Typing and Keyboards

I did similar as a kid, weird random typing, mostly left hand, thumb used for some of the letters, etc. If you're willing to dedicate 2-4 weeks of fully immersed proper typing, you can definitely undo the old habits. Takes a bit longer to regain your old speeds, but it's mainly the very beginning that is frustrating. Whether that's worth it is hard to say. I use both shift keys now, and a split ergonomic keyboard. The numrow is easier to hit accurately as I have internalized the placement as well as the rows of letters after a lot more typing practice (columnar stagger rather than row stagger also helps, I think, I slide my fingers straight up and know which numbers are there).

This sounds like me. I've been described as "high speed hunt and peck". I have slowed down a bit in the last decade or so, but I can still type fast enough for everything I want to do. I've had no reason to pursue anything different because it's not an impediment to my work.

I'd like to how the incidence of repetitive strain injury from typing compares between populations who follow a rigorous technique versus personalized. I've never had the slightest discomfort typing, albeit I'm sure I'm not in the upper echelons of typing quantity per unit of time either.

120 wpm using mostly thumb and index fingers sounds insane to me. I type using standard touch typing and can only get to about 60 wpm. I've always been a bit of a slow typist. Can I ask how you measured the 120 wpm?

The whole premise of "correct" typing on a traditional keyboard is absurd. It's trying to force good ergonomics into a system that is simply incompatible with it. You're better off either making yourself compatible with the system, or vice versa.

I type "incorrectly" on traditional qwerty keyboards, too. I also type "correctly" on my split ergonomic keyboard, using the workman layout. As far as I can tell, I'm not any faster with either; but I definitely enjoy using the ergonomic keyboard more.

I also mostly use only my thumbs and index fingers, but probably only up to 60 words a minute because that is how fast (or slow) I think.

I always thought I was a touch typist because I rarely look at the keyboard. But then I got a keyboard with blank keycaps and realise how very much I rely on my peripheral vision.

I kind of wonder what the key difference is over 40 years for typing text vs code.

I type text at a rather slow rate due to poor training and never having really tried to improve, but when it comes to code I can output code sequences so much faster.

Hey, me too! I do touch typing with home row and tried using mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches, but eventually switched to scissor switches. I like them for the same reasons as you.

I definitely prefer shorter travel keys too - full size MX feels like an unnecessary workout. Though personally the mechanical ones with a bit more distance than scissor is where I think my sweet spot lies. And Mac's butterfly keyboards are way too short, they slow me down noticeably.

I just received this Keychron B11 Pro semi-split kbd with scissor keys:

https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-b11-pro-ultra-sli...

pretty amazing so far. put together a SpaceFn layout, with partial home row keys, in no time, with their web usb based, online configurator.

i tried and/or assembled keyboard.io model 01, (falba.tech bamboo) minidox, troy fletcher signum 3.0, egodox ez, leopold, glove80 before, but this device is a pretty amazing compromise among many dimensions, like portability, price, familiarity, split-ness, extra layers, thumb keys, connectivity, portability.

what's clearly not great is its serviceablilty and only time will tell how durable is it.

if the battery dies in it and puffs up, it's most likely have to be thrown away, so it's not really an end-game keyboard, in that sense.

Yeah same, even after years of gaming I still prefer laptop style short travel keys. Slim mechanical are good but still not quite the same. The official apple separate keyboards are my favourite but currently I use a keychron k1.

I guess, having just tried it, I use my pinky for []. But, it is not so bad, realistically the actions are

    Hit [type whatever goes in here, hit ]

So it isn’t really a repetitive action or limited by the rate at which I can hit brackets I think even for programmers who use weird punctuation, a file should still mostly not be punctuation.

I have "Shift space" remapped to underscore as that was my biggest annoyance. The rest I've made peace with (though not ergonomic).

I have an Ergodox EZ setup with a layer switch under my left thumb to a code-symbols layer on my right hand, formatted kinda like numpad but for brackets and boolean math. It’s been a good way for me to eliminate a lot of pinky use

I mapped them to the row above the home row, in order of bendy complication. So it's {[<(/ for the left hand, and \)>]} for the right. I just hold them down for the punctuation instead of letters. So much easier, imo.

tbh when typing both together, I just shift my hand and press with my index and middle fingers. otherwise it's my pinky.

parens are third and fourth finger

=+ is my palm (weird keyboard I know)

[]{} I used a modifier key to put them on O and P directly below () (columnar keyboard)

-_ and \| are actually pinky

I don't feel like any particular finger is overloaded. Dvorak helps a lot with that IMHO.

My back and shoulders felt so much better when I mounted my spliit keyboard floating under my desk, halves shoulder width apart. Not just arms on the armrests, shoulders back against the chair instead of rounded forward. I can't go back. Nevermind that typing that way with colemak and hardly moving my fingers feels like magic.

"Low-profile split mechanical" is I think my ideal too. Though I really like cupped keywells, the Advantage2 definitely convinced me that it's more comfortable than flat.

KDE has a phone connection program called KDE Connect that lets you use your phone as input.

There are definitely quiet mechanical switches out there. I'm pretty happy with my Kailh LP Whale silent tactiles. My old IBM style was so loud at night.

Consider Topre, e.g. a Realforce R4 keyboard.

I've heard this anecdotally. I'm enjoying my current setup but I do hold open the possibility of going back to membrane one day.

That was my impression too. I used to think I'd use nothing but MX Blues forever. The 'copycat' switches haven't just caught up, they've been innovating and Cherry seems to have given up.

I've personally replaced keymacros by things like Alfred's workflows (or Raycast's): aka a universal command palette.

It's usually very fast to type "cmd-space", and then type 3-4 letters to find the macro I want.

> Does anyone here use a numpad?

Yes.

> What for?

Inputting numbers.

The number row is too wide and too offset on a staggered keyboard to really work for me. I'd be interested in trying a full-width ortholinear keyboard, but can't find any.

I don't use a numpad, but a friend of mine swears by them for playing roguelikes. It makes it much easier to move diagonally in a single turn.

If you play any games with keyboard and mouse, you could bind some letters/numbers from the right half of the keyboard and then place the macropad on the left so you don't have to take your hand off the mouse to hit anything.

For another idea, you could bind pgup/pgdn or scroll wheel up and down for scrolling webpages, IRC backlog, etc.

As a 90s phone user where you text on one it feel like a fast way to type a credit card number or similar. Pretty rare use case with modern keychains and password managers though.

I do when I'm using a keyboard that has one, for numeric input, but I don't do this often enough to prefer it to the smaller form factor of a tenkeyless keyboard.

My usual layout, left to right, is Magic Trackpad, tenkeyless keyboard, mouse on mousepad cut down to roughly the size of a Magic Trackpad (with a larger mousepad on hand for gaming and other precision applications).

Quite a bit - I have a bunch of custom shortcuts for musical notation (adding dynamics, expression, etc.) for rapidly entering music into my notation software.

Yep, trying to type a long number on the top row is super tedious to me. I just use a layer under my right hand for 10-key.

I have a number of AutoHotKey/Hammerspoon numpad shortcuts for arranging windows.

In Visual Studio, on the suggestion of a colleague at my first job, I use Numpad + for copy, Numpad - for cut, and Numpad * for paste. (I've never managed to train my hand eye coordination to use these in any other program. Which is a bit of a shame, because they're actually pretty useful. Whichever side you mouse on, you can find some way of hitting them without much effort.)

The numpad also comes in handy sometimes for typing numbers.

I have a similar sized macropad that I use extensively with AutoHotKey for application-specific shortcuts like clicking on buttons that don't have a keyboard shortcut, or scrolling two panes of a window simultaneously. All things that I could bind a key combo to, but I like having a dedicated button for.

Thank you for creating the containment thread.

I could never see the need to rebind Ctrl to Caps Lock (and I do use Emacs). Whenever it's time to press Ctrl, I curl my pinky and press that key with my pinky's distal joint. I did, however, swap Fn and the Global key on my Mac.

>no mention of Dvorak or Colemak? Let's have that eternal discussion again!

I prefer Workman. Used to use Dvorak. Did not see much point to Colemak or its Mod DH variant by the time I was open to switching again, Workman set out to solve those issues in its original design. To anyone coming from Qwerty these days (Workman only came out in 2010), I would just recommend skipping over Dvorak and Colemak. You can find even more esoteric layouts, but Workman is in a bit of a goldilocks zone where it's available in some OSes/keyboards by default and isn't impossible to find keycaps for (often the "colevrak" kits cover it).

>Swap Caps and Ctrl

I never liked binding caps to Ctrl or Esc, but I do bind it to Compose in my OS these days. What I'd instead recommend is getting an ergonomic keyboard with a thumb cluster, like the Pinky4 or Iris, and putting your modifiers there. My Ctrl, Alt, and Super keys are all thumb keys now and even the leftmost of them is offset a similar amount to where Alt is on a traditional keyboard, so all very comfortable to press. I also have backspace, space, and enter on thumb keys.

>use Emacs or vi keybindings,

Strongly agreed, this is huge. Vi especially as you can avoid most chords, a bit like Sticky Keys in Windows, except not awful and not something you activated by accident. I spent considerable time with Spacemacs as well as evil-mode in my own config at one point. Back to (neo)vim now, but all great choices, all better than using nano or a CUA binds editor.

If you swap caps for left control, do you swap return for right control? I've been taught not to type modifier + key with one hand.

Dvorak + Emacs user here, by the way. In my opinion mouse use is okay, but I think a drawing tablet is better than a mouse.

I use Colemak DH for many years and Dvorak before that and I am of an opinion that alternative layouts are way overrated. I even somewhat regret inventing so much time in learning them. QWERTY is just fine!

The matter I want to preach about tho are split ortolinear keyboards. I believe absolutely every typist should use them. Conventional keyboards are just bad from ergonomics perspective and eventually it’d have a toll on your wrists health. And many of these keyboards stores key mappings directly on the chip so no need to mess with weird mapping software.

Having said that, my split keyboard is one of the best investments I did in my life.

I don't bother with a dedicated capslock key. I set it up so hitting left and right shift at the same time is caps lock. Also have an arrow layer under my right hand with home/end and pgup/pgdown within easy reach. Could never get used to vi cursor navigation.

I used to love swiping to type on mobile. Then I switched to iPhone. The issue there is if you have swipe enabled, it messes with the hit box of keys and you end up typing a lot of garbage if you type to fast when not swiping.