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Comment by eigenrick | Hacker News Reader

I may never understand why people are willing to depart from the form factor of a keyboard, but still adhere to the staggered (as opposed to ortholinear) layout of the keys themselves. Both modifications will require retraining some muscle memory.

The staggered layout is a remnant of typewriters, since there was no other way to create room for the bars that connect the key to the hammers.

Computer keyboards don't have this restriction.

Switching from a staggered to ortholinear keyboard took me all of a day to adapt-to, and I still regularly use a staggered keyboard on a regular basis with no hardship (when I take my laptop from my desk)

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There is a split ortholinear keyboard which looks pretty similar to this one: https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/

Its column-staggered, not ortholinear.

I've had my Moonlander for about a week now. Would recommend if you're willing to spend that much on something like a keyboard.

I have this keyboard on the way either this month or next month. I am excited. It will be my first ergo and ortho board.

I’ve got one of these and while I’m impressed I think I will still likely go back a normal layout as I’m just not seeing speed and accuracy I’m happy with. Previous to this I have tried other split layouts, including the X-Bows which I think is just a disaster.

The Moonlander I really _want_ to get along with. It has an almost but not quite perfect setup for Emacs, for example, with natural places for Ctrl and Alt, and the software and configurability is excellent. I’ll likely give it a few more months but honestly if you haven’t got pain to deal with I don’t think these fancy layouts are useful, and even then I’m not sure my joints are any happier.

I just received my Moonlander a couple days ago, after using an Ergodox Ez for a year. It's a joy to use. It's slim, has a good palm rest, can tent, and having the thumb cluster take an angle when tenting the keyboard is a killer feature, it makes it much easier to reach all keys of the cluster without strain.

Only downside is the palm rest is huge, so you need a fair amount of desk space to use it.

I have a wireless split ortholinear and while I love the "split" part, I hate the "ortholinear" part. It forced me to completely relearn how to type, and I still am not back to my 100 WPM, with no benefit.

If I were to do this again, I would go for a wired split staggered keyboard. I never take it anywhere so I don't need the portability, and I'd avoid all the issues with latency and low battery.

I’ve spent the best part of a year trying to get on with split and ortholinear layouts and frankly I hate them. I think it’s a design that only works for very orthodox typists, and I don’t find that efficient for me (e.g. I would never ever want to use the same finger for two different keys in succession, that feels maddeningly slow).

What's your WPM?

On the Moonlander I think I’m back up to about 80 with at least 95% accuracy (at lot of those issues are me trying to combine space and shift in a multifunction key). That’s on normal text. Previously I was reliably above 100WPM, but I’ll keep at it. Honestly it’s less that so much as the sense of flinching whenever I open up a terminal and have to do something complex. Much of that is muscle memory obviously, but for example the X-Bows I just think is irreparably bad for coding or terminal use. There’s just too much for a programmer’s right pinkie to do in many of these layouts, I find. I will admit my previous style probably wasn’t great, in that I’d mostly use pinkies for just shift, enter and caps-as-ctrl, thumbs for space and alt, and the remaining six free ranging as you would on a piano. Acknowledging this might not be good for long term joint health was part of the reason to evaluate something new, but I didn’t have any specific issues beyond bad alt placement.

> I may never understand why people are willing to depart from the form factor of a keyboard, but still adhere to the staggered (as opposed to ortholinear) layout of the keys themselves.

Split keyboards allow users to free themselves from arbitrary constraints on shoulder/elbow/wrist movement.

Keyboard layout config just affects how your fingers move.

Being forced to spend hours with your wrists held together no matter how broad your shoulders are, and bending your hands outward, has more impact on your well-being than how many millimeters your fingers move to hit a key.

The split keyboard, if you already touch type, really doesn’t require any retraining at all. Give it a try. Going orthinear is really tough though.

what are the advantages of ortholinear ?

Purely medial movement of the fingers (which is more ergonomic) as opposed to the lateral motions that fingers have to make for a staggered-row keyboard.

I don't understand this. My fingers don't move straight away from my wrist unless I've got them squeezed together, which doesn't seem like a useful way to type.

Replace "purely" with "mostly", if you want to be pedantic. Even if ortholinear keyboards don't completely eliminate lateral motion, there's still a rather large reduction in it - which is what matters.

I find it much more comfortable.

A standard row-staggered keyboard is terribly asymmetric. With your hands on home row, the distances to the modifier keys are different for left/right; but even the distances to the inner columns of keys aren't symmetric. That asymmetry makes it uncomfortable to use the right-hand modifier keys; and more awkward to type, in general.

It's fairly hard to accurately touch-type the number-row with a standard row-staggered keyboard; but this is more accessible with an ortholinear keyboard.

Moreover, ortholinear keyboards (because they're so niche) tend to have firmware customisation, which allows for some improvements. (e.g. allowing different keyboard 'layers').

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