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Comment by hellotomyrars | Hacker News Reader

I learned to touch-type at a young age and can comfortably type 90-110 WPM.

Personally I agree that people, especially people who are expected to use a computer for their job, probably should know how to type, and as a result it should be part of primary education.

I think having blank keycaps though is kind of silly, personally. Especially given the keyboard the author has gone with. If you sat me in front of that keyboard I wouldn't know where to begin due to its size and layout.

It's a fun novelty and if it works for them more power to them, but I only see more frustration than anything. I don't need to look at the keyboard to know what I'm typing, especially on my normal keyboard, but it's nice to have the option.

(I'm the odd-man out when it comes to keyboards though. I don't have a preference for mechanical keyboards and I truly don't understand the love/passion for ~60% keyboards. I really don't get why anyone would want less keys.)

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I think blank keys are the way to go if you want to improve your typing ability. It may not be worth it for you in particular since you already type at 90-110 WPM, but in general I'd argue that if blank keys are frustrating, that frustration is evidence of your need to have those blank keys.

I too learned to type at a young age. I can type without making mistakes at 120 WPM. I also used to be a stenographer, which for the uninitiated involves typing on a specially designed keyboard for the purpose of recording transcripts. In order to graduate as a stenographer you're required to type at 240 WPM with at least 98% accuracy (which is achievable thanks to the keyboards special design).

I know from this experience that looking at your hands / the keyboard while typing drastically hinders your ability to become a good typer. Given that you type at 90-110 WPM already, the benefit for you would really only be for the obscure keys you rarely press. It's clearly very effective for breaking poor typing habits, though.

You really just need to force your brain to form a complete model of the keyboard in your head. Even looking at an image of your keyboard layout while typing (and thus not looking at your hands) hinders how well you learn. During the first semester of stenography classes they had an image of the keyboard layout blown up and hanging on the wall. How well people did correlated very well with whether or not they ever glanced at this image.

Blank keyboards prevent these bad habits from forming, and break the bad habits if they're already formed. Considering you already type at 90-110 WPM, the frustration you'd experience may not be worth it to you, but arguably you're not the target audience.

When I learned in school, we used normal non-electric typewriters. When starting out we got a paper to look at. This was only to learn the character for the first time since the keyboard was under a plastic hood so you could not see your hands. After that you are expected not to look at the paper. It did not take very long to learn the basics and then it was just to keep at it.

It improved the typing of game listings from magazines immensely, much less debugging needed to find that character that was wrong :-)

That's interesting that they expected you to not glance at the paper. I actually think looking at the paper (or nowadays a screen) to see the result of what you're typing is good for learning. You get immediate feedback on whether or not you're correct.

Also yeah, those plastic covers are good. I'm not sure if this is common nowadays but my elementary school had a typing class that probably met once a week. We too used a plastic cover over a keyboard. I couldn't type before that, and it set me on the path to being a good typer.

Sometimes, the immediate feedback can be a problem in itself. If you are typing as fast as somebody is speaking, the last thing you want to do is recognize a mistake and try to correct it. Doing so will just make you fall behind, which is worse than having a typo in the transcription. Since mistakes cannot be corrected until afterwards, it is better not to be distracted by them at all.

This differs quite a bit from programming, where a single character typo might not be noticeable in review, and should be watched for while typing.

Interestingly there's been a few keyboards that have come out recently that are inspired by the chording design used in stenography. 40% keyboards already rely on it to some extend but there are a few that are even bellow that.Sure it's niche but obvious it's faster and probably easier on your wrists. Don't think most people are going to want to take the time to learn it given there seems to be people arguing against touch typing in this comment section.

> I really don't get why anyone would want less keys.

For the same reason many people prefer keyboard shortcuts over moving the hand back and forth between mouse and keyboard.

My main keyboard has 42 keys; that's enough for all letters, most common symbols and modifiers. Everything else is quickly reachable by holding down one of two "FN" keys.

Why? Because this way I can input anything without even moving my hands or wrists. And as both FN keys are directly below my thumbs I don't suffer from any delay when typing any special symbols or numbers. In fact my typing speed has stayed exactly the same, possibly even with increased accuracy because my hands are always guaranteed to be in the correct position for every input(outside the period of getting used to the layout of course).

So for me personally it's a number of advantages without a single drawback, except maybe the fact I now find standard keyboards really cumbersome and awkward to use.

Well the problem arises if you use more than a few shortcuts.

If you start having keybinds like ALT + CMD + (F1..F6) you _really_ dont want to have to press an additional FN Keys. I found 4 key shortcuts not viable in the long run if you have to press them multiple times a minute.

With that said:

> So for me personally it's a number of advantages without a single drawback

The objective drawback is the expandability of your shortcuts because you are artificially limited in your options of key combinations. For me that would be a no go. Though I am close to 500 shortcuts in my 3 main applications alone, excluding i3 or KDE globals. I only use a mouse to browse the web.

If you have to regularly enter 4 key shortcuts you can just define a few macros in the firmware and be done with it. I haven't been in a situation where I absolutely couldn't input some combination. Some shortcuts are awkward, sure, but I rarely need those.

If I had to regularly use 4 key shortcuts I'd go insane no matter what keyboard.

Edit: Then again I don't (yet) have 500 shortcuts, but if software doesn't support rebinding those that's not a problem with the keyboard imho.

Those keybinds are mainly custom macros and scripts.

Some project specific some more general. The project specific keybinds range from do test deployment and run tests to grab the latest test results format a text variant as well as pdf, archive and send them out to everyone who needs them. The general ones range from tell my AC/heating that I'm heading home from office to open my local weather forcast on Screen #2.

IMO there's no good reason to omit possibilities for aesthetics. Though as often as I thought about it I am not going to use a stream deck since I know I couldn't live without one after a few weeks and don't want to be bothered to carry it with me while traveling.

> IMO there's no good reason to omit possibilities for aesthetics.

My point is that it's not for aesthetics but comfort. For aesthetics I wouldn't use vertical stagger or a split layout.

With a 40% keyboard you can enter everything without moving hands or wrists at all and more important keys are moved right below the thumbs so I can use Ctrl and Shift without twisting my hand.

All said and done I still think that the standard keyboard layout is actually not a bad choice either, and is sometimes underrated. I just think that some more experimental boards manage to be just as productive while removing some ergonomical weaknesses.

That is not an argument for more non-modifier keys; it is an argument for more modifiers. Why? Each added non-modifier key adds X more modifier+non-modifier keybindings (e.g. C-n) and X-1 more modifier+modifier+non-modifier keybindings (e.g. M-C-n), where X is the number of modifiers. In practical terms, a keyboard with control, alt, shift and super only gets four two-key and three three-key bindings with each additional key. That is not great.

Adding a modifier, OTOH, add Y modifier+non-modifier and Y modifier+modifier+non-modifier bindings, where Y is the number of non-modifiers. So adding a hyper key means adding , say 104 additional keys (on a keyboard with 52 non-modifier keys). Adding a compose key means adding … another 104 additional keys.

My current keyboard has control, alt, super, hyper, compose and shift. A lot of folks add raise & lower, for even more modifiers.

> My current keyboard has control, alt, super, hyper …

Assuming USB HID, how are you distinguishing extra modifiers?

For many, additional modifier keys means keyboard firmware changes with macro programming. My keyboard does not have media keys, but I have programmed the keyboard that Fn+Q sends the Volume Up key, Fn+A sends Volume down, Fn+W sends Play, etc. There is no Fn key in the HID specification (at least not that I'm aware of), the Fn key exists only on the keyboard's firmware.

Many keyboards these days are getting quite fancy. There's even an open source keyboard firmware standard. https://qmk.fm/

I use X11 and a custom keyboard firmware: both of my hyper keys generate USB left super and both of my super keys generate USB right super (or vice versa), and X11 turns left super into hyper and right super into super.

I dont always do it. But using Vim with Ctrl+] fir Esc and Ctrl+M for enter makes for quite an experience.

You mean Ctrl+[. I use this sometimes too. You can also use Ctrl+j for enter (in the shell too).

Life changing for me was binding my control key (which is, rightfully, in the typical caps lock position) to register as escape when pressed briefly. When held down beyond a certain threshold, it acts as control. This makes for a very handy escape key but combinations with control still work without issue. There are multiple ways to accomplish this, but I use xcape (for X on Linux).

I'm all for small keyboards, but I don't know how people do it with fewer than 61 keys. I use fn+HJKL for arrow keys (vim bindings), and fn+number row for F1-F12. Having to use multiple modifiers in common situations like that would be a pain IMO. I've also rebound caps lock to be an additional FN key, but it wouldn't be enough to drop an additional 19 keys I think.

I have a keyboard with a similar arrangement, and I've still never quite gotten used to it. I make extensive use of the Mac's built-in text editing shortcuts, and chording them all gets very confusing.

  Beginning of line: right-fn+cmd+h
  Select beginning of line: right-fn+cmd+right-shift+h
  Previous word: left-fn+option+h
  Select previous word: left-fn+option+left-shift+h

I kept telling myself it would eventually click, but I found myself still making mistakes two weeks in.

I guess the main difference here is that I am working with Vim and its shortcuts. Thanks to its modes and two leader keys I can use every shortcut using only one modifier.

Only being restricted to usual system-wide shortcuts I think I also would have issues, at least without custom macros. For example I defined macros for Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab so I can switch browser tabs more comfortably, but I don't see that as much more than a crutch.

I went down the novel design mechanical keyboard hole last year. I had been coding on a kinesis advantage for ages but why not try I thought. I now have a shelf of very pretty but very shitty typing experiences.

- plank/preonic ortholinear boards. Fine, the advantage is ortholinear so the adjustment wasn't too terrible, but the advantage's thumb cluster beats the living shit out of the plank/preionic's bottom row. Also all flat not comfrotable.

- Viterbi (from keeb.io).. this was me thinking, this could work maybe if I could just get over the crampedness of the preonic keyboard i would be happier (Viterbi is split in half preonic mostly) .. nope.

- 60% w/ split spacebar in a nice wooden travel case for travel etc. Working on the laptop keyboard is literal torture, and the advantage isn't very portable at all. It's ... ok, the lack of a proper arrow cluster sucks, got used to layers for Fkeys, the sixcluster and arrows on a layer under wasd and ijkl depending on what hand i wanted to use. It's ok, sometimes it still flys with me.

- Minvan 40% .. mostly bought on a whim, sucks badly, I guess if I weren't coding it would be ok, but the increased use of symbols and non-letters is problematic on all these layouts. Too much cognitive overhead (where did I put the ampersand again...)

Now I knew less keys were not going to be solving my problems.

- Ergodox. I have some minor qualms with the advantage mostly size but also the case is quite hollow and noisy. Also they sell a limited array of switches for it (blue, brown, red .. I'm a brown guy, I like a little tactile feedback). Coming from the advantage this thing just sucks, very much the same layout (with a few extra keys) but flat flat flat, making it much harder to reach characters. Those advantage wells are amazing. The thumb cluster is also just worse due to the flatness. I actually gave this keyboard away.

- Iris (keeb.io) ... slightly better than the ergodox but less keys than the advantage. Tried it for a few weeks, felt limiting for coding. Have played videogames with it, works pretty well for that. It stays on my desk for that purpose.

- Dactyl - Finally I printed a dactyl. This is a great board for a travel board for me. It's essentially an open source kinesis advantage. I already had a 3d printer, had one printed, soldered and running in a week. Put some very nice zealious zilent switches in it. It's awesome. I still an advantage at home (though I replaced it's controller with a custom one that runs QMK, filled it with foam to deaden the din and am considering contacting the manufacturer for some spare parts so I can put some other switches in it) .. My only reservation is around the 3d printing, I wish I could get a solid plastic shell or it milled out of aluminum or something a little lighter (aluminum being extra weight when I travel .. if i ever travel again). But custom work like that is very cost prohibitive.

So anyways, that was my journey down the rabbit hole of niche keyboard designs. I mostly still use the advantage, with an iris for gaming, and a dactyl for travel.

> I still an advantage at home (though I replaced it's controller with a custom one that runs QMK, filled it with foam to deaden the din and am considering contacting the manufacturer for some spare parts so I can put some other switches in it)

Did you write about this anywhere? I'm thinking of getting an Advantage but it would be really nice to be able to run it with QMK, and your soundproofing sounds neat too.

I currently have an Ergodox EZ but the thumb clusters do not work for me, I can only press one of the keys without straining my thumb.

The reason I use a 60% keyboard is that I can keep the mouse closer to the centre, which saves my right shoulder.

Yes, and this is very important. A wide keyboard can cause you to rotate your arms outward to reach a mouse. A neutral work position is to have your elbows near your sides with forearms horizontal (parallel to the floor) and pointing inward somewhat so your two hands could hold something in front of you or work together on some object, such as peeling an orange.

If you turn your palms down and rotate your forearms outward until they are pointing straight forward (parallel with each other), you are probably at the outer limit of where you should routinely work. Keep most of your work inside that limit, in front of you.

If you are mousing right handed, for example, and your keyboard is so wide that the normal position of the mouse requires you to rotate your forearm so your arm isn't pointing inward or straight ahead but is now pointing outward to the right, you may start feeling pain under your right shoulder blade, which may become quite severe.

The problem is that people with this pain don't usually feel it when they are mousing. Perversely, they tend to feel it when they are away from the keyboard, so they don't make the connection. If you know of anyone with sharp pain under the shoulder blade, see if they do a lot of work with that arm rotated outward.

I use a TKL layout precisely for this reason.

It's reasonable but why cut F1-12 keys?

Personally I prefer 70% for additional cursor/jump keys.

I’ve been using a 60% keyboard for a couple of years now, with a Magic Trackpad off to the right. The total size is about that of a full size keyboard (with numpad).

The thing about 60% and ten-keyless keyboards, is the smaller size means your hands travel less. Yeah, some common things are now chords as opposed to discrete keys.

But chords are easy to learn if you’re using them every day. They’re not for everyone, just like any accessibility feature.

Above all, the 60% keyboard is more comfortable.

How difficult is it to get a new Magic Trackpad working with a Linux distro?

The driver is part of the kernel, so it should work immediately though may require tweaking. Debian would require a newer kernel too.

I switched to a 60% keyboard a few months ago. I've been surprised how easy the transition has been. One of the things I wish there were more is split space bar 60% boards. I have one of the few, and it really helps when your layer switch is an easy thumb press away.

My parents put me in a touch-typing class when I was young. You just needed discipline to not look at the keycaps, or just tape over the letters while you're practicing.

I'm in about the same WPM range as you. It's one of the greatest skills I've ever learned. It's invaluable in todays world. I regularly just keep typing while looking at someone. This was especially useful while taking notes in college.

> I think having blank keycaps though is kind of silly, personally. Especially given the keyboard the author has gone with. If you sat me in front of that keyboard I wouldn't know where to begin due to its size and layout.

Buying a novelty keycaps (or a whole keyboard with blank caps) seems overkill. Just tape over the keys and remove them when you can touch-type comfortably.

Having blank-keycaps would only annoy other people need to use my computer for something. It's just a novelty that I personaly feel like it adds anything.

> I really don't get why anyone would want less keys.)

One unintended benefit of my 60% keyboard is less travel with my right arm when switching from keyboard to mouse. Over the course of the workday it adds up.

However conversely, in this modern era with 2FA codes for many sites... Inputting 2FA codes is now a royal pain in the ass.

I share your perspective with this. It's a fun idea. I've been a touch typist my whole life. But I did recently switch my default keyboard to International so I can type in French and Spanish, as accents are common to both languages but not included in the Windows 10 American English keyboard. I mention this because it has easily halved, if not hanged, drawn and quartered my typing speed. I'm several months in and still need to "test" touch type when I need a ç or ñ. So, I know speed comes down to muscle memory.

Really, it's not the blank keycaps that improved this person's typing speed. It was the deliberate focus on training their senses to memorize the way the tension in their left ring finger, or the way their right thumb extended to the left a little.

One fun and maybe not so novel use for this though would be training yourself to touch type AZERTY and QWERTY interchangeably. The blank keycaps would make it easy to switch between layouts and not run into a focus conflict like trying to mentally envision the A key, struggling to place it then looking down to see Q and having to fight your brain to not dump your mental priming for AZERTY and return memory for QWERTY. (There's a specific term for this in cognitive science. I want to say "trigger", but that's definitely not it. It refers to when a mylenated path is triggered by your senses and overrides your present thought.)

> I'm several months in and still need to "test" touch type when I need a ç or ñ

I found that using US-international mostly removes the need to look for the dedicated accented letter.

It works by making you compose accented character instead of typing them directly.

For instance, you have to press the grave accent key [`] then [a] to make "à". The apostrophe doubles as the acute accent and cedilla key, so ['] then [e] makes "é", [`] and [c] makes "ç".

It works for most diacritics in European languages (`, ~, ^, ', "). Also, to get the original character, press space (or double press them to double type them).

It's probably a tiny bit slower than having dedicated keys, but I find the consistency nice to have.

> Also, to get the original character, press space (or double press them to double type them).

If you don't like this behavior then then I can recommend using a modified US-International layout where those keys are only dead if AltGr is held down [1]. Alternatively, you can use a version where AltGr acts as the modifier [2].

The latter is what I use since I only need it for Swedish special characters (åäö) which I get by typing AltGr+W, AltGr+Q, and AltGr+P.

[1] https://github.com/thomasfaingnaert/win-us-intl-altgr

[2] https://github.com/umanovskis/win-kbd-usint-nodead

I've been using British/German keyboards with Polish Programmers layout(which is just general US layout with Polish accents) and I don't recall ever looking at the actual keys, as most special characters are not where they appear on the keys. Most Polish people learnt this way(well, at least in the early days) because most keyboards you could get on the market weren't in actual US layout but that's what the Polish layout was based on.

MacOS’ English keyboard is great for typing in Spanish and French. As I’ve posted recently in other threads like this, I don’t know why other operating systems don’t copy them for their defaults.

Default English keyboards in Windows and Linux are awful for typing in English (which includes needing easy access to some accented characters, among other things). I accidentally learned to type on the International layout so I’m very familiar with it—unless you often need to make a very wide range of accented characters, wider than you’d need for French and Spanish, it’s a worse layout than the default macOS English keyboard because it gets in the way when you don’t need those. AltGr is like the macOS default, but entirely much worse. Everyone, please copy them, they’re the only OS with a keyboard layout good for typing in English, which, it’s 2020 so that’s a big WTF.

[EDIT] examples, option = alt except remember it's positioned a little differently on macOS

option+c ç

option+s ß (german too!)

option+\ «

option+shift+\ »

option+e, deadkey for ´ which you can apply kinda like in US International

option+u, same for ¨ (I'm hitting space after to type the decoration on its own)

option+`, same for `

option+shift+/ for ¿ (or option+? if you prefer to think of it that way)

And that's just the stuff directly relevant to typing in Spanish and French (and German). Most of which are also relevant to fluent typing in English because we have lots of loan words and phrases from those languages, and quoting from them is also common. Then there's punctuation, currency symbols, and so on. All are better than any alternative I know of, let alone any other default keyboard, and if you never press option while typing you'd never even know they're there (that is, they never get in the way otherwise)

What's interesting about this is that the Mac's option-character mapping has basically remained unchanged since at least the '90s, maybe earlier. They managed to design for a relatively uncommon use case (QWERTY typists who type in Spanish and French), and basically got it right the first time.

When I bought my first Mac in 2012, I was amazed to learn that the tricks I learned in 8th grade French class still worked nearly 20 years later.

> They managed to design for a relatively uncommon use case (QWERTY typists who type in Spanish and French), and basically got it right the first time.

Kinda, but you do need those to type fluently in English, too, which isn't an uncommon use case for a computer sold in an English-speaking country. We have tons of accented loan words from French and Spanish, among other European languages. We also need a lot more punctuation and "special characters" than any other default English layout I know of makes available.

It is entirely a joke that Apple's got the only OS, in the year 2020, that does a good job at the task of composing text in English, out of the box and without compromising other use cases. I don't even know of alternate layouts that are anywhere near as good on another OS. What the actual hell is up with that?

Linux (and predecessors) have supported a Compose key for decades, which is more discoverable than hidden combinations like Option+e. (Compose e ' → é. The arrow is Compose - >.)

But what's the significant advantage of Mac OS's layout vs e.g. Microsoft Windows US International layout?

>One fun and maybe not so novel use for this though would be training yourself to touch type AZERTY and QWERTY interchangeably

Speaking from experience, this is very hard, I have the feeling it affects negatively your speed in both layouts, with AZERTY I was somewhere in between 90-100WPM, I decided to switch to QWERTY for several years and I'm consistently between 76 and 85WPM, now trying AZERTY back after using exclusively QWERTY I'm scoring between 60WPM and 70WPM.

An argument for a smaller keyboard (and this is definitely a personal thing) is that I try my hardest to avoid using keys that are more than one key away from a finger in its resting position anyway (why---I really don't like having to move my hand physically, and I'm willing to pay the cost of additional latency with having more keys gated behind modifiers if it means I have to move my hand less). My day-to-day keyboard uses QMK, so it's really possible to make this work.

I also learned to touch-type at an early age, but incorrectly. I can easily do 90+ wpm and closer to 110 when younger, but certain keys on my keyboard are bound to the wrong fingers.

For example, I always end up moving my entire left hand several centimeters to the right so my left index finger can reach the "Y" key. So every time I type a "Y" character my entire left hand shifts unnecessarily back and forth.

This could be survivor bias. I hunted and pecked for the first ~15 years without pain. Then had problems within the first 3 years of touch typing. My guess is, like sports, some people won the genetic lottery and/or had training and time to perfect their craft more easily than others.

Did you learn it on a old mechanical typewriter?

People at my school used to do that. I did not care about carrying that X kg suitcase with me every Friday to school. Being already active on irc already at young age, at some point i got so annoyed of typing so slow and while typing missing what was being written on screen by others, i simply forced myself to look at the screen and type. Progress happened quite fast and that was most encouraging to keep going.

But 90-110 words per minute, that's blazing fast. Think i'm stuck at about 60 words per minute (https://typing-speed.net/keystrokes-per-minute)

> I'm the odd-man out when it comes to keyboards though

I assume I'm in the extreme minority as my preferred keyboard is the floppy silicone style [1].

They wear out after a couple years, and usually whoever made the previous one has gone out of business by then, so getting replacements is a bit of pain.

The things I love about this style of keyboard though:

1. More or less silent to type on. No louder than just tapping your fingers on your desk.

2. The fact that they are completely flat on the desk seems to prevent any of the wrist strain that I get from a traditional keyboard.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WWM5TC6

perhaps the worst typing experience ever. Though I did have one of these I took to burningman to hook up to the camp's mp3 server circa 1999, it lived in a box with a lot of filtration, the keyboard just lived on the playa and worked like a champ. But I wouldn't want to type on it for more than 2 minutes.

"I really don't get why anyone would want less keys"

Size. I have used an HHKB2 for ~3 years now, with blank keycaps, and I've been quite happy. I find myself rarely needing to use function keys so often that it becomes an issue.

I also used a split, ortholinear Let's Splitv2 that I built myself, with blank keycaps. But not having the number row kinda sucked. I may try it again soon.

Though there are a few situations where I'd want a full, standard keyboard layout, with a numpad:

* Data entry

* Playing videogames that have a lot of commands like DotA2. Chording is simply not fast enough / too much cognitive overhead during high apm moments.

I'm typing this one a 65% right now, and it's simply "I want more space on my desk (for other junk)". This keyboard is completely usable. I never use half of the F row anyways, and removes a few redundant keys like the duplicate alt/ctrl on the right hand I never use.

Learning to type really makes a difference in productivity. My typing skills took a huge leap when I worked in a computer lab that had bad lighting and green terminal screens. You couldn't see the markings on the keys... ancient Zenith terminals hooked up to a VAX.

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