I feel like computers are such an important part of our lives now that it's surprising so many people settle for the entrenched option of 'standard QWERTY computer keyboard'.
I realised a while ago that since I spend so much of my life interacting with a computer, I should really invest significant effort into improving, even marginally, the ergonomics and bandwidth of the IO channel between my brain and the computer I am interacting with. This realisation and the ensuing quest for a better option led me to adopt the Ergodox EZ keyboard. This has been the most significant improvement to my day-to-day interactions with computers since learning Vim. It did take several months to adjust and a significant amount of effort went into designing the optimal layout to suit my needs, but the results have been incredible.
- I never need to look at the keyboard
- My WPM rate is sufficient that I can type almost as fast as I can think
- The palms of my hands never move (zero wrist flexion)
I use a QWERTY and I can type faster than I can think. I can routinely type at 130 WPM and at bursts up to 140 WPM. But I didn't type this comment that fast, not even close. I think much more slowly than I type. Point being, I can already type far faster than I need to on QWERTY, so why bother switching to something else, where I will almost certainly be slower for a period of months at best?
I have exactly the same mindset, if you spend 10 hours a day typing on a keyboard then investing a few weeks and/or a few hundred bucks to marginally improve your speed and comfort is a very good investment indeed.
In particular I'm always amazed that, in my experience, the vast majority of the professional software programmers I encounter never bothered to learn how to touchtype proficiently. I personally use the dvorak layout but I can understand staying on QWERTY for convenience but not knowing how to touchtype is very hard for me to rationalize.
Regarding the Ergodox I have a question, do you really find that "matrix" key layout (or "ortholinear" as they call it on their website) is really an improvement? It never made a lot of sense to me and when I tried a similar keyboard a few years back (admittedly for a short amount of time) I really didn't like it. The website says:
> When you extend your finger, it doesn't go sideways, does it? So why are the keys on your keyboard not directly on top of each other?
But... They do go sideways when I have a keyboard in front of me, my hands are not perfectly straight and parallel on the keyboard lest my wrist or shoulders end up in a weird position. Now of course in this case with a split keyboard you can move and orient them any way you like but I always wondered if there was actual science behind that choice or if it's just "non-linear layout == old mechanical typewriter leftover == bad".
You'll only make up those months spent adjusting if you now spend decades using nothing else, and any time spent on a conventional keyboard will be slower than it would have been if you had not switched.
I simply do not understand the "increased performance" claims people in these situations make. There is no way.
All keyboards have fundamentally arbitrary layouts, some are just slightly more or less arbitrary than others.
Having one hand I felt this way, I spent a lot of money on a Maltron one handed keyboard, but I could never get it integrated into my work flow. And then laptops became popular, and I just can't be bothered to carry a laptop and a keyboard around with me. So unless I use one computer all the time, I can't get away from qwerty, so I've just stuck with it.
> I realised a while ago that since I spend so much of my life interacting with a computer, I should really invest significant effort into improving, even marginally
In the world of guitars one can spend thousands of dollars having the perfect custom guitar built. I've often wondered why software developers don't invest as much in bespoke custom keyboards for exactly the same reason you have come to realize. I definitely think there's a market for it.
This is cool, but the author could sell his idea better. It took me a while to figure out what a Penti Chorded keyboard even is. The video linked at the very bottom shows why this could be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_01ha1uS6Y&feature=youtu.be
I wish the author had explained at the start what problem this solves rather than launching right into an explanation of how it works.
I've been trying to use it on Android for 40 minutes now (read: brute forcing and trying to match what I see with the docs) and I just figured out how basic stuff like backspace is supposed to work.
Some getting-started tips:
- The first thing you need is to touch all 5 fingers in a comfortable position to the screen. This activates the view that you were expecting to see. (This info is buried in the second to last paragraph of intro text.)
- To reset the buttons' positions (and get to pick new locations), activate another keyboard and then activate this one again.
- The arpeggio versions with two options (such as "tab/del") are directional: A->B is tab and B->A is del, where A and B are two of the five buttons.
- "del" is the equivalent of "backspace", not "delete".
- Backspace is supposed to be the arpeggio version of L, which is "- ##--" (index and middle finger), with middle finger first. So what you do is: press and hold middle finger, wait, press index finger, then release both. Do not release middle before you press index, do not be too fast, and do not be too slow. It's easy to be too fast or too slow, so keep practicing I guess...
- That mysterious little 6th button is the repeat key (this is also mentioned somewhere in the middle of the text).
- All keys disappearing when you tap next to it is not a bug but a feature: it allows you to use a second finger (while the first one hides the keyboard UI) to tap something behind the keyboard, such as opening a menu or selecting text.
- The lowering of audio volume (and perhaps some stuttering) is not your hitting the key combo for volume changes, but it's your music app detecting that this app is playing sound or vibrating or whatever and lowering its volume temporarily in response.
I'd like to notice an important thing: with this keyboard, one does not move the fingertips at all. The only motion required is press / release.
This is a great quality when hands are busy with something else, like holding a bike's handlebar, or an aircraft control rod.
It's also likely a good setup for some smart glove type of input device, where there are no keys to press but finger motions are detected.
If fingertips are allowed to change the position, a few more keys allow for easier chords and much more characters, all using the same 5 fingers. They can be touch-typed even easier than a normal keyboard.
Reminds me of the AlphaGrip[0] somewhat. Of the problems of using it, I mean. I bought it like 10 years ago, and sold it a couple of years later, it's good to see that they're still in business.
On the AG, instead of a combination of buttons to produce a keypress, you have 8 keys (buttons?) that can rock in two directions, plus thumb buttons, including red and green "shifts" that work as Fn keys. Normally you type text, pressing red shift you input numbers and arithmetic symbols, with green shift the rest of the symbols. It was great for games and got past my regular QWERTY speed writing English text after a couple of months.
Now, if you write in more than one language, you're screwed. Using other layouts would make the already difficult task for developing muscle memory even more annoying. I tried it with US-Intl layout (as I was used to it on QWERTY) to have a unique layout for multiple languages, but it quickly becomes unusable: to produce an "À", I don't remember exactly, but required 2+2 or 3+2 simultaneous keypresses, plus US-Intl is implemented different in different OS, so sometimes you have to take into account dead keys, sticky keys, sometimes not. And don't get me started on shortcuts and programming...
I actually used an Alphagrip daily at work for probably a year+. It halved my normal qwerty speed (120 wpm down to 60 wpm), but got rid of all of my wrist pain. Good exchange! I had a similar experience that I bought my first one ten years ago, then sold it after a few years of not using it. On a whim after I started feeling pain, I tried again and after doing typing tests for 10-15 minutes each morning for a month it finally stuck. Ended up modding it with a teflon trackball before I finally unplugged my normal keyboard and put it behind my monitor.
Would be nice to see an upgrade with a working shift key (the modifier is not actually sent) and a wireless option...
This reminds me of steno keyboards and the plover system. It's interesting, but I don't think it's the most important thing for developers. In my opinion a comfortable keyboard like an ortho one, and a bunch of helpers like modal editor and shortcuts using something like qmk provide the most value. That takes you to like 90%. Using steno after that is just pushing you to like 95%.
(I know that's some weird random metric, but hopefully I got the point across.)
Stenography is likely overkill if you're only coding: an orthographic and/or split keyboard, keyboard shortcuts, a snippets, and autocomplete gets you most of the way there. Unlike prose, you really don't crank out that many characters of code very quickly.
The question is really: how much of your day do you spend writing prose rather than code? For me, I have a lot of instant messaging to do with coworkers in remote offices, or emails to write or respond to, or design documents to write. In this case, stenography really helps me out, and since I've learned it, I might as well use it for coding where it's convenient (mostly comments but also for writing some new lines of code.)
I just wonder if there's any chorded keyboard implemented as a smartphone bump case (with 4 buttons on the one side and one for the thumb on the other side, but maybe some other layout), so user can grip it with their hand and use for input.
Should be painful to learn (obviously), but then should beat on-screen keyboards because it won't require tapping (and even looking) at the screen at all.
This is a cool idea. New explorations and innovations in this direction are very welcome IMHO. I'm still a bit dismayed after reading about Douglas Engelbart's 5-key chording keysets that there's very little on the market to fill such a niche completely.
It may be argued that we now have mouses with 5+ buttons, when Engelbart himself scaled back from 5 to 3 for the mouse hand, and we're now used to keeping one hand on the keyboard where we commonly do two- and three-finger chords, but there's a certain level of facility that I think can still only be realized with a dedicated chording keyset.
Engelbart's keysets could also provide two-way communication (by puffing air under the keys) to do things like prompt for certain responses when mousing over certain screen elements, which still seems slightly out of reach for smartphones' limited "haptic feedback" (not that I saw that mentioned here, just something that came to mind when I saw this was an implementation for touchscreen devices).
A friend of mine created a chorded (virtual) keyboard for making typing on tablets easier[0]. The more common the letter, the simpler the chord combination.
I got a Microwriter AgendA from someone around the turn of the millennium, and I loved the chording system as an idea, especially for mobile input. I've reimplemented it once or twice using the down/right arrow keys and 4/8/6/return on the numpad of a typical keyboard, as a novelty.
And I bought a CyKey, so both devices seen in this image in your link:
But it is enormously slow; it's approximately like typing with one slow finger, with writing being enough let alone punctuation.
I'm most surprised nobody has made a HTML/JavaScript chording thing that works on multitouch tablets to be an overlay (maybe a bookmarklet?) to type into textboxes. So this Penti keyboard link is a great interest to me.
My Dad had a Microwriter AgendA! I learned some of the chording, and used to write "Choose Your Own Adventure" games using its desktop software (which looked a little like a wiki, I guess) and download them on to the device to be played.
I want to build a mirror chorded keyboard, using an existing split design like a Dactyl or Ergodox, where a modifier on each side gives you the mirrored key (mod+A gives you ', mod+e gives you p, etc.)
I've seen some commercial keyboards like this, but they're incredibly expensive and non-mechanical (mostly geared to people who are disabled/have limited or no use of one hand).
My theory is that the learning curve of a one handed keyboard that is just a mirror would be easier than a totally new layout like the FrogPad or the example linked here.
Reprogramming an existing split model means I could also build both the left/right hand versions and try to learn both.
> I've seen some commercial keyboards like this, but they're incredibly expensive and non-mechanical (mostly geared to people who are disabled/have limited or no use of one hand).
You can also use AutoHotkey[0] to create a script to emulate any keyboard layout.
I use it (among other things) to provide me with arrow-key navigation on IJKL keys by pressing the left Alt + <key>.
After the initial 'how does this work' it's almost trivially easy to create all kinds of new "shortcuts"!
I built one of these! With a shifter on the palm, and a separate control toggle, you'd get pretty much the full ASCII set.
Even though I'm right handed, it worked best on my left hand. This is because of how surprisingly nice it was to use my dominant hand to do something (use a mouse, eat, etc), while still typing with my left.
Alas I assume the reason this never caught on was due to the learning curve. People will never leave qwerty. Also it was pretty slow. When I built this back in 2005, I was thinking for PDAs and early cell phones and was only competing against T9 and early palm keyboards. After a few months of practice, I never topped about 45 wpm.
> Chorderoy is a an attempt at crafting an optimal method of text input for mobile and wearable devices aimed at those who enjoy the rewards that come with free climbing steep learning curves.
Recently I have been pondering something very similar, but strictly "arpeggio"-based [0] and for regular keyboards, and whether it could be comparatively performant like normal qwerty.
I've amused myself fancying scenario when using just fraction of keys in an unusual way could perhaps beat traditional touch typing professionals. I've seen some video where blind person claimed that typing on braille keyboard [1] could be insanely fast.
Coincidentally, today I have been testing what my keyboard can handle in regards of how many simultaneously pressed keys it recognizes at most. (I know it depends on particular keyboard hardware and its "ghosting", but it was fun to try out [2]. I've squeezed 12 keys max.)
I think there is going to be room in the future for a single handed symbolic entry system like Twiddler as we enter the era of immersive computing. It seems likely you're going to need a way to do text entry on-the-go, while wearing AR glasses. An input mechanism where one hand is dedicated to doing that seems like a good model, with the other dedicated to more fine motor gesturing.
Hi. I think you may be delighted to see what I have built. I would love to get your thoughts on it if you're in a related field. I can also let you try it if you'll give me feedback. How can I reach out to you? My contact is my username @opdig.com.
Really nice to see this, 10 years ago I designed a chording system with 5 bits, distributing the difficult to use combination to less frequently used characters (like in the Dvorak keyboard layout). Was there any though given to this aspect?
I should explain more clearly how to generate an arpeggio in PentiKeyboard:
The rules are:
1. The last key must be pressed AT LEAST 80 ms later than the second.
2. The last key must be pressed MAXIMALLY 240 ms.
A backspace (DEL) is generated with middle and index finger.
While pressing middle and index finger simultaneously (or longer than 240 ms)
gives an "l", you get a backspace when you first press the middle finger (as
long as you like, but at least 80 ms), then make a short tap with the index
finger and immediately release both fingers.
[+] [-] ganonm|7 years ago|reply
I realised a while ago that since I spend so much of my life interacting with a computer, I should really invest significant effort into improving, even marginally, the ergonomics and bandwidth of the IO channel between my brain and the computer I am interacting with. This realisation and the ensuing quest for a better option led me to adopt the Ergodox EZ keyboard. This has been the most significant improvement to my day-to-day interactions with computers since learning Vim. It did take several months to adjust and a significant amount of effort went into designing the optimal layout to suit my needs, but the results have been incredible.
- I never need to look at the keyboard
- My WPM rate is sufficient that I can type almost as fast as I can think
- The palms of my hands never move (zero wrist flexion)
My keyboard layout can be found here https://github.com/Ganon-M/ergodox-vim-ubuntu
If any of you out there are heavy Vim users and want to take your ergonomic experience to the next level, I suggest taking a look at the above layout.
[+] [-] ddevault|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
In particular I'm always amazed that, in my experience, the vast majority of the professional software programmers I encounter never bothered to learn how to touchtype proficiently. I personally use the dvorak layout but I can understand staying on QWERTY for convenience but not knowing how to touchtype is very hard for me to rationalize.
Regarding the Ergodox I have a question, do you really find that "matrix" key layout (or "ortholinear" as they call it on their website) is really an improvement? It never made a lot of sense to me and when I tried a similar keyboard a few years back (admittedly for a short amount of time) I really didn't like it. The website says:
> When you extend your finger, it doesn't go sideways, does it? So why are the keys on your keyboard not directly on top of each other?
But... They do go sideways when I have a keyboard in front of me, my hands are not perfectly straight and parallel on the keyboard lest my wrist or shoulders end up in a weird position. Now of course in this case with a split keyboard you can move and orient them any way you like but I always wondered if there was actual science behind that choice or if it's just "non-linear layout == old mechanical typewriter leftover == bad".
[+] [-] naikrovek|7 years ago|reply
I simply do not understand the "increased performance" claims people in these situations make. There is no way.
All keyboards have fundamentally arbitrary layouts, some are just slightly more or less arbitrary than others.
[+] [-] FigBug|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DenisM|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naibafo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightcracker|7 years ago|reply
Can you quantify this? E.g. through https://typing-speed-test.aoeu.eu/?lang=en
I don't know how fast you think.
[+] [-] eddieh|7 years ago|reply
In the world of guitars one can spend thousands of dollars having the perfect custom guitar built. I've often wondered why software developers don't invest as much in bespoke custom keyboards for exactly the same reason you have come to realize. I definitely think there's a market for it.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sverhagen|7 years ago|reply
I _so_ wish I could think as fast as I can type.
[+] [-] jVinc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|7 years ago|reply
I wish the author had explained at the start what problem this solves rather than launching right into an explanation of how it works.
[+] [-] moron4hire|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|7 years ago|reply
Some getting-started tips:
- The first thing you need is to touch all 5 fingers in a comfortable position to the screen. This activates the view that you were expecting to see. (This info is buried in the second to last paragraph of intro text.)
- To reset the buttons' positions (and get to pick new locations), activate another keyboard and then activate this one again.
- The arpeggio versions with two options (such as "tab/del") are directional: A->B is tab and B->A is del, where A and B are two of the five buttons.
- "del" is the equivalent of "backspace", not "delete".
- Backspace is supposed to be the arpeggio version of L, which is "- ##--" (index and middle finger), with middle finger first. So what you do is: press and hold middle finger, wait, press index finger, then release both. Do not release middle before you press index, do not be too fast, and do not be too slow. It's easy to be too fast or too slow, so keep practicing I guess...
- That mysterious little 6th button is the repeat key (this is also mentioned somewhere in the middle of the text).
- All keys disappearing when you tap next to it is not a bug but a feature: it allows you to use a second finger (while the first one hides the keyboard UI) to tap something behind the keyboard, such as opening a menu or selecting text.
- The lowering of audio volume (and perhaps some stuttering) is not your hitting the key combo for volume changes, but it's your music app detecting that this app is playing sound or vibrating or whatever and lowering its volume temporarily in response.
[+] [-] nine_k|7 years ago|reply
This is a great quality when hands are busy with something else, like holding a bike's handlebar, or an aircraft control rod.
It's also likely a good setup for some smart glove type of input device, where there are no keys to press but finger motions are detected.
If fingertips are allowed to change the position, a few more keys allow for easier chords and much more characters, all using the same 5 fingers. They can be touch-typed even easier than a normal keyboard.
[+] [-] Uberphallus|7 years ago|reply
On the AG, instead of a combination of buttons to produce a keypress, you have 8 keys (buttons?) that can rock in two directions, plus thumb buttons, including red and green "shifts" that work as Fn keys. Normally you type text, pressing red shift you input numbers and arithmetic symbols, with green shift the rest of the symbols. It was great for games and got past my regular QWERTY speed writing English text after a couple of months.
Now, if you write in more than one language, you're screwed. Using other layouts would make the already difficult task for developing muscle memory even more annoying. I tried it with US-Intl layout (as I was used to it on QWERTY) to have a unique layout for multiple languages, but it quickly becomes unusable: to produce an "À", I don't remember exactly, but required 2+2 or 3+2 simultaneous keypresses, plus US-Intl is implemented different in different OS, so sometimes you have to take into account dead keys, sticky keys, sometimes not. And don't get me started on shortcuts and programming...
[0] http://www.alphagrip.com/
[+] [-] lfowles|7 years ago|reply
Would be nice to see an upgrade with a working shift key (the modifier is not actually sent) and a wireless option...
[+] [-] pvinis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arxanas|7 years ago|reply
The question is really: how much of your day do you spend writing prose rather than code? For me, I have a lot of instant messaging to do with coworkers in remote offices, or emails to write or respond to, or design documents to write. In this case, stenography really helps me out, and since I've learned it, I might as well use it for coding where it's convenient (mostly comments but also for writing some new lines of code.)
[+] [-] drdaeman|7 years ago|reply
Should be painful to learn (obviously), but then should beat on-screen keyboards because it won't require tapping (and even looking) at the screen at all.
[+] [-] jodrellblank|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwringer|7 years ago|reply
It may be argued that we now have mouses with 5+ buttons, when Engelbart himself scaled back from 5 to 3 for the mouse hand, and we're now used to keeping one hand on the keyboard where we commonly do two- and three-finger chords, but there's a certain level of facility that I think can still only be realized with a dedicated chording keyset.
Engelbart's keysets could also provide two-way communication (by puffing air under the keys) to do things like prompt for certain responses when mousing over certain screen elements, which still seems slightly out of reach for smartphones' limited "haptic feedback" (not that I saw that mentioned here, just something that came to mind when I saw this was an implementation for touchscreen devices).
[+] [-] melling|7 years ago|reply
Cameras, etc could be used to read our gestures:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/16/ctrl-labss-neural-tech-lets-...
https://atap.google.com/soli/
[+] [-] dminor|7 years ago|reply
[0] http://asetniop.com
[+] [-] lps41|7 years ago|reply
I would really like to have the ability to install asetniop on Linux, and have the layout be configurable.
[+] [-] thom|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=4
[+] [-] utopcell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjbprime|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asplake|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter
[+] [-] jodrellblank|7 years ago|reply
And I bought a CyKey, so both devices seen in this image in your link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MicroWriter,_AgendA,_and_...
But it is enormously slow; it's approximately like typing with one slow finger, with writing being enough let alone punctuation.
I'm most surprised nobody has made a HTML/JavaScript chording thing that works on multitouch tablets to be an overlay (maybe a bookmarklet?) to type into textboxes. So this Penti keyboard link is a great interest to me.
[+] [-] cjbprime|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djsumdog|7 years ago|reply
I've seen some commercial keyboards like this, but they're incredibly expensive and non-mechanical (mostly geared to people who are disabled/have limited or no use of one hand).
My theory is that the learning curve of a one handed keyboard that is just a mirror would be easier than a totally new layout like the FrogPad or the example linked here.
Reprogramming an existing split model means I could also build both the left/right hand versions and try to learn both.
[+] [-] sleepybrett|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leoc|7 years ago|reply
The Matias 508 is one such http://www.508keyboard.com/ , are there others?
One feature you might want in such an arrangement is a capactive sensor in the mouse: https://plus.google.com/105224327306964621564/posts/51Jkbioc...
[+] [-] wildebaard|7 years ago|reply
After the initial 'how does this work' it's almost trivially easy to create all kinds of new "shortcuts"!
[0] https://autohotkey.com/
[+] [-] linsomniac|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e0m|7 years ago|reply
Even though I'm right handed, it worked best on my left hand. This is because of how surprisingly nice it was to use my dominant hand to do something (use a mouse, eat, etc), while still typing with my left.
Alas I assume the reason this never caught on was due to the learning curve. People will never leave qwerty. Also it was pretty slow. When I built this back in 2005, I was thinking for PDAs and early cell phones and was only competing against T9 and early palm keyboards. After a few months of practice, I never topped about 45 wpm.
[+] [-] haraball|7 years ago|reply
http://bengler.no/chorder
> Chorderoy is a an attempt at crafting an optimal method of text input for mobile and wearable devices aimed at those who enjoy the rewards that come with free climbing steep learning curves.
[+] [-] myfonj|7 years ago|reply
Coincidentally, today I have been testing what my keyboard can handle in regards of how many simultaneously pressed keys it recognizes at most. (I know it depends on particular keyboard hardware and its "ghosting", but it was fun to try out [2]. I've squeezed 12 keys max.)
[0] in penti vocabulary, meaning progressions of several held and released keys, mainly to circumvent hassle of definition what timespan is still "parallel" and what "progression". Releasing the last key could be the end of progression and produce output. [1] like http://www.teach-ict.com/as_a2_ict_new/ocr/AS_G061/312_softw... [2] http://myfonj.github.io/tst/keyboard-simultaneous-keys.html not perfect, since some keys or OS key combos produces funky results…
[+] [-] gfodor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lam|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnal943|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
[+] [-] fsiefken|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Regenaxer|7 years ago|reply
https://picolisp.com/wiki/?TermuxPentiPicoLisp
[+] [-] spilk|7 years ago|reply
https://www.infogrip.com/bat-keyboard.html
[+] [-] Regenaxer|7 years ago|reply
The rules are: 1. The last key must be pressed AT LEAST 80 ms later than the second. 2. The last key must be pressed MAXIMALLY 240 ms.
A backspace (DEL) is generated with middle and index finger.
While pressing middle and index finger simultaneously (or longer than 240 ms) gives an "l", you get a backspace when you first press the middle finger (as long as you like, but at least 80 ms), then make a short tap with the index finger and immediately release both fingers.