I think the central hypothesis of using these keyboards is flawed. It seems to all centre around thinking that less movement is better, and that keeping as close to the home row as possible is king, even if that means chording, contorting your hands to reach far keys, and over-relying on your weak pinky fingers.
Human bodies are meant to move. I've found that since I've started dancing over keyboard more with my fingers (a sort of advanced hunt-and-peck using all fingers but the pinky), combined with using a low profile keyboard, my hand pain has disappeared, and I'm at my fastest WPM yet (105). YMMV of course, but it's worth considering if you're peering into the rabbit hole.
Most people don't understand it, or understand it too late, after they have joint pain.
I concur with you on these extremely pared down keyboards. It's a nice and niche optimization for the use cases you have (programming in a certain language, etc.), however the general applicability of the tool dies with every iteration, plus the movement aspect of the body.
I've moved to 75% keyboards because of a combination of minimalism and underutilized numpad (that part literally collects dust), however I'll not move beyond that size, because the F-Row and the standard keyboard layout is both needed and practical.
I have two keyboards (one for work, one for home). A Logitech K380, and a NuPhy Air75, both are nice and compact wireless keyboards with a 75% layout, and they are both comfortable and fast to use.
However, I don't rather comment on people's choices. It's their hobbies and path to exploration. They shall do as they please. Feel bad for the people who suffer RSI though.
I really do feel that CRKBD has optimized a particular utility of keyboards (I use one). By having every key no more than one unit away from home, you can always be confident that you’re hitting exactly the right key. This eliminates errors in a way that I personally enjoy more than any alternative. With QMK, layers make full utilization of keycodes trivial. I use 20+ layers, and it’s second nature now that it’s all muscle memory.
It all sounds good. Compact keyboard has always appealed to me, so did ergonomics, I bought a split keyboard (36 keys) with Miryoku layout and went to town. I lasted about 1 month and quit.
What happens is the amount of keys you have to type concurrently increases forcing your fingers in weird positions.
For example, typing the following 48 characters
if (needle in [a, b, c]) {
println('found it')
}
In a Miroyoku layout it's 59 key presses. This might not sound like a lot but it's a ~10% increase.
It also doesn't account for a very big problem, arrow key navigation for non VIM users. Since pressing the arrow keys requires two button presses in smaller keyboards, and done repetitively it's a huge slow down in navigating text. Now there are solution to this, most IDEs can support VIM keybinds, or have their own hot keys to skip words etc. To me the arrow key navigation is what got to me long term and I opt4ed out of it.
Honestly, you don't need to go down to so few keys, just program your keyboard to have one more layer that puts those special characters into a better place for you and I think you'll get 90% of the benefit of the OP's keyboard.
Having (){}[]-+ in the same place and easily touch-typable was much better than having them in different places depending on what I was typing on (dvorak already has < and >, ' and " period and comma in a sensible place).
The reason I couldn't move to a much smaller keyboard is that the less common keys that I use a few times a day like `{}\<>? feel like they would be so much harder to retrain. Similarly I am only passable at touch typing my number row, and I don't think I could survive without the labels for the symbols that are usually over the numbers.
When I see this layout I'm both amazed and thinking he must love copilot!
Back in the days we used to pay extra to have more buttons!
Extra F keys up top, two columns of function keys on the left etc.
This minimalistic trend with keyboards isn't really making people more efficient as it is a conversation starter.
With fully programmable layouts the number of keys doesn't mean that much, though for me the sweet spot is around 42. Going much lower than that comes with too many compromises.
That being said, I think the most important thing is that you like what you’re using. If you prefer Mac’s native keyboard, more power to you. More keyboard happiness is less work stress.
75% is a good compromise in size and usability in my experience.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard#/media/Fi...
I do also enjoy (full sized) split keyboards though.
I reproduced most of a small keyboard’s layout on my laptop using KMonad and now don’t even touch about 20 keys even though they’re available. It’s that realization that makes one dream of just omitting the unused hardware.
The F-keys just don’t get enough usage to justify dedicated keys, and while dedicated arrows aren’t bad the reduced hand movement of layered arrows with the HHKB layout is nice. Numpads are useful occasionally but not often enough that I want one permanently integrated into my keyboard eating up desk space and being unmovable, so I have a standalone numpad that sits to the left of my keyboard when it’s needed so I can mouse around and use the numpad at the same time.
These layouts are also similar enough to typical laptop keyboard layouts that I can still use those without much trouble, so I don’t need to tote around a keyboard.
[edit]
Searching split keyboards on google image search for long enough found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand#/media/File:DataHand_...
https://www.infogrip.com/bat-keyboard.html
His plan was to mount them to the sides of his chair so he could type with his arms hanging at his sides. I don't recall if ever got past using just one of them, and actually, I'm not sure why he needed two in the first place. Now I'm doubting my memory. Anyway, more on this innovative keyboard:
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/18/inputs-of-interest-the-infog...
I think that has more to it as it's not just chorded but has a steno dictionary as well. There must be a way to turn a standard keyboard into a chorded one?
Overall, I find that this is ridiculously comfortable to use.
I suffered from mild wrist pain when typing on standard keyboards, mostly because my pinky had to do so much work for programming (and pressing backspace, kill the default position of that key with fire), and the Ergodox helped me a lot.
One thing I'll note, when I moved from Ergodox to Moonlander, I lost the 1.5U key next to the h/n keys (heh). I used to use that as backspace, but moved it to my left thumb. When you're backspacing an entire word (not something I do in Emacs, but something you have to do in the web browser), the up/down/up/down/up/down motion isn't as fast with your thumb as it is with your pointer finger. OS X users probably don't have this problem, as C-w isn't "close window" there like it is on Windows.
That being said, the most important thing is that you enjoy what you’re typing on.
I'm still memorizing some inputs; ones that require holding a layer key, then holding a homerow mod on one hand, and finally hitting the intended character key are proving especially tricky.
(eg: hold thumb key to switch to symbol layer, hold down homerow mod for shift, press desired symbol for shifted version -- poor example, but all the same.)
More folks should give this sort of thing a try! Provided you're not also re-learning the alpha-key locations at the same time, it's really not so bad a transition. A day or two architecting your layout, a few days tweaking with use, some dedicated practice, and normal use from there on out should get one comfortable. :)
Here is PR if somebody else is interested that most probably will never get merged to QMK as they don't like unit-tests https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/pull/16174
The main difference from Miryoku that there is not tap-hold keys.
i would like one of these though and maybe move on from the planck for my desktop. the minimalism is sexy as hell
Minor differences:
I use Dvorak as the base setup.
I use the same system on Mac laptops, so the two inner thumb keys are both 'space' because when on the laptop rather than a split keyboard I use the spacebar to toggle into the num/symbol layer if held.
Command keys on Mac laptop (either side of the spacebar) are set to backspace and enter if used individually.
I didn't got full home row mods. I use two keys at once for ctrl (sd or kl on a qwerty layout), and two keys at once for shift (cv or m, on querty).
A few other double key shortcuts e.g. xc as ":" for vim stuff, and cv in querty (jk in dvorak) as escape.
I have a 36 key keyboard but I guess due to the double space it's a 35 key layout. Don't use the other button (option) for much, just arrow keys with vim hjkl so could possibly live without it as a 33 key layout.
edit: also seems to be a dupe submission of this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648245
Minor differences:
I use Dvorak as the base setup.
I use the same system on Mac laptops, so the two inner thumb keys are both 'space' because when on the laptop rather than a split keyboard I use the spacebar to toggle into the num/symbol layer if held (I believe you can actually use thumb on the trackpad as extra keys if you want and your laptop layout works, but never got around to trying it).
Command keys on Mac laptop (either side of the spacebar) are set to backspace and enter if used individually.
I didn't go full home row mods after trying it. I use two keys at once for ctrl (sd or kl on a qwerty layout), and two keys at once for shift (cv or m, on qwerty).
A few other double key shortcuts e.g. xc as ":" for vim stuff, and cv in querty (jk in dvorak) as escape.
I have a 36 key keyboard but I guess due to the double space it's a 35 key layout. Don't use the other button (option) for much, just arrow keys with vim hjkl so could possibly live without it as a 33 key layout.
https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
and
https://github.com/yqrashawn/GokuRakuJoudo
lets you write your keymappings in a text editor and translate it into the weird XML/JSON syntax so you don't have to use the GUI editor.
I went back using a simple ANSI US layout keyboard (not the standard here) where the only change I do is to assign CTRL to CAPS LOCK.
I've been daily driving the Preonic for 4 years now and once reconfigured, it is the most comfortable of my keyboards. The layer system is a game changer: you can put arrow keys on the home row, just a modifier away. One other cool trick is having enter on the bottom right key, you can press it with your palm.
I describe a bit my current layout in the QMK repo (they encourage everyone to add their keymap!): https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/tree/master/keyboards/pr...
It has six or seven layers, and aggressively uses home-row mods.
Example A:
Hold Backspace => Activates layer overlay
Example B:
Tap Backspace => Input backspace
Hold Backspace => Input held backspace => OS handles repeating as configured
I heard using colemak and stagger column makes your muscle memory confused because it is similar with staggered row qwerty.
It was slightly more difficult for me to switch back to qwerty when I was still using a traditional staggered keyboard to type workman, especially when I was still getting comfortable with workman.
I wasn't really worse at qwerty than before: I just felt extra uncomfortable with the context switching.
Now that I'm exclusively using an ortholinear keyboard to type workman, I'm back to my original comfort level typing qwerty on traditional staggered keyboards. I don't enjoy it, but I don't really think about it either. Context switching went from a mild nuisance to completely effortless.
Yes, though I use a laptop's keyboard from time to time, which will help.
I use row-stagger QWERTY, and use Dvorak on small, weird keyboards like this.
I think learning a second layout on the same keyboard would be confusing (row-staggered or otherwise).
[^0]: https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/1537631208414191616?s=21...
It wasn’t that hard to learn. Time investment of about 30 minutes/3 times a week for about six month.
One of these days I'll try out something other than QWERTY.
Good post, although I find homerow mods kinda annoying so I personally don't use them (ergodox ez). I think the perfect layout for me would be something like a Sofle :)
Symbols in a mirrored numpad shape to fix $ and ^ seems brilliant, I might have to try that! And the caps word feature, holy crap thats awesome.
Where are your \, ` and F keys, you don't use them? And why stock colemak not mod-dk?
