this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

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Keep it ergo

Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)

i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²

¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid

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Build finally complete!!! But completely unable to learn T_T (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by wfh@lemm.ee to c/ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world
39 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm typing this with my new ergo keeb right now. Holy fuck it is hard. I cannot seem to be able to hack my brain, I've spent 2 WEEKS desperately trying to learn the first SIX MOST FUCKIN COMMON LETTERS and I'm still completely unable to use them even remotely quickly or reliably. I am completely unable to even break the 70% confidence line on keybr on I,E,S and R despite hours of efforts. Worse, now my accuracy goes steadily down the toilet even if I slow down to a grind in an attempt to improve it.

I fuckin suck at this. It is despair and rage inducing. How the fuck do you manage to even learn new layouts?

I spent almost an hour typing this fuckin message.

But hey at least my keyboard looks awesome.

Edit: it seems using keybr is actually damaging my progress instead of helping. I'm switching to another tool.

Edit2: after a few days on monkeytype I'm up to 17 WPM and 91% accuracy in french, up from 4 WPM and almost negative accuracy. Not great BUT it's still a big win for me. I mostly know my layout now, except for the dev layer. I can only progress from now.

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[–] uqs@lemmy.world 25 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Do not try to type fast. Think about every keypress to get near 100% accuracy. And don't overdo it either, your brain needs to lay down new neural pathways, try to get enough sleep and, again, do not strive to get fast(er).

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The thing is, I'm already super slow. 30 wpm with the 6 most common keys, less than prolly 5 wpm full keyboard.

[–] Araozu@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You'll get better with practice. When I started with my Corne i was typing at 5-10 letters per minute the first week. After a month of practice I reached around 50 wpm, and hit a ceiling of ~90 wpm.

Speed should be a metric, not a target. It should be a side effect of using a better keyboard, so don't focus on speed. Instead focus on accuracy, and learning exactly where each key is.

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

I know. I do not aim for speed. I'm too old for this. I just aim for proficiency.

[–] ryncewynd@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wow I love your arrow keys, that's brilliant

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Thanks :)

[–] PeachMan@lemmy.one 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I didn't use any training tools, I just forced myself to do the work that I normally do, using the ortholinear layout. I didn't try to type fast or brute force things, I went slow as hell and backspaced when I screwed up. I had to apologize to several coworkers and clients that were waiting on me to finish typing something, I just told them I was using a weird ergonomic keyboard and still getting the hang of it.

But after a couple weeks I was just as fast on ortholinear as QWERTY.

One thing that surprised me is that I don't really have a problem switching back to QWERTY, and then right back to ortholinear. I was expecting that to be a problem, but I'm happy that it's not.

[–] Gutless2615@ttrpg.network 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ortholinear doesn’t necessarily mean not QWERTY though. I’m running an ortho QWERTY layout. I don’t really understand the appeal of breaking your brain for an entirely new layout tbh, but ortholinear just makes sense ergonomically.

[–] PeachMan@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago

Oh yeah, to be clear I'm using Ortholinear QWERTY. I just call it ortho because I'm lazy.

[–] crandel@programming.dev 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I buy corne and at the same time I switch from query to colemak-hd and learn blind typing as well. First several days it was slow as hell. But I didn't rush myself. I tried to type with 100% accuracy so my brain is sure where every letter is placed. Humps are very helpful for this. I glue small wood pieces(from toothpick) to the key caps and my brain learn where to move my fingers for every letter. Accuracy is very important for this.

[–] puppybox@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

Make an account on monkeytype and practice 1 hour a day. Look at the stats, you should improve in a week or two.

When I switched layout first time (qwerty -> Colemak dh) it took me 2-3 weeks to learn it. Recently I switched again (canary) and it took me around a week of practicing around 2h a day to go to 60wmp English 1k. Then I just started using it at work.

Now I'm switching to Piantor and it's difficult even without switching layout.

I think you have to be patient and also keep track of your progress to motivate you.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What keyboard layout is this? I've never seen this layout before.

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I called it the BYPOK layout 😅

Basically heavily based on BÉPO (especially the home row and most of the top row), with a bit of Colemak sprinkled in, and a few letters shuffled based on frequency in both French and English (French taking precedence in case of conflict).

Bépo's main limitation is that it requires at least a 60% sized keyboard. All French accented letters are directly accessible. That's near but not feasible with a smaller keyboard. So I kept É and À, which are very common, on the main layer and moved the other accented letters below their unaccented counterpart. It's mostly OK because these letters are quite infrequent anyway.

Now that I'm starting to get used to it, it's not a bad layout at all. Some digraphs are a bit inefficient, but 99% of the time it seems fine.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh, so it is for typing in French?

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yes. With some compromises made for English. I mostly type in English anyway, but communicate exclusively in French at work.

[–] a_lemmy_user@discuss.online 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh, then may I suggest trying to use the keyboard to chat with someone non-professionally and in french? Hobby blogs or chats? It's habit forming.

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

I believe any language is fine but you're right, key frequencies are very different.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That explains why I haven't seen it before. I did a lot of keyboard layout research several years ago, but only for the English language. It looks really cool. I love the colors and layout you chose, and the fact that it is basically lacking an enclosure. It's very minimalist.

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Thank you :)

[–] TeXitoi@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I use an almost pure BÉPO mapping on a 44 key board: https://github.com/TeXitoi/keyseebee#whats-the-layout

[–] iandoug@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What layout is that?

[–] TheObserver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A cursed one

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Blursed.

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

Some type of bépo-colemak hybrid I made up. bépo needs way too many keys for a corne style board, colemak is really bad for french.

[–] johnydoe666@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 years ago

Looks like colemak

[–] araly@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

only write on it from now on, and it will slowly but surely become second nature

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is what I'm doing right now. Hence my very short replies.

[–] araly@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

keep it up 👍🏻

[–] Turbo@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is what makes me skip over these cool looking custome keyboards since I started seeing them 5years ago. Only today did I see a really neat looking one with carbon fiber base that got me thinking.

But nah...

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

To be fair I wasn't using a good tool. Keybr is bad and actually harming progress. Instead of helping you learning your layout, it gets stuck on 1 or 2 letters indefinitely, never letting you progress because they're never good enough. I spent so much time on 3 letters that now I confuse them all the time, whereas other, almost unused letters are really solid.

I'm done with the frustration now. I'm slow as fuck, but at least I kinda know my layout now and I can progress. I can be a fast learner, but for muscle memory stuff, I really suck. I could never learn touch typing because my hybrid technique is actually decent (~50-55 WPM 100% accuracy), so if I wanted to save my neck and my back in the long term, I needed a 'big bang'.

[–] h3mlocke@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Looks like your letters are all wonky

[–] Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Bon courage à toi. Le modèle de clavier à un nom particulier?

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Merci ! Déjà là ça va mieux même si je suis péniblement à 10-13WPM.

Pas de nom particulier à part ErgoMechKeyboardV3 🤣

[–] Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Après environ 3 semaine à l'utiliser au travail j'arrivais à écrire plutôt normalement. Et j'avais swtich en même temps au Colemak. À un moment t'a un déclic de surprise à te voir réussir sans y penser et c'est légendaire

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Ça commence à marcher pour certaines lettres que j'arrive à taper sans réfléchir, la sensation est assez incroyable en effet 😅

Pour l'instant quasiment chaque frappe est encore un effort conscient et délibéré, surtout après une erreur.

[–] Anamnesis@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Why are you people doing this to yourselves. These are keyboards for masochists!