4 ms·

I think it'd be cool for programming, I have RSI and find using the shift key + another key painful. I also rarely use the number keys above the letters (I used

I think it'd be cool for programming, I have RSI and find using the shift key + another key painful. I also rarely use the number keys above the letters (I used num pad) so changing all those keys to the shit_key equivalent would be neat. And rearranging some of other keys would be great. And don't get me started on games, oooooh, how often to I buy a new game and forget what 'm' does? Knife? Grenade? Pickaxe?

jacobolus 10y ago
Have you considered trying a keyboard with more thumb keys, and using a thumb for shift? (Or if you’re stuck on a standard keyboard, I recommend you try to use the opposite-hand shift key.)
chris_st 10y ago
You might consider either Autohotkey for Windows, or Keyboard Maestro for Macs (or something similar for Linux, I'm sure). You can rebind keys, including shift and control/command, to whatever or wherever you want. I did it to get control on the caps-lock key, but never conditioned myself to use it.
iheartmemcache 10y ago
Firstly: RSI is no joke - if you're experiencing pain, there's a non-zero chance it'll develop into a serious medical condition. (At MIT's Media Lab, someone's RSI got so bad he couldn't type at all and had to invent an interface using vocal phonemes to encode common OS actions/lexical keywords to control his OS (OS X) / editor (emacs) / language of choice (python)). If you feel even the slightest bit of pain, that's your body signalling to you 'hey buddy, don't do this'. I was suffering from emacs pinky to the point where my hands were aching hours after leaving my desk. On weekends, my tennis racket grip was significantly weaker and form poorer. Mapping Ctrl to caps, right shift to Esc, and buying a $30 MS Ergonomic keyboard solved my issues. My friends who have had worse issues spent the $300 on a Kinesis (which I had up until then considered to be snake oil) but it seems to have solved their issues entirely (and for $300 it's definitely a cheap investment compared to the opportunity cost of the time invested in physical therapy). If you're on Linux, you can at the os-level make modal changes. I made the right-alt key move into a different mode, so I effectively get an entirely separate key-mapping when that key is depressed. (E.g., hjkl for me is OS-wide, and sdfg lets me move the cursor. nb. Were I to make this decision again, I'd use Caps as my primary modifier, [ as my secondary, effectively giving me four full keyboard maps. Probably overkill but if I were using something like SolidWorks or Illustrator where having both keyboard and mouse access available often, I'd be experimenting with a setup like that -- keeping my right hand always on the mouse, and left for keyboard shortcuts -- biasing all of the shortcut keys to the left-hand region of the keyboard.) ErgoDox implements a similar system but on the micro-controller level so you don't even have to putz with modifiers and it's cross OS. I don't have one but I would have bought one if I used a desktop more often, simply due to the trackball-feature (effectively letting one use a mouse without leaving the home-row -- a 'must-have' for me).
- dylanz 10y ago
  Great post and an important disclaimer... take RSI seriously. I went the Kinesis route and switched to Dvorak (after taking a week off from typing) and I've never had a problem since (I ditched the Kinesis after a couple months and went back to my laptops keyboard).
- rjeli 10y ago
  If your pinky issue comes back, try Xah Lee's ctrl-palming method[0]. It's even less strain than Caps Lock IMO. [0]: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html
- kentt 10y ago
  Echoing the parent, take it very seriously. One thing that helped me was an verticle mouse (Evoluent C in my case). There's on one thing that will solve you're problems, just bit a pieces that will contribute to long term management. One other thing is WorkRave which reminds me to take breaks. This is helpful for my hands, but has been frustrating for getting into the groove of programming.
  - simplexion 10y ago
    The vertical mouse thing being "ergonomic" is nonsense. There are studies that have shown this. From memory it was generally worse for you to use a vertical mouse in terms of productivity and comfort. The only thing vertical mice reduce is wrist movement.
    - kentt 10y ago
      Perhaps you might appreciate a different perspective. Broadly speaking, ergonomic devices are meant to combat repetitive strain injuries. I think of ergo devices as useful if they give you more variation. They might not be better positions in themselves, but switching between palms down and palms sideways when moving from the keyboard to mouse gives you variation that helps to combat RSI. At the very least, I couldn't put my palm down without pain for a while, so a sideways mouse is better at least from that vantage point.
anexprogrammer 10y ago
Having recently noticed a little carpal tunnel (though in truth I don't know how to distinguish the two) and got rather sensitive to where my wrists rest on a laptop I can sympathise! I switched to a vertical mouse earlier in the year which has helped massively. My right wrist was always the most affected, and it turns out it was mostly down to mousing. Very true on games. I'd use for this too, and learning. Like someone else mentions a reactive keyboard would have been great when I was learning vi!
- Hemospectrum 10y ago
  > Having recently noticed a little carpal tunnel (though in truth I don't know how to distinguish the two) Carpal tunnel syndrome is a specific condition where your carpal tunnel constricts around a nerve. RSI is the umbrella term for these types of injuries.
chx 10y ago
May I recommend switching to vertical keyboard and mouse? Here https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0 you can see my solution made from tripod parts and the Matias Ergo Pro which is a) mechanical b) split c) uses tripod screws. For vertical mice, the Evoluent VerticalMouse is fantastic and you can get previous generation (which are just as fine) used on eBay for $25-30.
dimatter 10y ago
http://voicecode.io http://voicecode.io
SonderDesign 10y ago
For your RSI check out keyboardio, it's a nice clean ergo design with a mech.
bartvk 10y ago
> so changing all those keys to the shit_key equivalent would be neat An appropriate typo, because with this keyboard you can probably map the happy-poo emoji to your shit_key.

jacobolus 10y ago

Have you considered trying a keyboard with more thumb keys, and using a thumb for shift? (Or if you’re stuck on a standard keyboard, I recommend you try to use the opposite-hand shift key.)

chris_st 10y ago

You might consider either Autohotkey for Windows, or Keyboard Maestro for Macs (or something similar for Linux, I'm sure). You can rebind keys, including shift and control/command, to whatever or wherever you want. I did it to get control on the caps-lock key, but never conditioned myself to use it.

iheartmemcache 10y ago

Firstly: RSI is no joke - if you're experiencing pain, there's a non-zero chance it'll develop into a serious medical condition. (At MIT's Media Lab, someone's RSI got so bad he couldn't type at all and had to invent an interface using vocal phonemes to encode common OS actions/lexical keywords to control his OS (OS X) / editor (emacs) / language of choice (python)). If you feel even the slightest bit of pain, that's your body signalling to you 'hey buddy, don't do this'. I was suffering from emacs pinky to the point where my hands were aching hours after leaving my desk. On weekends, my tennis racket grip was significantly weaker and form poorer. Mapping Ctrl to caps, right shift to Esc, and buying a $30 MS Ergonomic keyboard solved my issues. My friends who have had worse issues spent the $300 on a Kinesis (which I had up until then considered to be snake oil) but it seems to have solved their issues entirely (and for $300 it's definitely a cheap investment compared to the opportunity cost of the time invested in physical therapy). If you're on Linux, you can at the os-level make modal changes. I made the right-alt key move into a different mode, so I effectively get an entirely separate key-mapping when that key is depressed. (E.g., hjkl for me is OS-wide, and sdfg lets me move the cursor. nb. Were I to make this decision again, I'd use Caps as my primary modifier, [ as my secondary, effectively giving me four full keyboard maps. Probably overkill but if I were using something like SolidWorks or Illustrator where having both keyboard and mouse access available often, I'd be experimenting with a setup like that -- keeping my right hand always on the mouse, and left for keyboard shortcuts -- biasing all of the shortcut keys to the left-hand region of the keyboard.) ErgoDox implements a similar system but on the micro-controller level so you don't even have to putz with modifiers and it's cross OS. I don't have one but I would have bought one if I used a desktop more often, simply due to the trackball-feature (effectively letting one use a mouse without leaving the home-row -- a 'must-have' for me).

dylanz 10y ago
Great post and an important disclaimer... take RSI seriously. I went the Kinesis route and switched to Dvorak (after taking a week off from typing) and I've never had a problem since (I ditched the Kinesis after a couple months and went back to my laptops keyboard).
rjeli 10y ago
If your pinky issue comes back, try Xah Lee's ctrl-palming method[0]. It's even less strain than Caps Lock IMO. [0]: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html
kentt 10y ago
Echoing the parent, take it very seriously. One thing that helped me was an verticle mouse (Evoluent C in my case). There's on one thing that will solve you're problems, just bit a pieces that will contribute to long term management. One other thing is WorkRave which reminds me to take breaks. This is helpful for my hands, but has been frustrating for getting into the groove of programming.
- simplexion 10y ago
  The vertical mouse thing being "ergonomic" is nonsense. There are studies that have shown this. From memory it was generally worse for you to use a vertical mouse in terms of productivity and comfort. The only thing vertical mice reduce is wrist movement.
  - kentt 10y ago
    Perhaps you might appreciate a different perspective. Broadly speaking, ergonomic devices are meant to combat repetitive strain injuries. I think of ergo devices as useful if they give you more variation. They might not be better positions in themselves, but switching between palms down and palms sideways when moving from the keyboard to mouse gives you variation that helps to combat RSI. At the very least, I couldn't put my palm down without pain for a while, so a sideways mouse is better at least from that vantage point.

anexprogrammer 10y ago

Having recently noticed a little carpal tunnel (though in truth I don't know how to distinguish the two) and got rather sensitive to where my wrists rest on a laptop I can sympathise! I switched to a vertical mouse earlier in the year which has helped massively. My right wrist was always the most affected, and it turns out it was mostly down to mousing. Very true on games. I'd use for this too, and learning. Like someone else mentions a reactive keyboard would have been great when I was learning vi!

Hemospectrum 10y ago
> Having recently noticed a little carpal tunnel (though in truth I don't know how to distinguish the two) Carpal tunnel syndrome is a specific condition where your carpal tunnel constricts around a nerve. RSI is the umbrella term for these types of injuries.

chx 10y ago

May I recommend switching to vertical keyboard and mouse? Here https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0 you can see my solution made from tripod parts and the Matias Ergo Pro which is a) mechanical b) split c) uses tripod screws. For vertical mice, the Evoluent VerticalMouse is fantastic and you can get previous generation (which are just as fine) used on eBay for $25-30.

dimatter 10y ago

http://voicecode.io http://voicecode.io

SonderDesign 10y ago

For your RSI check out keyboardio, it's a nice clean ergo design with a mech.

bartvk 10y ago

> so changing all those keys to the shit_key equivalent would be neat An appropriate typo, because with this keyboard you can probably map the happy-poo emoji to your shit_key.