my fingers instinctively go into 'QWERTY mode'. It's an extremely useful switch to be able to manually toggle in my head, as it's no longer crippling to use someone else's keyboard.

How long did it take you to feel comfortable switching back and forth? How fast do you type?

I spent a year switching between Colemak and Qwerty (but mostly using Colemak) and the transition never became comfortable for me.

I'm not sure how long it took to settle - it's one of those things you don't realize has become natural until you actively notice it - but I think it was the scale of a couple of months.

I'm not sure if there's a 'special recipe' to be generalized to all people; unfortunately, I only have my experiences on this to draw on, and the stories of a few others.

Does the transition just feel disjointed for you, like it takes you a few minutes to switch modes fluidly? Or is it longer-term?

It's longer term — I have to type one or the other for a few days before it feels like I'm not fighting the keyboard. Glad to hear it's not like that for everyone, though!

I type 85-95wpm (peaking around 130wpm) in Colemak on a Kinesis Advantage I with cherry brown keys. I documented my switch to Colemak five years ago (February 2013) and am still on it:

  - [7 weeks of colemak](http://petrustheron.com/posts/colemak.html)
  - [21 weeks of colemak](http://petrustheron.com/posts/colemak-21-weeks.html)
  - [Back up to speed on Colemak](http://petrustheron.com/posts/colemak-speed.html)

Don't switch unless you have RSI issues and you won't have to type on other people's computers. Whichever layout you choose, map Caps Lock to Backspace on QWERTY for an easy boost (and Backspace as Space key to learn faster).

To type fast, don't focus on speed; instead aim for 95%+ accuracy. Then push your speed up. The trick to touch typing is to maintain home row position, and the Caps Lock/Backspace mapping helps with that: [How to Type Fast](http://petrustheron.com/posts/how-to-type-fast.html)

I use dvorak full-time on my desktop PC, but I never bothered to switch my cell phone key layout so it's still qwerty, and I send a few texts a day. I don't even notice the change anymore, I can fluidly switch between the two. I've been using dvorak for almost 20 years, it's so much more comfortable for typing quickly, as I usually do on my desktop PC.

I used Colemak for a year and came to the same conclusion — I use Qwerty again now and am happier for changing back. (I no longer feel/look inexperienced when asked to help on a computer set to use Qwerty, and vim is easier with Qwerty.)

Using Qwerty because “Qwerty won” in the face of better-optimised layouts felt defeatist to me at first, but I accept it as the most practical option for those living in Qwertyland.

Committing to Colemak for a year was a fun exercise to focus on basic typing skills, though — I'm now faster in Qwerty due to better general typing habits (after the initial and frustrating re-adjustment period when switching back).

I wrote about the experience here: https://thisisforeveryone.com/switch-to-colemak-for-the-shee...

One day they will come up with an advanced keyboard layout that keep hjkl movement keys, and I'll give it a try.

I wonder how much of a day of typing can be generalized to a keymap that is good for words and prose input, even code input, and how much is meta things like navigation, and editor commands or window manager commands, etc... I also wonder how much varies from person to person. I feel like I do a fairly small amount of prose or code input but a lot of window navigation, scrolling, thinking...

Honestly, though, keeping qwerty and switching to a ErgoDox has made me extremely happy and uninterested in trying another keyboard layout. I have the qwerty layout mostly as it is on all my other devices (Chromebook, laptop, workstation), but I have a bunch of little tweaks for my work environment including customization for work like modifiers for tiling window manager and different layers for coding characters and special functions (mouse paste and browser back).

I have a friend that had it set up so that in insert mode in vi it was Dvorak and in command mode it was qwerty so hjkl worked. Based on people I've seen switching between Dvorak and qwerty, that seems awfully painful.

I use Dvorak (5 years total, vs 25 with qwerty), and IMO Dvorak is clearly superior for the specific case of vi motion (hjkl). Dvorak places these keys on 4 separate fingers rather than 3, and their relative positions make just as much sense as with qwerty. I've used vim since 2005, but before that I used emacs for 11 years, 3 of which was on Dvorak keyboards. I similarly found qwerty vs Dvorak to be a wash in the context of the editor.

The only combination that has given me trouble with Dvorak is OS X hotkeys and mouse (can't reach some hotkeys while right hand is on the mouse). OS X and trackpad works fine with Dvorak.

These days I use Dvorak layout even on my Android phone, and my family's computers are configured to easily switch between layouts, so I only rarely find the need to suffer qwerty. This is a strong contrast to 2001, when I last switched back to qwerty.

I agree. After 15 years on QWERTY and now over 10 years on Dvorak, I find the navigation in vim with the default hjkl keys in Dvorak better than in QWERTY.

I'm considering switching to Colemak but the vim key mappings concern me.

If your fear lies in hjkl, you can try Colemak.

- h and l are really close, and if you move your fingers a bit you can have index on h and middle on l.

- j and k are on the same column, with j on top and k on bottom. That reminds me of “natural scrolling”.

> One day they will come up with an advanced keyboard layout that keep hjkl movement keys, and I'll give it a try.

Everytime I read this kind of argument, I tell myself “Surely, I must be using Vim in a weird way”. I really don't use hjkl that much, compared to test objects or search (or on my setup, sneak[0]).

[0] https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak

I feel like my typing speed (80-85wpm) is almost never the limiting factor for my being able to enter data via keyboard. I can see it being an advantage for recording realtime voice conversations (ie. an official transcriber or someone) but I'd guess that for the majority, while the marginal advantage of switching layout may eventually pay off compared with the annoyance of having to relearn to type, the annoyance of having to switch between layouts when using any computer other than your own would make it a net loss overall.

I'm not saying that QWERTY can't be improved upon, just that it's probably "good enough" that it'll stay the standard while keyboards remain relevant (in much the same way that jpeg and mp3 are "good enough" that they're unlikely to be broadly supplanted.)

Edit: Thinking more about it, I don't think you can even evaluate the quality of a keyboard layout without specifying the target user. On one end of the scale, you have a complete novice who's single finger hunt-and-pecking. A hexagonal grid with letters/numbers in alphanumeric order is probably the easiest for such a user (maybe even doing away completely with the concept of a shift key). At the other end of the scale you have an expert touch typist who's willing to devote significant time to training with a new keyboard layout. Such a user could probably benefit somewhat from a fancy new layout such as this, but would already be fast enough using a standard QWERTY layout that they'd see minimal returns.

I use Dvorak exclusively at work, and move between QWERTY/Sholes and Dvorak at home. I'm a better typist with Dvorak than I ever was with QWERTY, but I admit that I'm slightly worse at QWERTY since adopting Dvoark.

For me, however, it's much more about comfort than typing speed or accuracy. Two of the touted advantages of Dvorak are: reduced finger travel, by putting frequent letters on the home row; and frequent alternation, by putting all the vowels on one side.

I'm intrigued by the effort grids used in designing BEAKL. I agree intuitively with the idea that the pinkies are much weaker, so perhaps a home block does make more sense than a home row.

It is true that main perceived benefits for alternative layouts are a long-term affordance rather than a peak speed, but in my experience the threshold is pretty high, if not non-existent (the professional transcription typically uses a dedicated keyboard layout with lots of common phrases anyway, so the general-purpose layouts are not relevant there).

I'm not a proficient English writer but I had been in a similar debate for Korean keyboard layouts, with a major split between consonant-vowel models (두벌식 "bipartite type") and initial-medial-final models (세벌식 "tripartite type"). For your information, a single Hangul syllable consists of one initial consonant, one medial vowel and an optional final consonant, with clusters possible for each part. Tripartite models can be (at least theoretically) more accurately optimized as frequency distributions for initial and final consonants would be pretty different, at the expense of slightly more keys to fit in. This theoretical consideration, combined with the fact that distinct keyboard layouts were directly tied do distinct typewriters in 70s and standardizing on the existing layout would effectively encourage a single typewriter, made the Korean government to standardize on entirely new layouts [1] with a bipartite basis. Nowadays tripartite layouts are supported in all major OSes but users are hard to find.

I had been a reasonably fast typist both in English and in Korean. I can continuously type Korean at sustained 600--700 strokes per minute [2], both in the standard bipartite layout and in a well-known tripartite layout (though I do feel pain after typing too long in the former). I can also type English at sustained 90--100 wpm in QWERTY. For both cases these peak numbers were highly meaningless even in the most favorable condition; a brain is not that quick. I had even done various transcription works from time to time and the main limiting factor was a recording quality and not the typing speed. (My work is by no way professional, but I have heard that one task was also sent to a professional transcriber and he/she had gave up due to the recording quality.) That's why I finally gave up learning DSK or elks.

[1] The standardized layouts were different for typewriters and computer keyboards; two are similar enough to be considered as a single layout but the former is typically termed quadripartite rather than bipartite.

[2] "Strokes" because consonant and vowel clusters often take multiple keystrokes. Roughly comparable to 100--150 wpm in English. Of course, all these numbers are not directly comparable to those in the typewriter era.

Speed isn't the only factor, many alternative keyboard layouts claim to be more ergonomic, leading to lesser chance of RSI. I've only heard anecdotal evidence for these claims though.

This links to deskthority.net, which says, "BEAKL 9 is currently the recommended layout for general audience." However, there is a link to the shenafu.com, which shows BEAKL 15 as the latest recommended layout.

Looks like this changed last month:

http://shenafu.com/smf/index.php?topic=89.msg2323;topicseen#...

I would really like to see an analysis for an optimized swipe layout. The biggest goal would be to reduce ambiguity of words.

I switched to the optimized QGMLWY once and worked up to 60wpm or so. I could have kept improving except for a couple of deal breakers... not being great at switching back to QWERTY and not having it on my phone. If I could solve either I’d still be on it!

So how does this compare to carpalx[0]?

[0] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/

Thanks for sharing. Personally, I think BEAKL looks very good:

Firstly, I found that keeping the up/down & left/right keys beneath the index and middle fingers was very comfortable to use with the RSTHD layout[0]. It follows then that I probably will enjoy how BEAKL places it's nav keys. Perhaps I will like it even more, because the Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End keys are also very important to me too - keys which seem to be positioned very ergonomically with BEAKL.

Secondly, RSTHD attempts to better organize the upper numrow by putting the most used numbers closer to the middle and index fingers. This BEAKL layout doesn't quite do that, but it nearly eliminates the numrow, which is one thing I actually like about the Technomancy's Atreus [1].

Thirdly, because of my experiences with the Atreus, now I'm a fan of mods on the thumb cluster. The designers of BEAKL also seem to be fans of it. To realize this benefit, I would have to find a variant of an ergo keyboard [2], rather than an ortholinear keyboard [3] suitable for it.

These days I use Dvorak most of the time. It is the first keyboard layout that I intentionally tried to learn without printed legends on my keycaps, so it now comes most naturally to me while typing. With QWERTY, I have developed over a long time a habit of looking at the keyboard sometimes, so I have difficulty typing as efficiently with it. Luckily Windows 10 and GNOME on Linux both allow easy switching of keyboard layouts (Win+Space) so it's not difficult for me to use these on a number of computers both at home and at work.

I am curious about trying BEAKL so will put it on my list of things to do. For now, I feel that it would be most important to learn the Steno layout for typing 200+ WPM via Plover [4]. Perhaps a BEAKL keyboard with a Plover function layer might be ideal.

[0] https://xsznix.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/introducing-the-rsth...

[1] https://atreus.technomancy.us/

[2] https://deskthority.net/wiki/ErgoDox

[3] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Staggering#Matrix_layout

[4] https://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/

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