8 ms·

Norman layout: less effort than QWERTY

41 points by lobo_tuerto 10y ago

kutkloon7 10y ago
I am much more bothered by the fact that I can't control my mouse and keyboard at the same time. Still, I applaud efforts like this to make things better. However, key layout seems to be one of those things that just won't change once the majority uses one standard.
- NikolaNovak 10y ago
  Isn't that exactly what Touchpoint (or whatever it's called these days) is for? My boss has been informed that laptop with a Touchpoint is a "condition of employment" - I cannot imagine working without one. I see people trying to work with touchpads and it just makes me cry... Sample Image: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/thinkpad_x1_carbon_touchpoint.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/think... Edit: Apparently Wikipedia imaginatively calls it a "pointing stick" :> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick
  - kutkloon7 10y ago
    I do have one indeed, but I'm not able to make accurate movements with it (for example, it's a lot of hassle to click the cross that closes a window with the touchpoint). Maybe a better one would help. I am using an old ThinkPad T410 now. I definitely want to buy a laptop in the same bussiness style as my next one. Love the feel of the keyboard and the separate buttons for the touchpad (I don't think I have ever accidentally pressed one). Are there any models (of any brand) with a particular good touchpoint feel? Edit: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/looking-for-nub-best-and-worst-notebook-pointing-sticks http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/looking-for-nub-best-and-w... Apparently, the Lenovo one is supposed to be good. Bummer, I don't like it at all. It seems to switch from moving slowly to moving really fast at a rather unpredictable spot, which makes it hard to make precise movements in a fast way. You usually overshoot about two times if you're trying to click in a small area. Edit: LOL, it also only just occured to me that using the trackpoint with your index finger is the best option (I was using my thumb before). Work a tiny bit better (still not very well honestly).
    - NikolaNovak 10y ago
      Thinkpad is the best one out there, so if you don't like it, you won't like anything else. I've used it on T410, T420, T450, T530, T61, T23. You do have to set up acceleration and speed to suit you (takes a while I assume), and set them up differently than you would for a mouse. I will absolutely agree that learning curve is higher for trackpoint and that it's less intuitive than touchpad - but it's a bit like Vi/Emacs vs MS Notepad - one is immediately intuitive, the other rewards you for initial investment. I think giving a random person a touchpad and a trackpoint, and asking them to immediately do something, touchpad will win. But I also firmly believe the achievable ceiling is higher on trackpoint. I cannot imagine using it with my thumb!! Interestingly, while I'm right handed and use my mouse with my right hand, I use my trackpoint with left index finger, thumb over buttons... but I think that's a quirk of mine and not a generalized thing.
  - fdim 10y ago
    I've never found it convenient to use. Touchpad with multi-touch (for scrolling) is much better and for any serious work not going to switch from a dedicated mouse (anywhere mx/mx2).I am not sure what people's issues are with such input. Disclaimer: I am software developer
    - kutkloon7 10y ago
      Moving your hands from the touchpad and the keyboard and back every time is rather annoying.
    - NikolaNovak 10y ago
      As I said above, for me, touchpad is slower and less precise (note that the blue/middle button is set for scrolling on trackpoint by default and works great). I'm willing to admit that it's largely due to whatever a person is accustomed to. However, I still have to see somebody use Touchpad in a way that doesn't make me cringe as to how long anything takes... maybe I need to find a more proficient friend :)
  - MayeulC 10y ago
    Very honestly, it boggles my mind just to try to imagine how one can accurately control a mouse with that thing. It feels so much like an analog joystick, and as such, it doesn't have a way to enter an absolute motion. Trackballs, touchpads, mice, even a lot of esoteric solutions such as eye-trackers do. Even Valve made a controller with touchpads to work around this problem. I find them too slow for long distances too, and they tend not to be accurate enough if you increase the speed. I had a couple of friends at university looking forward to have some of those, but they admitted (on their own, while presented with the above argumentation) it was for the "premium/professional" look of those rather than usability. So,in my highly subjective experience, this input method is highly unusable when used as a mouse. I wonder how you perceive these issues? Maybe I am just using them the wrong way? Edit: One thing I wish more laptops had is a third button, though, if only for interacting with tabs/link in the browser, and copy/paste. You can also use a touch pad with your thumb quite accurately (tap to click), but it's a bit awkward.
    - NikolaNovak 10y ago
      I'll agree that the Trackpoint uses a different method than virtually all other solutions (relative indication of direction desired as opposed to absolute motion). As to the rest though, I have exactly the same complaints about touchpad - lack of speed, accuracy, etc... it just boggles my mind how people can put up with it (especially on smaller laptops/netbooks). Largely I imagine therefore it's whatever you're used to. That being said, and for whatever this extremely biased and small sample is worth, there's nobody I know (friends, family, co-workers, fellow geeks) who can beat me on either speed or precision if they use a touchpad and I use trackpoint. I can pinpoint things down to a pixel (can never do it with touchpad, regardless of time), drag & drop with ease and I can move from one corner of the screen to the other in less than a second in one motion. [couldn't care less about "professional" look - nobody I know would be impressed... if anything, most people will just look at me in bewilderment/pity when I try to use the touchpad :]
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  Whenever I have to use the number pad for any length of time I find myself wondering why it isn't on the left. Sure I could tab or use arrow keys but often it is just easier to use the mouse to click the box/cell I want to put numbers into. So lots of moving my right hand back and forth. Having the number pad on the left would be so much easier.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    Well if it will be a huge boost to your productivity, you can always get a detached number pad a move it. http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/902/images/Image_03S.png http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/902/images/Image_03S.p...
  - toast0 10y ago
    You could move the mouse to the left instead; I've been doing that at work (but not at home) for ergo reasons: it's a shorter move from the home row to the mouse if the hand have to cross the number pad. It took about a week of cursing the ergo team, and then it's pretty much normal feeling. (Also some amount of cursing Apple because the reversed mouse buttons only work when i login, not at the login screen; and some amount of cursing mouse makers because very few models are nice for left handed use)
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  Another alternative pointer I've seen in use at a previous job was a 'roll bar': https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Roller_bar_mouse_2.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Roller_b..., a horizontal tube that can roll in both directions and be slid from side to side. Can be controlled with one or both thumbs, ends up just under the space bar.
- tgb 10y ago
  The vimium plugin for chrome has a neat feature: pressing f brings up one or two letter labels over each link on the page. Type the label and it'll open the link. This eliminates a large amount of my mouse use. But I agree, I've always wanted a plausible one handed keyboard (of course I'm writing this on one now: my phone).
adovenmuehle 10y ago
I actually learned Norman a number of months ago to a pretty reasonable level (90WPM) with http://type-fu.com/ http://type-fu.com/. However, I couldn't get over the hump to use it day to day. It's hard to unlearn vim commands and all. Strangely, I'm able to switch pretty effectively between qwerty and norman. Also strange is if I think about typing in my mind, it's in the norman layout.
- teilo 10y ago
  I found that it was possible to retain two layouts when switching, but at the expense of efficiency. I could not make significant progress until I abandoned any effort to retain my former layout. Having switched three times now, I found this to be the case every time. I'm up in the 120s at this point.
nkkollaw 10y ago
Kudos for the effort, but it's always going to be extremely hard getting people to adopt a different layout.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  Maybe easier than ever with most keyboards being virtual now...
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    Most? Mine is plastic. If you're talking about cell phones and tablets sure—but you certainly don't type with both your hands like on your laptop...
- aoeu345 10y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. I got hit with RSI this August. I became proficient with Dvorak by October. I looked into Colemak and Workman and might have switched to Norman if there were more info to convince me.
gamache 10y ago
I wish my key layout were the problem.
- thealistra 10y ago
  It's weird, as this is mostly a programmer-related community, I am a programmer and I never found that typing is the bottleneck. Mostly the thinking part is the bottleneck.
  - beat 10y ago
    Depends on what you're typing. For coding, it really doesn't make a difference... so much of the typing is punctuation anyways. But for prose - emails, blog posts, HN comments, etc - typing speed matters.
    - lj3 10y ago
      If it mattered that much, everybody would be typing steno instead of qwerty.
  - mbrock 10y ago
    For me it's not so much about finding the bottleneck to increase the speed of programming, it's much more about ergonomics and convenience. I do end up typing quite a lot, and in my experience, keyboard layouts that intentionally minimize uncomfortable movement just makes typing feel less bad and harmful, which is very valuable to me.
  - seppin 10y ago
    > It's weird, as this is mostly a programmer-related community, I am a programmer and I never found that typing is the bottleneck. Mostly the thinking part is the bottleneck. You're obviously not a writer :)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- 10y ago
dest 10y ago
User of bépo (more or less a French dvorak), I am frustrated by the locations of x, c and v for cut, copy, paste. It's not easy to change those shortcuts in software. Norman took care of that by keeping those keys in place as in qwerty, which is good.
painted 10y ago
what about the best layout for writing code? usually you use a lot of characters that require 2 key press like (){}:"|<>?~$+...
- chinathrow 10y ago
  This. And the Ctrl key so far away you easily overwork it.
  - rpxx 10y ago
    Definitely swap the Ctrl and Caps Lock in your OS. Ctrl on the home row makes so much more sense for coding.
- floatboth 10y ago
  Any layout (I prefer colemak) – you can add cool tricks to make it better. http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/ http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/ introduced me to "CapsLock == Control AND Escape" and "Shifts as parens" tricks. I have them set up in Xorg: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324951186b05a49c2de5d78ad0/x11/xinitrc#L45-L57 https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324... And Windows: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324951186b05a49c2de5d78ad0/windows/keyboardstuff.ahk https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324...
- iagooar 10y ago
  Pro-tip: if you can get a gamer keyboard, often times they come with plenty of additional, customizable keys. Then, you just assign whatever character you are using a lot to them.
- kutkloon7 10y ago
  Very interesting question. I think programming is so suboptimal from what we could do, just by clinging onto the ASCII-based textfiles paradigm. Actually, autocompletion really slows me down sometimes too. For example, sometimes I type faster than I can watch what happens, and I press the up button to go up a line. Sometimes autocompletion decided to give me some options, and decides that the up button press is meant for that list, and refuses to let me go up. So I have to press left or right until my cursor is no longer in the token that is being autocompleted, and THEN I can finally go up/down a line. Very bothersome. Also, sometimes space works to select a autocompletion option, for other editors it has to be enter. Same thing with braces: I will type both of them eventually, but a lot of IDE's put one there immediately, which is very annoying if you don't anticipate. The whole thing makes coding inconsistent among multiple different editors; a bad case. IMO features should only be triggered by keys which do not have an essential function already.
cryptos 10y ago
As long as keyboards can not show a different layout (e. g. OLED keys), all these efforts will not get much traction.
- pattisapu 10y ago
  There are stickers: https://www.amazon.com/Simplified-Keyboard-Lettering-Transparent-Background/dp/B0011FI3O8 https://www.amazon.com/Simplified-Keyboard-Lettering-Transpa... I can't imagine that not having backlit keys would be a dealbreaker for the kind of person willing to learn a new layout.
- 91bananas 10y ago
  And there are keycaps for nicer keyboards. They probably won't get any traction to speak of period, since no major manufacturers mass produce and sell keyboards in these layouts.
- teach 10y ago
  Assuming you're using a mechanical keyboard like a proper human, you can switch the keycaps around. If you're using a laptop then I have no sympathy. You have chosen that life.
  - veritas3241 10y ago
    You can change the keys on a laptop usually. I'm using a 2013 Macbook Pro and while it's disconcerting to pop the keys off, it can certainly be done.
    - teach 10y ago
      Good to know. I've never owned a laptop. I have a desktop machine at work and another at home and just virtually never have a need to do computer work when I'm not in one of those two places.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  At least anecdotally, you learn to touch type better if the keys on your keyboard don't match the layout you are learning. Almost better to just unlabel all the keys.
floatboth 10y ago
I type on Colemak — it already has many keyboard shortcuts same as QWERTY, most common letters on the home row, and it's old and popular enough to be included in many places out of the box (FreeBSD console, Xorg, macOS, iOS, Android). I don't see the how Norman is better.
morinted 10y ago
I write on Norman. AMA? I started in high school by switching to Dvorak, missed keyboard shortcuts, switched to Colemak. Didn't like it, switched to Workman. Didn't like it, found Norman. Haven't looked back. I also use Plover for stenography. I like typing.
- koolba 10y ago
  What makes a person switch to a non-default keyboard layout? How much of a pain in the ass is it to deal with other people's keyboards (which presumably are still QWERTY)? Does it work for a split layout? (ex: Microsfot Natural Keyboard) Any noticeable speed increase or decrease of wrist pain? I've all but eliminated it via a split keyboard but always on the lookout for something better.
  - Nadya 10y ago
    1) Comfort/reducing RSI. 2) Depends if you retain your ability to type with QWERTY or not. I type with Colemak at home and QWERTY at work. 3) Depending on how you type. I dislike split layouts because my left hand frequently hits my "right hand" keys. 4) Any non-trivial speed increases are likely entirely contributed to people learning how to properly type after switching keyboard layouts, IMO. Comfort/decrease of pain is tied to making both fewer and smaller movements when typing.
    - lj3 10y ago
      > 1) Comfort/reducing RSI. That's why I switched. I was having some hand pains using Qwerty. I switched to Dvorak and never had those pains again. I never did get to the same speed in dvorak that I had in Qwerty. That's largely because I learned to type qwerty by playing MUDs, where fast typing can literally save your life. None of my dvorak typing has had the same sense of urgency. :)
  - morinted 10y ago
    Great questions! > What makes a person switch to a non-default keyboard layout? I switched in high school. I think one of the first times I heard about Dvorak was this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/554/ https://xkcd.com/554/ I also found the Dvorak Zine to be of great inspiration: http://www.dvzine.org/ http://www.dvzine.org/ Personally, I was never formally taught QWERTY, and so my hand placement while typing on a QWERTY keyboard is whack. I'm all over the place → namely, because I'm left-handed, my left hand reaches all the over to the Y, H, and B on the keyboard. My right hand is shifted and the right pinky lies on the right shift key. So I couldn't even use split layouts with QWERTY! > How much of a pain in the ass is it to deal with other people's keyboards (which presumably are still QWERTY)? I still type QWERTY completely fine, and on other people's computers I just deal with it. On my own computer, I have a hot key to switch back and forth; sometimes games have hard-coded WASD so I need to switch, other times I want to let someone write on my keyboard. It's not inconvenient. > Does it work for a split layout? (ex: Microsfot Natural Keyboard) After learning Dvorak I got a TypeMatrix keyboard, which I loved to bits. It's split and ortholinear. Then I graduated to an ErgoDox. I'd say that my "properly-learned" touch typing layouts like Dvorak and Norman work much better with a split layout than when one writes non-traditionally on a QWERTY layout (noting, too, that not many people touch-type 100% correctly like they would teach you in class.) With these newer layouts, they are designed to be touch-typed and favor the home row, and so a shifted configuration like I have on QWERTY would not work well with a custom layout. > Any noticeable speed increase or decrease of wrist pain? I've all but eliminated it via a split keyboard but always on the lookout for something better. Speed increase: not appreciable. I went from ~95 words per minute on QWERTY to ~100 words per minute on Dvorak/Norman. However, for me, I did have greater accuracy, and I do find that comfort is greater.
red2awn 10y ago
How much better is Norman than QWERTY? I am learning Dvorak right now but I miss keyboard short cuts!
- lelag 10y ago
  As I wrote in response to another comment, I think Dvorak is still the best qwerty alternative because of it's ubiquitousness. Once you make the switch to an alternative layout, having to write on a qwerty layout becomes very unpleasant. Unfortunately, it is often common that you have to type on a borrowed system and you want a layout you can easily switch to. Dvorak layout is standard in all operating system whereas most alternatives are not and requires additional drivers / setup files. While most people will let you change a system settings for a while, it will be frowned upon if you start downloading strange software from the internet... Switching to Dvorak and back on any modern OS take less than 20 seconds so it's not an issue to setup even for a short time.
twoquestions 10y ago
For those of you who type with a non-QWERTY layout and use either Emacs or Vim bindings for your text editor, how have you adapted? You would think you'd have to retool your muscle memory for the new bindings, is this the case?
- lelag 10y ago
  I've been typing in Dvorak for over 10 years. I kept the same shortcut / vim command as standard and I got used to the different physical position. For some shortcut, it is indeed sub-optimal (ctrl+c / v in particular) but it works without any additional configuration on any system / software. That's also one of my reason of choosing US-Dvorak as an alternative to Qwerty rather than more modern / efficient alternatives : it is available in most operating systems out of the box.
- lj3 10y ago
  For me, the hardest was learning where hjkl is in dvorak. I think I remapped them at first, so htns were hjkl. That caused other problems, so I eventually just forced myself to get used to the fact the movement keys were no longer on the home row.
cgriswald 10y ago
I'm genuinely curious about people who have actually switched typing layout for day-to-day use. I've played with Dvorak for awhile, but I already type at over 100 wpm with QWERTY, and I know whatever keyboard I'm likely to come into contact with that is not my own is likely to be QWERTY. Add to that, the changing of shortcuts, vim commands, etc. (which Norman attempts to address somewhat) and I'm not strongly motivated to try. Has anyone found it valuable to switch and if so, why?
- teilo 10y ago
  No reason to change shortcuts. I use vim on Dvorak. It's all just muscle memory. Makes no difference where the keys are for the most part.
- thatswrong0 10y ago
  I switched in college to Colemak when I wanted to learn how to properly touch type. Turns out that unlearning a weird QWERTY typing style developed to talk shit during Age of Empires 2 games as a kid.. is hard. While trying to learn QWERTY proper I also got frustrated by how inconvenient it felt. So I did some research and decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try a different layout. If you already touch type quickly on QWERTY, I only think it would be worth it if you wanted to potentially help with RSI.. although I'd try an ergonomic keyboard first.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    I have a similar tale. Was having pains in my wrists in grad school and decided it was way past time to unlearn my broken QWERTY touch typing technique (in my case my left hand was shifted a key left such that the pinky was homed primarily shift/caps/tab/ctrl and my right hand "wandered" to compensate). Trying to relearn QWERTY itself just lead to falling back into old habits. Forcing myself to learn an entirely different one (in my case, also Colemak) was a huge part of making good habits stick and I've been glad I did so.
greenspot 10y ago
> 46% less effort than QWERTY For whom? For programmers? For Vim users? For Emacs users? For Photoshop users? For writers? For English writers? For Non-English writers? For Mathematica users? For LaTex users? For my mother browsing the net on her iPad? Everyone has a different use case, programmers use special characters more than non-programmers, Vim users use different shortcuts than Photoshop users, C programmers use the semicolon while Ruby programmers don't, American writers use the letter y more than German ones and so on. Claiming 46% less effort than qwerty needs further clarification. Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, otherwise the constant mental switch from one to another keyboard layout won't bring you any speed and flow improvement. My writing speed goes down to zero when I have to write on a British layout (which is already super close to the US layout compared to other countries).
- Walf 10y ago
  Not for Vim users, that's for sure.
  - morinted 10y ago
    Custom layout users still use vim (as crazy as we are). If you care about efficiency enough to learn an alternative keyboard layout, you probably care about efficiency enough to learn a modal editor. Even though my hjkl isn't in a line, it's still convenient enough. Muscle memory is muscle memory.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, Desktop and laptop, sure. Mobile (which I assumed meant a palmtop such as a smartphone), not so much. If you change the layout of your keyboard, you will touch type. This is a very different kind of memory than the typical hunt&peck. Phone virtual keyboards are even more different. In practice, my dekstop and laptop use the Bépo layout (a Dvorak-like for French), and I kept Azerty (French Qwerty derivative) on my phone. The discrepancy never caused me any problem.
wkearney99 10y ago
They might as well name one Quixote, or Windmills. Because it's an equally pointless gesture expecting anyone to take on the quest to use one.
dimman 10y ago
For people who have other layouts than us on their keyboards, it's easy in *nix to remap keys to get special chars. For instance I use xmodmap to remap ALTGR + [ for å, ALTGR + ; for ö (+ SHIFT produces capital letters of the same) Example: xmodmap -e "keycode 108 = Mode_switch" && xmodmap -e "keycode 48 = apostrophe quotedbl adiaeresis Adiaeresis" This can of course be used for any kind of remapping in case your unhappy with some key locations.
libdong 10y ago
I've always wonder why Norman, Dvorak etc. preform so much better than qwerty by most metrics, but real-world studies showing that much of a difference are rather lacking. I can imagine it must be hard to design a good study comparing them when almost everyone uses qwerty.
- hashhar 10y ago
  I don't think the gains are manifested as speed. They come as better ergonomics. Try this tool [1] to see how different layouts compare. [1]: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main
- teilo 10y ago
  There is no speed advantage. The anecdotal evidence saying otherwise has nothing to do with the layout, but with the effort put into learning to type properly. The rest is confirmation bias.
V-2 10y ago
I used carpalX for a while: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ I did feel it was more convenient, but I never got up to my typing speed with regular QWERTY (~130wpm), I peaked at about 60 or 80, can't remember. Surely I would get there with time, but it would take time and be limited to English anyway, which isn't my first language. The website itself is very interesting though: the guy developed an algorithm for assessing the quality of keyboard layouts, and another - based on simulated annealing - to create his own. The theory behind this was more interesting to me than the layout itself. I played with Dvorak and Colemak too, but neither felt as comfy. One great idea I adopted from Colemak though is setting that useless caps lock key to backspace. That feels really great, especially the ability of deleting the last word with only left hand; ctrl + backspace requires both hands on normal keyboard layout, ctrl + capslock doesn't and feels very natural. It's about the first thing I set up on every new machine I lay my hands on.
nbanks 10y ago
I'll stick to Dvorak until I get around to getting a stenosaurus/stenoboard/opensteno or some other form of stenograph system. The primary problem I've had with Dvorak over the years was learning a new layout when I started French!
jerdavis 10y ago
Even sidestepping the 46% less "For Whom" : Qwerty/dvorak/whatever .. No one is really worried about cranking out Words per minute anymore. Nor is it going to significantly change RSI injuries where one wasn't already going to happen.
sliken 10y ago
Seems like the best way to quantify such claims is a small daemon that listens to your keystrokes. Which would use a config file to configure which finger hits which key. Then with the logs you could record top typing speed, and total finger distance. Then users could contribute their speeds, accuracy (number of backspaces), and finger distance for whatever mapping pleases them.
kahrkunne 10y ago
The thing about alternative keyboard layouts is that I can type on QWERTY at 138 words per minute and use both vim and emacs fluently. I recognize that QWERTY is a bad keyboard layout, but switching to anything else would incur a productivity loss that'd last for years.
anotheryou 10y ago
I'm on neo. Sadly optimized german and german keyboards. It features really lovely re-use of the keys for caps-lock and the alt-gr. hover the layers here: http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html layer 4 is numpad, arrow keys, backspace, del escape. the layer above I don't use, maybe handy for mathematicians. Some hidden bonuses too: [caps]+[tab],[U],[C],[1],[+],[2],[=] produces: 1+2=3

41 points by lobo_tuerto 10y ago

I am much more bothered by the fact that I can't control my mouse and keyboard at the same time. Still, I applaud efforts like this to make things better. However, key layout seems to be one of those things that just won't change once the majority uses one standard.

NikolaNovak 10y ago
Isn't that exactly what Touchpoint (or whatever it's called these days) is for? My boss has been informed that laptop with a Touchpoint is a "condition of employment" - I cannot imagine working without one. I see people trying to work with touchpads and it just makes me cry... Sample Image: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/thinkpad_x1_carbon_touchpoint.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/think... Edit: Apparently Wikipedia imaginatively calls it a "pointing stick" :> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick
- kutkloon7 10y ago
  I do have one indeed, but I'm not able to make accurate movements with it (for example, it's a lot of hassle to click the cross that closes a window with the touchpoint). Maybe a better one would help. I am using an old ThinkPad T410 now. I definitely want to buy a laptop in the same bussiness style as my next one. Love the feel of the keyboard and the separate buttons for the touchpad (I don't think I have ever accidentally pressed one). Are there any models (of any brand) with a particular good touchpoint feel? Edit: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/looking-for-nub-best-and-worst-notebook-pointing-sticks http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/looking-for-nub-best-and-w... Apparently, the Lenovo one is supposed to be good. Bummer, I don't like it at all. It seems to switch from moving slowly to moving really fast at a rather unpredictable spot, which makes it hard to make precise movements in a fast way. You usually overshoot about two times if you're trying to click in a small area. Edit: LOL, it also only just occured to me that using the trackpoint with your index finger is the best option (I was using my thumb before). Work a tiny bit better (still not very well honestly).
  - NikolaNovak 10y ago
    Thinkpad is the best one out there, so if you don't like it, you won't like anything else. I've used it on T410, T420, T450, T530, T61, T23. You do have to set up acceleration and speed to suit you (takes a while I assume), and set them up differently than you would for a mouse. I will absolutely agree that learning curve is higher for trackpoint and that it's less intuitive than touchpad - but it's a bit like Vi/Emacs vs MS Notepad - one is immediately intuitive, the other rewards you for initial investment. I think giving a random person a touchpad and a trackpoint, and asking them to immediately do something, touchpad will win. But I also firmly believe the achievable ceiling is higher on trackpoint. I cannot imagine using it with my thumb!! Interestingly, while I'm right handed and use my mouse with my right hand, I use my trackpoint with left index finger, thumb over buttons... but I think that's a quirk of mine and not a generalized thing.
- fdim 10y ago
  I've never found it convenient to use. Touchpad with multi-touch (for scrolling) is much better and for any serious work not going to switch from a dedicated mouse (anywhere mx/mx2).I am not sure what people's issues are with such input. Disclaimer: I am software developer
  - kutkloon7 10y ago
    Moving your hands from the touchpad and the keyboard and back every time is rather annoying.
  - NikolaNovak 10y ago
    As I said above, for me, touchpad is slower and less precise (note that the blue/middle button is set for scrolling on trackpoint by default and works great). I'm willing to admit that it's largely due to whatever a person is accustomed to. However, I still have to see somebody use Touchpad in a way that doesn't make me cringe as to how long anything takes... maybe I need to find a more proficient friend :)
- MayeulC 10y ago
  Very honestly, it boggles my mind just to try to imagine how one can accurately control a mouse with that thing. It feels so much like an analog joystick, and as such, it doesn't have a way to enter an absolute motion. Trackballs, touchpads, mice, even a lot of esoteric solutions such as eye-trackers do. Even Valve made a controller with touchpads to work around this problem. I find them too slow for long distances too, and they tend not to be accurate enough if you increase the speed. I had a couple of friends at university looking forward to have some of those, but they admitted (on their own, while presented with the above argumentation) it was for the "premium/professional" look of those rather than usability. So,in my highly subjective experience, this input method is highly unusable when used as a mouse. I wonder how you perceive these issues? Maybe I am just using them the wrong way? Edit: One thing I wish more laptops had is a third button, though, if only for interacting with tabs/link in the browser, and copy/paste. You can also use a touch pad with your thumb quite accurately (tap to click), but it's a bit awkward.
  - NikolaNovak 10y ago
    I'll agree that the Trackpoint uses a different method than virtually all other solutions (relative indication of direction desired as opposed to absolute motion). As to the rest though, I have exactly the same complaints about touchpad - lack of speed, accuracy, etc... it just boggles my mind how people can put up with it (especially on smaller laptops/netbooks). Largely I imagine therefore it's whatever you're used to. That being said, and for whatever this extremely biased and small sample is worth, there's nobody I know (friends, family, co-workers, fellow geeks) who can beat me on either speed or precision if they use a touchpad and I use trackpoint. I can pinpoint things down to a pixel (can never do it with touchpad, regardless of time), drag & drop with ease and I can move from one corner of the screen to the other in less than a second in one motion. [couldn't care less about "professional" look - nobody I know would be impressed... if anything, most people will just look at me in bewilderment/pity when I try to use the touchpad :]
jccalhoun 10y ago
Whenever I have to use the number pad for any length of time I find myself wondering why it isn't on the left. Sure I could tab or use arrow keys but often it is just easier to use the mouse to click the box/cell I want to put numbers into. So lots of moving my right hand back and forth. Having the number pad on the left would be so much easier.
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  Well if it will be a huge boost to your productivity, you can always get a detached number pad a move it. http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/902/images/Image_03S.png http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/902/images/Image_03S.p...
- toast0 10y ago
  You could move the mouse to the left instead; I've been doing that at work (but not at home) for ergo reasons: it's a shorter move from the home row to the mouse if the hand have to cross the number pad. It took about a week of cursing the ergo team, and then it's pretty much normal feeling. (Also some amount of cursing Apple because the reversed mouse buttons only work when i login, not at the login screen; and some amount of cursing mouse makers because very few models are nice for left handed use)
Cthulhu_ 10y ago
Another alternative pointer I've seen in use at a previous job was a 'roll bar': https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Roller_bar_mouse_2.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Roller_b..., a horizontal tube that can roll in both directions and be slid from side to side. Can be controlled with one or both thumbs, ends up just under the space bar.
tgb 10y ago
The vimium plugin for chrome has a neat feature: pressing f brings up one or two letter labels over each link on the page. Type the label and it'll open the link. This eliminates a large amount of my mouse use. But I agree, I've always wanted a plausible one handed keyboard (of course I'm writing this on one now: my phone).

adovenmuehle 10y ago

I actually learned Norman a number of months ago to a pretty reasonable level (90WPM) with http://type-fu.com/ http://type-fu.com/. However, I couldn't get over the hump to use it day to day. It's hard to unlearn vim commands and all. Strangely, I'm able to switch pretty effectively between qwerty and norman. Also strange is if I think about typing in my mind, it's in the norman layout.

teilo 10y ago
I found that it was possible to retain two layouts when switching, but at the expense of efficiency. I could not make significant progress until I abandoned any effort to retain my former layout. Having switched three times now, I found this to be the case every time. I'm up in the 120s at this point.

nkkollaw 10y ago

Kudos for the effort, but it's always going to be extremely hard getting people to adopt a different layout.

Neliquat 10y ago
Maybe easier than ever with most keyboards being virtual now...
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  Most? Mine is plastic. If you're talking about cell phones and tablets sure—but you certainly don't type with both your hands like on your laptop...
aoeu345 10y ago
I wouldn't be so sure. I got hit with RSI this August. I became proficient with Dvorak by October. I looked into Colemak and Workman and might have switched to Norman if there were more info to convince me.

gamache 10y ago

I wish my key layout were the problem.

thealistra 10y ago
It's weird, as this is mostly a programmer-related community, I am a programmer and I never found that typing is the bottleneck. Mostly the thinking part is the bottleneck.
- beat 10y ago
  Depends on what you're typing. For coding, it really doesn't make a difference... so much of the typing is punctuation anyways. But for prose - emails, blog posts, HN comments, etc - typing speed matters.
  - lj3 10y ago
    If it mattered that much, everybody would be typing steno instead of qwerty.
- mbrock 10y ago
  For me it's not so much about finding the bottleneck to increase the speed of programming, it's much more about ergonomics and convenience. I do end up typing quite a lot, and in my experience, keyboard layouts that intentionally minimize uncomfortable movement just makes typing feel less bad and harmful, which is very valuable to me.
- seppin 10y ago
  > It's weird, as this is mostly a programmer-related community, I am a programmer and I never found that typing is the bottleneck. Mostly the thinking part is the bottleneck. You're obviously not a writer :)
  - deleted 10y ago
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dest 10y ago

User of bépo (more or less a French dvorak), I am frustrated by the locations of x, c and v for cut, copy, paste. It's not easy to change those shortcuts in software. Norman took care of that by keeping those keys in place as in qwerty, which is good.

painted 10y ago

what about the best layout for writing code? usually you use a lot of characters that require 2 key press like (){}:"|<>?~$+...

chinathrow 10y ago
This. And the Ctrl key so far away you easily overwork it.
- rpxx 10y ago
  Definitely swap the Ctrl and Caps Lock in your OS. Ctrl on the home row makes so much more sense for coding.
floatboth 10y ago
Any layout (I prefer colemak) – you can add cool tricks to make it better. http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/ http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/ introduced me to "CapsLock == Control AND Escape" and "Shifts as parens" tricks. I have them set up in Xorg: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324951186b05a49c2de5d78ad0/x11/xinitrc#L45-L57 https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324... And Windows: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324951186b05a49c2de5d78ad0/windows/keyboardstuff.ahk https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324...
iagooar 10y ago
Pro-tip: if you can get a gamer keyboard, often times they come with plenty of additional, customizable keys. Then, you just assign whatever character you are using a lot to them.
kutkloon7 10y ago
Very interesting question. I think programming is so suboptimal from what we could do, just by clinging onto the ASCII-based textfiles paradigm. Actually, autocompletion really slows me down sometimes too. For example, sometimes I type faster than I can watch what happens, and I press the up button to go up a line. Sometimes autocompletion decided to give me some options, and decides that the up button press is meant for that list, and refuses to let me go up. So I have to press left or right until my cursor is no longer in the token that is being autocompleted, and THEN I can finally go up/down a line. Very bothersome. Also, sometimes space works to select a autocompletion option, for other editors it has to be enter. Same thing with braces: I will type both of them eventually, but a lot of IDE's put one there immediately, which is very annoying if you don't anticipate. The whole thing makes coding inconsistent among multiple different editors; a bad case. IMO features should only be triggered by keys which do not have an essential function already.

cryptos 10y ago

As long as keyboards can not show a different layout (e. g. OLED keys), all these efforts will not get much traction.

pattisapu 10y ago
There are stickers: https://www.amazon.com/Simplified-Keyboard-Lettering-Transparent-Background/dp/B0011FI3O8 https://www.amazon.com/Simplified-Keyboard-Lettering-Transpa... I can't imagine that not having backlit keys would be a dealbreaker for the kind of person willing to learn a new layout.
91bananas 10y ago
And there are keycaps for nicer keyboards. They probably won't get any traction to speak of period, since no major manufacturers mass produce and sell keyboards in these layouts.
teach 10y ago
Assuming you're using a mechanical keyboard like a proper human, you can switch the keycaps around. If you're using a laptop then I have no sympathy. You have chosen that life.
- veritas3241 10y ago
  You can change the keys on a laptop usually. I'm using a 2013 Macbook Pro and while it's disconcerting to pop the keys off, it can certainly be done.
  - teach 10y ago
    Good to know. I've never owned a laptop. I have a desktop machine at work and another at home and just virtually never have a need to do computer work when I'm not in one of those two places.
WorldMaker 10y ago
At least anecdotally, you learn to touch type better if the keys on your keyboard don't match the layout you are learning. Almost better to just unlabel all the keys.

floatboth 10y ago

I type on Colemak — it already has many keyboard shortcuts same as QWERTY, most common letters on the home row, and it's old and popular enough to be included in many places out of the box (FreeBSD console, Xorg, macOS, iOS, Android). I don't see the how Norman is better.

morinted 10y ago

I write on Norman. AMA? I started in high school by switching to Dvorak, missed keyboard shortcuts, switched to Colemak. Didn't like it, switched to Workman. Didn't like it, found Norman. Haven't looked back. I also use Plover for stenography. I like typing.

koolba 10y ago
What makes a person switch to a non-default keyboard layout? How much of a pain in the ass is it to deal with other people's keyboards (which presumably are still QWERTY)? Does it work for a split layout? (ex: Microsfot Natural Keyboard) Any noticeable speed increase or decrease of wrist pain? I've all but eliminated it via a split keyboard but always on the lookout for something better.
- Nadya 10y ago
  1) Comfort/reducing RSI. 2) Depends if you retain your ability to type with QWERTY or not. I type with Colemak at home and QWERTY at work. 3) Depending on how you type. I dislike split layouts because my left hand frequently hits my "right hand" keys. 4) Any non-trivial speed increases are likely entirely contributed to people learning how to properly type after switching keyboard layouts, IMO. Comfort/decrease of pain is tied to making both fewer and smaller movements when typing.
  - lj3 10y ago
    > 1) Comfort/reducing RSI. That's why I switched. I was having some hand pains using Qwerty. I switched to Dvorak and never had those pains again. I never did get to the same speed in dvorak that I had in Qwerty. That's largely because I learned to type qwerty by playing MUDs, where fast typing can literally save your life. None of my dvorak typing has had the same sense of urgency. :)
- morinted 10y ago
  Great questions! > What makes a person switch to a non-default keyboard layout? I switched in high school. I think one of the first times I heard about Dvorak was this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/554/ https://xkcd.com/554/ I also found the Dvorak Zine to be of great inspiration: http://www.dvzine.org/ http://www.dvzine.org/ Personally, I was never formally taught QWERTY, and so my hand placement while typing on a QWERTY keyboard is whack. I'm all over the place → namely, because I'm left-handed, my left hand reaches all the over to the Y, H, and B on the keyboard. My right hand is shifted and the right pinky lies on the right shift key. So I couldn't even use split layouts with QWERTY! > How much of a pain in the ass is it to deal with other people's keyboards (which presumably are still QWERTY)? I still type QWERTY completely fine, and on other people's computers I just deal with it. On my own computer, I have a hot key to switch back and forth; sometimes games have hard-coded WASD so I need to switch, other times I want to let someone write on my keyboard. It's not inconvenient. > Does it work for a split layout? (ex: Microsfot Natural Keyboard) After learning Dvorak I got a TypeMatrix keyboard, which I loved to bits. It's split and ortholinear. Then I graduated to an ErgoDox. I'd say that my "properly-learned" touch typing layouts like Dvorak and Norman work much better with a split layout than when one writes non-traditionally on a QWERTY layout (noting, too, that not many people touch-type 100% correctly like they would teach you in class.) With these newer layouts, they are designed to be touch-typed and favor the home row, and so a shifted configuration like I have on QWERTY would not work well with a custom layout. > Any noticeable speed increase or decrease of wrist pain? I've all but eliminated it via a split keyboard but always on the lookout for something better. Speed increase: not appreciable. I went from ~95 words per minute on QWERTY to ~100 words per minute on Dvorak/Norman. However, for me, I did have greater accuracy, and I do find that comfort is greater.

red2awn 10y ago

How much better is Norman than QWERTY? I am learning Dvorak right now but I miss keyboard short cuts!

lelag 10y ago
As I wrote in response to another comment, I think Dvorak is still the best qwerty alternative because of it's ubiquitousness. Once you make the switch to an alternative layout, having to write on a qwerty layout becomes very unpleasant. Unfortunately, it is often common that you have to type on a borrowed system and you want a layout you can easily switch to. Dvorak layout is standard in all operating system whereas most alternatives are not and requires additional drivers / setup files. While most people will let you change a system settings for a while, it will be frowned upon if you start downloading strange software from the internet... Switching to Dvorak and back on any modern OS take less than 20 seconds so it's not an issue to setup even for a short time.

twoquestions 10y ago

For those of you who type with a non-QWERTY layout and use either Emacs or Vim bindings for your text editor, how have you adapted? You would think you'd have to retool your muscle memory for the new bindings, is this the case?

lelag 10y ago
I've been typing in Dvorak for over 10 years. I kept the same shortcut / vim command as standard and I got used to the different physical position. For some shortcut, it is indeed sub-optimal (ctrl+c / v in particular) but it works without any additional configuration on any system / software. That's also one of my reason of choosing US-Dvorak as an alternative to Qwerty rather than more modern / efficient alternatives : it is available in most operating systems out of the box.
lj3 10y ago
For me, the hardest was learning where hjkl is in dvorak. I think I remapped them at first, so htns were hjkl. That caused other problems, so I eventually just forced myself to get used to the fact the movement keys were no longer on the home row.

cgriswald 10y ago

I'm genuinely curious about people who have actually switched typing layout for day-to-day use. I've played with Dvorak for awhile, but I already type at over 100 wpm with QWERTY, and I know whatever keyboard I'm likely to come into contact with that is not my own is likely to be QWERTY. Add to that, the changing of shortcuts, vim commands, etc. (which Norman attempts to address somewhat) and I'm not strongly motivated to try. Has anyone found it valuable to switch and if so, why?

teilo 10y ago
No reason to change shortcuts. I use vim on Dvorak. It's all just muscle memory. Makes no difference where the keys are for the most part.
thatswrong0 10y ago
I switched in college to Colemak when I wanted to learn how to properly touch type. Turns out that unlearning a weird QWERTY typing style developed to talk shit during Age of Empires 2 games as a kid.. is hard. While trying to learn QWERTY proper I also got frustrated by how inconvenient it felt. So I did some research and decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try a different layout. If you already touch type quickly on QWERTY, I only think it would be worth it if you wanted to potentially help with RSI.. although I'd try an ergonomic keyboard first.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  I have a similar tale. Was having pains in my wrists in grad school and decided it was way past time to unlearn my broken QWERTY touch typing technique (in my case my left hand was shifted a key left such that the pinky was homed primarily shift/caps/tab/ctrl and my right hand "wandered" to compensate). Trying to relearn QWERTY itself just lead to falling back into old habits. Forcing myself to learn an entirely different one (in my case, also Colemak) was a huge part of making good habits stick and I've been glad I did so.

greenspot 10y ago

> 46% less effort than QWERTY For whom? For programmers? For Vim users? For Emacs users? For Photoshop users? For writers? For English writers? For Non-English writers? For Mathematica users? For LaTex users? For my mother browsing the net on her iPad? Everyone has a different use case, programmers use special characters more than non-programmers, Vim users use different shortcuts than Photoshop users, C programmers use the semicolon while Ruby programmers don't, American writers use the letter y more than German ones and so on. Claiming 46% less effort than qwerty needs further clarification. Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, otherwise the constant mental switch from one to another keyboard layout won't bring you any speed and flow improvement. My writing speed goes down to zero when I have to write on a British layout (which is already super close to the US layout compared to other countries).

Walf 10y ago
Not for Vim users, that's for sure.
- morinted 10y ago
  Custom layout users still use vim (as crazy as we are). If you care about efficiency enough to learn an alternative keyboard layout, you probably care about efficiency enough to learn a modal editor. Even though my hjkl isn't in a line, it's still convenient enough. Muscle memory is muscle memory.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
> Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, Desktop and laptop, sure. Mobile (which I assumed meant a palmtop such as a smartphone), not so much. If you change the layout of your keyboard, you will touch type. This is a very different kind of memory than the typical hunt&peck. Phone virtual keyboards are even more different. In practice, my dekstop and laptop use the Bépo layout (a Dvorak-like for French), and I kept Azerty (French Qwerty derivative) on my phone. The discrepancy never caused me any problem.

wkearney99 10y ago

They might as well name one Quixote, or Windmills. Because it's an equally pointless gesture expecting anyone to take on the quest to use one.

dimman 10y ago

For people who have other layouts than us on their keyboards, it's easy in *nix to remap keys to get special chars. For instance I use xmodmap to remap ALTGR + [ for å, ALTGR + ; for ö (+ SHIFT produces capital letters of the same) Example: xmodmap -e "keycode 108 = Mode_switch" && xmodmap -e "keycode 48 = apostrophe quotedbl adiaeresis Adiaeresis" This can of course be used for any kind of remapping in case your unhappy with some key locations.

libdong 10y ago

I've always wonder why Norman, Dvorak etc. preform so much better than qwerty by most metrics, but real-world studies showing that much of a difference are rather lacking. I can imagine it must be hard to design a good study comparing them when almost everyone uses qwerty.

hashhar 10y ago
I don't think the gains are manifested as speed. They come as better ergonomics. Try this tool [1] to see how different layouts compare. [1]: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main
teilo 10y ago
There is no speed advantage. The anecdotal evidence saying otherwise has nothing to do with the layout, but with the effort put into learning to type properly. The rest is confirmation bias.

V-2 10y ago

I used carpalX for a while: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ I did feel it was more convenient, but I never got up to my typing speed with regular QWERTY (~130wpm), I peaked at about 60 or 80, can't remember. Surely I would get there with time, but it would take time and be limited to English anyway, which isn't my first language. The website itself is very interesting though: the guy developed an algorithm for assessing the quality of keyboard layouts, and another - based on simulated annealing - to create his own. The theory behind this was more interesting to me than the layout itself. I played with Dvorak and Colemak too, but neither felt as comfy. One great idea I adopted from Colemak though is setting that useless caps lock key to backspace. That feels really great, especially the ability of deleting the last word with only left hand; ctrl + backspace requires both hands on normal keyboard layout, ctrl + capslock doesn't and feels very natural. It's about the first thing I set up on every new machine I lay my hands on.

nbanks 10y ago

I'll stick to Dvorak until I get around to getting a stenosaurus/stenoboard/opensteno or some other form of stenograph system. The primary problem I've had with Dvorak over the years was learning a new layout when I started French!

jerdavis 10y ago

Even sidestepping the 46% less "For Whom" : Qwerty/dvorak/whatever .. No one is really worried about cranking out Words per minute anymore. Nor is it going to significantly change RSI injuries where one wasn't already going to happen.

sliken 10y ago

Seems like the best way to quantify such claims is a small daemon that listens to your keystrokes. Which would use a config file to configure which finger hits which key. Then with the logs you could record top typing speed, and total finger distance. Then users could contribute their speeds, accuracy (number of backspaces), and finger distance for whatever mapping pleases them.

kahrkunne 10y ago

The thing about alternative keyboard layouts is that I can type on QWERTY at 138 words per minute and use both vim and emacs fluently. I recognize that QWERTY is a bad keyboard layout, but switching to anything else would incur a productivity loss that'd last for years.

anotheryou 10y ago

I'm on neo. Sadly optimized german and german keyboards. It features really lovely re-use of the keys for caps-lock and the alt-gr. hover the layers here: http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html layer 4 is numpad, arrow keys, backspace, del escape. the layer above I don't use, maybe handy for mathematicians. Some hidden bonuses too: [caps]+[tab],[U],[C],[1],[+],[2],[=] produces: 1+2=3