Hacker News Reader

Comment by Syzygies | Hacker News Reader

I have experience with both the FrogPad and the Matias Half Keyboard (I paid $95; now $595). The Frogpad never caught on with me.

https://matias.store/products/half-keyboard

The Matias Half Keyboard is based on a theory that our minds mirror each hand, so by holding the space bar to access the missing half keyboard, we already know what to do. I was skeptical. Recognizing that we're modal (do we even recognize that telephone keypads and numeric keypads are different, or do we just use them without thinking?) I decided to learn Dvorak on the half keyboard while continuing to use QWERTY on my full keyboards.

One day, on a lark, I tried Dvorak on a full keyboard. I could, easily. The mirror theory holds.

View on HN

Another anecdata. I had a bike accident which took my left hand out of commission for a while. It was after the Matias keyboard became so expensive, and I was broke. But I was motivated enough to try the concept that I hacked together a software implementation that behaved more or less the same way on a standard full size keyboard by swapping to a mirrored system keyboard layout while holding the spacebar for a short time.

The software itself was buggy as hell (I learned just enough ObjC to get it kinda working), but even so the mirroring concept worked perfectly for me. It was basically no learning curve (full QWERTY to half QWERTY), and I only took a slight hit to typing speed. The first thing I did was prove it out by building another bit of software to relaunch the first whenever it crashed, and then worked full time with it for a couple months. Typing was never quite as subconscious for me as it is with both hands, but it was as close to that as I could imagine.

Sounds like something you could also do with half of a keychron Q11 and some reprogramming via QMK?

Yes, easily.

I came out of the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole with multiple Leopold FC660C Topre switches (there's no going back to any mechanical switch) and Hasu replacement controllers that support QMK.

Here's an out-of-date version of my layout, heavily using tap-hold to access multiple layers:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Syzygies/log_folders/maste...

Chording never took for me, but one-finger-each-hand concentrated near home row is such an obvious way to quadratically expand the address space. The Matias space bar was certainly an inspiration for this, though everyone uses QMK tap-hold for purposes like this.

> It was after the Matias keyboard became so expensive, and I was broke.

I was once emailing with a customer and saw their email signature included apologies for typos, on account of a broken bone/arm/shoulder. As the customer lived nearby, I asked if by chance he had broken his right side, but could use a Matias left-handed keyboard I had laying around (from the days when it was cheap). I loaned it to him for the rest of the semester. I hope to loan it out again someday, to someone else in need!

> the Matias Half Keyboard (I paid $95; now $595)

Ha, same here. Seems like they discovered that the mainstream demand for this is quite low, but the reimbursement potential for ADA/HR purposes was much higher.

I've always been curious about that half keyboard, but nowhere near to the point of spending $600. I'm glad to have read some impressions, at least!

I've also tested out a mirror layout on a standard keyboard, it's shockingly easy to pick up

There’s a trick with phantom limb pain and mirrors as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com