Efficient keyboard layout for English and Spanish | Hacker News Reader

Efficient keyboard layout for English and Spanish

github.com

34 pointsCanaryLayout61 comments

Instead of counting distance like Workman does (and totally ignoring weird+painful finger stretches), good `ol community-debate among layout experts, who have collectively switched layouts thousands of times, was done to make Canary.

Introducing Canaria (spanish for "canary"). This version moves the J to make it faster to type in Spanish, without sacrificing English speed or ergonomics.

It's rare for an ergo key layout to be good in two languages. This one is.

Could you clarify the 'weird/painful' remark? I have small/average hands, been on Workman for 6-7 years and I wouldn't say I've found anything weird or painful about it yet (assuming I have interpreted your comment as you intended it).

It's noted in the README.md Workman has a bad vowel cluster and one of the more annoying bigrams is LY.

The letter P in Workman is on the wrong side of the board. If you are making a vowel cluster (or close to one if you leave out A), then P goes opposite of where O and U go.

Let's go into why P is on the wrong side of the board in Workman (and in QWERTY, too). It is true that P is a vowel-hugging consonant. A distance analyzer that the creator of Workman used to look at travel distance would of course conclude that it should be one with the vowels.

But look how often P shows up as a double letter, which stops you from rolling the keys because of the double-strike: opposition oppression stopping appendage application applying appreciate --- there's a lot.

So in Workman the word PEOPLE is a painful SFB-fiesta, and that is a Top 200 word in English, and it does not feel good at all! That's because P needs to be opposite of the vowel cluster, not just because of PEOPLE, but because you need to use one hand to take care of the double-letter strike while the other hand is setting up the vowel cluster roll that is coming.

>But look how often P shows up as a double letter, which stops you from rolling the keys because of the double-strike: opposition oppression stopping appendage application applying appreciate --- there's a lot.

Why isn't the location of a letter commonly struck twice only a problem when the finger used to strike the letter is also used for preceding and following letters? E.g. 'stopping' in Workman has right ring finger hit all of 'opp' which, yes, isn't great, but that's the only example I can think of - *opp* words.

apply application apprehension rapping snapping snooping

double letters stop the rolling action, and P is one of the biggest offenders. Putting P next to a vowel cluster does nothing for rolls. It makes more sense to swap to the other side of the board so while you are dealing with whatever P is doing, your other hand is teeing up the rolling keys that will start after P.

For instance: application. In Canaria your roll would look like this, with the keys being rolled in [brackets]

opp[ortun][ity]

Or, if you're slower:

opp[or][tuni][ty]

Why is Canaria better than other alt layouts for Spanish? As a Spanish learner, Colemak-DH seems to be pretty good for both languages (although my usage is still overwhelmingly dominated by English).

the inner columns are not great and you do need to get Z out of the same column as A to free up that SFB.

Interestingly, Spanish might be easier to optimize as a solitary language if the punctuation keys are moved away from the vowel cluster. You can get insanely-low SFB scores. Spanish is a higher-syllable density language with better spelling conventions than English.

What some of the alt-Spanish layouts have done is just take an EN-optimized layout and add diacritics (and Canaria is not an exception here either, it just restored some ergo sanity to Spanish vs. pushing Q and J to bad spots like most EN ergo layouts do). For those who work entirely in Spanish most of the time, EN-ergo layouts are not ideal.

As a Russian, I'm endlessly envious to those who can get by with just one alphabet, even if in different variations — the intersection between these Latin-based alphabets is always large enough for universal keyboard layouts like this to be viable.

Colemak and Rulemak work nicely together.

I'm really good at typing in the traditional qwerty and йцукен layouts. The problem is that I need two and sometimes the wrong one is active. This is why I envy people who can do everything without needing non-Latin alphabets.

I like the idea of extending Latin with some extra letters as needed to accomodate more languages. Someone would have to make a couple of new fonts probably.

Some stats. Canary and Canaria are very high-roll layouts. This allows for lots of combos where 2-5 letters can be hit in a fast sweeping motion across the board (a "roll").

canaria (ASHTNEOI) (0 likes) w l y p k z j o u ; c r s t b f n e i a ' x v d g q m h / , .

MT-QUOTES: Alt: 22.56% Rol: 47.83% (In/Out: 21.07% | 26.76%) One: 2.21% (In/Out: 0.89% | 1.32%) Red: 3.16% (Bad: 0.08%)

  SFB: 1.22%
  SFS: 8.59%    (Red/Alt: 3.62% | 4.98%)

  LH/RH: 42.11% | 57.89%

------------------------

QWERTY (cmini) (0 likes) q w e r t y u i o p [ ] \ a s d f g h j k l ; ' z x c v b n m , . /

MT-QUOTES: Alt: 18.40% Rol: 37.59% (In/Out: 20.22% | 17.37%) One: 2.28% (In/Out: 1.02% | 1.26%) Red: 5.84% (Bad: 0.32%)

  SFB: 5.17%
  SFS: 12.18%    (Red/Alt: 6.43% | 5.75%)

  LH/RH: 54.65% | 45.35%

--------------------------------------------- Workman (cmini) (1 like) q d r w b j f u p ; a s h t g y n e o i ' z x m c v k l , . /

MT-QUOTES: Alt: 20.41% Rol: 42.34% (In/Out: 21.58% | 20.77%) One: 3.03% (In/Out: 1.52% | 1.51%) Red: 8.16% (Bad: 0.91%)

  SFB: 2.49%
  SFS: 7.73%    (Red/Alt: 2.68% | 5.05%)

  LH/RH: 48.32% | 51.68%

I just use the Mac’s US layout and type accented characters using Alt. (Alt+c=ç, Alt+n=ñ, plus a few other combos to get the grave, acute and umlaut). Works for Portuguese (my native language), Spanish, French, and what little German I need.

Trying to optimize beyond QWERTY might be appealing, but I’ve found the trade-off of having to set up layouts everywhere when using multiple machines to be annoying, plus application key combos are usually designed for QWERTY.

I find the best layout for English and German to be "German (US)". It has been such a revelation. I enjoy the comforts of accessible braces while the occasional umlaut (or greek letter) is only an AltGr away.

I imagine there might be people who don't code but write a lot of German texts. They might need umlauts far more often than braces and the native "German" layout might be more sensible. Otherwise, I despise the German layout.

I have been using EURKey for a few years now. You might like it. https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu

Thanks! It does indeed look better than the prevalent "US intl", which places Ö on the P key in favor of accented O.

I think, because I only ever need umlauts, I still prefer "German (US)" which only adds umlauts to the US layout.

Yeah, I love EURKey, it even includes the capital ẞ. The only thing I’d like is an easier typographic apostrophe (’ instead of ') which is on Ctrl+Alt+Shift+0 (though I do use it almost automatically, nowadays).

Nice project. However it makes writing in some languages merely possible but not easy. For example Portuguese uses a lot of ã and õ, which are only available via dead keys. If I have to use dead keys anyway, then I'd rather use a Compose key, aptly mapped on the otherwise-useless Insert key.

Besides, Romanian language is not fully supported, lacking ț and ă, and Polish too, lacking ą and ę.

The problem with eurkey is the high enter key on German keyboards, it's kinda made for US keyboards. (I usually map caps-aous to äöüß and that's good enough for me).

My problem is a proper layout on a German keyboard, not some weird Umlauts on a US one :P

I also find the best layout for French is the US one with Mac-style modifiers. Alt E + E -> É, etc. Direct access to braces and numbers, which is great for programming. And it also doesn't break the ' and ` keys, which US international breaks on Windows, since you have to type them twice to get the regular character.

As others have said, I'm not a professional typist having to follow along in a court of law or whatever. I don't remember ever being limited in my work by my typing speed. So not having to learn weird layouts and adapt when I change computers or in non-ideal situations (think BIOS passwords and the like), deal with weird shortcut placements, etc is much more of a win than pumping out more words per minute.

> And it also doesn't break the ' and ` keys, which US international breaks on Windows, since you have to type them twice to get the regular character.

You can also hit the space key after those characters (or other modifiers like " or ~) to get just the character and without a space after. I find it a lot easier than the Mac-approach, but YMMV.

In practice, I type those characters on their own much more often than I type them for French characters, so having to press more keys for the French ones makes more sense than the other way around.

There's also the fact that I have to type those characters in places where I don't have fancy entry systems (drive unlock passwords, rescue environments), while I don't type French in those places, so it also makes more sense for muscle memory.

Ah yeah, I generally just switch between US and US-Intl when I need to move to French. Since you can do it with Win+Space, it's pretty convenient, though I do sometimes trigger it on accident.

I don't use windows often enough to have gotten the hang of how it handles layout switching. I think, by default, it's supposed to handle them "per app". Which, in my case, sounds great: I need French for Outlook / Teams, and English everywhere else. Somehow I always seemed to type expecting the wrong layout. So I've looked for a way to have a single one which works everywhere.

Windows doesn't natively support the Mac behavior. I had to find some layout that almost does it, with the caveat that it uses alt-gr instead of mac's alt, which isn't exactly the same nor in the same spot. So I had to pile another utility on top that modifies the WIN/Menu keys to send alt-gr. Luckily, it was also able to move win to caps. So now, aside from the "weird" altgr, I'm happy enough with my keyboard under windows.

What does this refer to? Is it available for example in Windows?

I am using it on Linux (GNOME 44 under Fedora 38), where it is natively supported. I don't know about Windows specifically but I was under the impression that it is pretty well-known.

Doesnt exist on MacOS, so ill just try Eurkey layout now instead.

But anyway thanks for the tip, i never thought about just remapping the umlauts to the US layout, i am always switching between US/german until now.

This seems like a game changer, since the german layout is a huge pain to begin with, and the only thing i need from it anyway is umlauts and ß.

Is there a good English/French (or English/French/Spanish) layout?

I did some excursion in alternative keyboard layouts, but the English layout I tried was clumsy for French (biggest offender was typing "ue" with one finger) and the French layout I tried was clumsy for English+programming, and that was one of the reasons I stopped trying to learn them.

Currently I use US qwerty when writing English or programming and the Canadian French keyboard (which uses qwerty for the basic letters but moves some special characters and replaces them with accents) when writing French.

(There's actually at least two different Canadian layouts for writing French, both using qwerty for the basic letters but differing on whether accented characters are typed using sequences of keys or a single keys)

I think switching between layouts isn't that big of an issue, as long as all the basic letters are in the same place. So the English/French layout could actually be a family of layouts, as long as the basic letter layout is made to be good enough for both languages.

US international with AltGr dead keys is wonderful for this - you get the “standard” US layout plus easy access to accented characters for Spanish and French via the right Alt key (AltGr if it’s so labeled).

Mostly-US layout means no finger contortions to type things like brackets (square and curly) or backslashes, which was always a painful thing in e.g. latam layouts for me.

As someone who writes in both English and Spanish I'd think this can be convenient. The other day gave Coleman a try for a few days but the H key almost at its center made its usage a pain in the butt for some reason (even though QWERTY has it like in the same spot).

Though I don't get the rationale for this to drop the Ñ key. Speaking about the Spanish alphabet overall I feel like having an extra letter just because the tilde is weird, but having its own key in a keyboard is convenient - and my keyboard has it. Hell, I wish sometimes one could have dedicated keys for Á, É, Í, Ó and Ú.

You have an ISO keyboard. For those with ANSI boards (2 less keys) it's harder to do this. That's why in Canaria (audience is ES speakers in USA/MEX in particular) the grave/tilde key violates the principle of using it to add a grave mark and instead acts as an AltGr.

This allows you to strike the ` key with the left hand while hitting N quickly. Same for the vowels. The Ü is next to Ú so that it's all in the same cluster.

The other day gave Coleman a try for a few days but the H key almost at its center made its usage a pain in the butt for some reason

Isn’t this why everyone uses Colemak-DH instead?

(Or is there really a layout called Coleman?)

Until I see a study that actually shows that “ergo” keyboard layouts actually make a difference I will continue to use QWERTY.

I still believe the actual contour of the keyboard (ie Kinesis or Microsoft’s ergo keyboard) have a much larger impact than key layout.

Microsoft's split board keyboard mostly only-addresses the wrists. It does not deal with redirects, SFBs and doesn't eliminate stretching (keyboards that reduce the number of keys help with that).

QWERTY is an alternating layout. It wasn't designed for comfort. It was designed in the 19th century for a particular purpose that no longer exists (how many documents do you need to prepare that require a non-electric typewriter?)

Changing your keyboard layout does play a big role in relieving hand pain than just shelling out money for boards.

> eliminate stretching (keyboards that reduce the number of keys help with that).

I think the more significant detail about "keyboards with reduced number of keys" is instead "keyboards with multiple thumbkeys".

On a standard keyboard, your thumbs only get to use spacebar. With these small keyboards, my thumbs get to use space, backspace, enter, escape, tab, delete. (And I put the modifier keys as Home Row modifiers).

Albeit, this is almost entirely orthogonal to how the alphabetical keys are arranged. Having 2-3 keys per thumb would be a benefit to any keyboard; where the main downside is "keyboards with 2-3 keys per thumb are expensive or diy".

I agree with this, especially in the context of the MS Sculpt which GP brought up. I loved that keyboard until it stopped working, but the huge dual space bar was such a waste. They could have easily split each space bar into at least three keys.

While I do agree that the physical layout of the keyboard has a larger impact (my hands love a split keyboard with tenting), QWERTY is objectively a bad layout and almost any alternative layout (dvorak, colemak, workman, etc) will give a huge benefit regardless of what measure you use (finger travel distance, rolls, hand alteration etc).

I agree with you but I dread the day I need to change layout and train my brain and my muscle memory for another keyboard layout.

I'm past my 40s- I rather teach my kid to use Dvorak.

The QMK and ZMK projects let you do this in firmware. Programmable boards are going to stick around long after we're gone. At least until Elon sells his brain-to-USB HID.

I’m kinda of the opposite. I think alt-layouts are only a marginal improvement (you can get most of the benefit with a small number of changes), but I think it’s a fun brain teaser.

I first learned Colemak-DH and I am currently trying RSTHD and I am upto 32 WPM in a few days.

In my 40ies.

Many people have tried alternative layouts and stick with them.

I have not seen many anecdotes where people get used to an alternative layout, and then revert to using QWERTY because they find QWERTY more comfortable to use.

I have seen people go back to QWERTY because the improvement was only marginal and not worth sacrificing a ubiquitous layout for.

(Disclaimer: I use Colemak-DH.)

Let's not kid ourselves: switching to a new layout takes a lot of effort, so many people quit and revert back to qwerty before they've gotten comfortable with the layout.

Other kinds of bias I'd be concerned about: because learning a new layout takes effort, probably there's emotional investment to avoid having to switch (for those who haven't learned another layout); or probably there's emotional investment for those who have learned, such that they'd be less likely to admit the effort is a waste.

If you look at alternative layouts in a vacuum and you base it on things like word frequency or character frequency, I'm certain you're right, but outside of the bubble and when you're interacting with software that all assumes that you're using qwerty and organizes its own keyboard interactions with that assumption, the advantages become much less clear.

In fact, trying to account for that is why colemak uses the zxcv keys where they are, if I'm not mistaken.

So I don't really agree with the notion that you get a huge benefit at all. You are potentially getting some ergonomic benefit in certain contexts (like typing out essays) while at the same time sacrificing ergonomics of keyboard shortcuts you may or may not be able to change and the mental overhead required to remap your muscle memory to fit it.

These tradeoffs are remarkably apparent to me as someone that uses a Kinesis board (and have used a variety of small, bespoke keyboards). There's a lot of tasks that simply aren't suitable for this keyboard, even if I remap the keys with QMK to try to better suit that context. If you need a key to be immediately accessible, having it placed inside a layer just isn't good enough.

With that being said, I'd encourage people to try these things out and see for themselves. I personally don't think they're all that useful, but there's dozens of others that I'm sure swear that using dvorak or workman or colemak or whatever alternative layout changed their life. Just don't expect miracles.

There's always tradeoffs of course.

How beneficial it will be depends on your use-case. I personally use Vim with an alternative layout for instance and have zero problems.

The standard ctrl-c/v/x/z is a consideration but it's perfectly fine to have then on another layer or under a combo.

I really do get a huge benefit, as +90% of my time I type inside Vim with the keyboard. Slightly less efficient shortcuts for rarely used programs just doesn't bother me.

For reference I use a 34 key keyboard using qmk.

If you're goal is ergonomics, the physical layout will get you 90% of the benefits. Ditching qwerty might get you that 10% but at a higher cost since almost all computing is built around qwerty.

I've been QWERTY-free since 2012. I do the layout in firmware so I don't need to change the mapping in the OS. And I use QMK and ZMK and I have a travel board that's bluetooth.

This concern might have been real back on OS/2 and MS-DOS. Not now.

Sure I was just thinking for most people. I just got a ZMK keyboard and I'm I've been practicing Coleman and qwerty. After less than an hour on Coleman, I was struggling on qwerty and had to wait for qwerty to switch back on my brain. Are you able to switch to qwerty with out issues if you need to?

Difference in what: long term hand health, comfort, efficiency?

Anecdotally, I taught myself Dvorak for a couple of months. I never reached speed parity, but typing felt significantly better. The number of common words which roll off of the home row was a treat. I could easily believe that this would put less pressure on keyboards than QWERTY.

My ultimate blocker was keyboard shortcuts. You get into a weird spot if you choose to maintain the original character chord (DVORAK CTRL-C would be CTRL-I on QWERTY) or force the QWERTY layout character.

You should take a look at Colemak. It keeps the zxcv at the same place, particularly for shortcuts.

I’ve switched now 6 years ago. I had a speed of about 80-85 wpm on Qwerty. And now recently I’m on the same speed with Colemak. So that took about 5 years, without deliberate practice. However after 4 months I was already at 57 WPM which is perfectly fine to be productive.

I still type with thumbs on qwerty though. So I haven’t changed my phone to colemak. I must say though that when typing at a colleague's keyboard, I have to type with 4 fingers in order not to confuse the layout. I’m not able to do both as touch typing

I had the same issue, so I implemented the following workaround: https://github.com/tbocek/dvorak. This remaps on Linux CTRL-I back to CTRL-C when using a Dvorak keyboard layout.

I see people occasionally mention shortcuts or vim as reasons they can't switch layouts, but I've done it multiple times and you just learn the new spots, same as typing words with all the letters that moved. It never felt like a showstopper for me.

Alas, it's not only about learning new spots. I never use any of the super useful motions with [ and { in Vi simply because they're only accessible via AltGr in my national layout.

As someone who built a split ergonomic keyboard and ended up changing layouts anyway, I don't think you can buy your way out of learning something new. I still had issues on an ergo split keyboard even with dvorak, had to switch to workman to really make the discomfort go away.

hot take: keyboard layouts does not matter unless you're a professional typist..

Over the course of the day, my output is not limited by how fast I can get text out of my head, by how fast my brain can generate text.

It's not just about total speed, but effort and comfort when you type at all. The person who can type up to 160wpm can very trivially and comfortably peck out the occasional stroke at 80-100wpm as well. Getting to know your keyboard well makes computing more immersive and reduces friction and cognitive overhead.

For me it's not primarily about speed, it's about reduced finger movement. I switched to a more efficient layout and carpal tunnel dropped off instantly, and that was a very long time ago. If you're doing fine on QWERTY then you don't need to make any changes.

Even if typing faster only gets you 1% more productive each day, if seen over your whole career that adds up to a significant amount of time.

Further, being able to burst out snippets of text quickly and effortlessly will leave your brain free to continue thinking and generating text. Even if I'm a fast typer during these chunks I'm still limited by ny typing speed.

And that's ignoring the biggest benefit for me, which is increased comfort and reduced RSI.

In that case you can switch to it with no effort.

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