13 ms·

An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

164 points by michidk 5y ago

bloopernova 5y ago
I'd like to see that AI project ran on different codebases. For example, a C++ corpus is going to be weighted differently than a Python one.
verisimi 5y ago
Not as good as this! https://www.charachorder.com/ https://www.charachorder.com/ 500wpm apparently!
- xcambar 5y ago
  Is this for real? To me, it looks way too error prone (3D movement per key... wat) and english only. I honestly wondered whether it was a stunt from Cards Against Humanity or The Onion. But if not, you got me curious.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    I know what you mean.. but apparently you can buy one! I haven't, so I can't verify it. And there seem to be training manuals etc.
- ivanche 5y ago
  They need to check marketing copy. "500% less keystrokes" is mathematically impossible. "80% less keystrokes" is.
- mkl 5y ago
  500wpm for a few seconds to type in a single massively practised sentence. Big discussion from a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827461
jonplackett 5y ago
Semi-colon gets pride of place (presumably for coding) but no sign of a hash key
- nolok 5y ago
  I'm not sure ; is due to coding, this keyboard would be terrible for coding (# ? ! % * + | [] { } ...)
  - jonplackett 5y ago
    That just makes it weirder. Who else uses a semi colon so much?
ZephyrOhm 5y ago
If there's ever an Android keyboard app, I'd love to give it a shot
unkoman 5y ago
Having a dedicated capslock key seems a bit much.
moss2 5y ago
Looks cool :) Can't use it cause my alphabet has three more letters than the English.
- hans1729 5y ago
  fwiw, I speak German and find the german layout to be insultingly unusable, especially for coding. So I use the american hardware layout (which lack three german letters) and type Umlaute äöü with alt+u+{a|o|u}. It doesn't feel like it adds significant overhead, I've built the muscle memory within minutes. Any acceptable operating system should allow for such mappings, on macos this is active by default.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    I use EurKEY [0]. It has Ctrl+Alt+o for ö and also a ton of other characters. [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/ https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
aivisol 5y ago
What about digits?
- xcambar 5y ago
  the very top row of the very first screenshot has what you're looking for.
  - aivisol 5y ago
    I see that. I mean why they are not shuffled
- riidom 5y ago
  Yea wondered about that too. No idea why this got downvoted
eimrine 5y ago
Dvorak touchtyper since 2010 is here ^_^ I appreciate any attempts to make August Dvorak's work even better. For example, that claster of wovels is not AI's work but Dvorak's. BTW there is one strange claim from my POW: > QWERTY - 0% (baseline) > Dvorak - +77% > Colemak - +84% > Workman - +101% > Halmak - +134% If author considers Colemak and Workman more efficient than Dvorak, I should not even to give this layout a try :) because I have tried these and can not report such experience. Probably it is because I am a piano player since 2016 and the fingers which are weak on average people are not that weak for me. Another rebuke to mention is that Halmak is not compatible with Programmer Dvorak. That idea of 7531902468 and three pairs of brackets, braces, parentheses (all paired symbols except diamond braces) is extremely handy while programming. AFAIK, 7531902468 is also August's gem of mind, can your AI/HAL/whatever to design a layout with that row and at least [{}(=*)+] cluster untouched?
- danpalmer 5y ago
  You make a good point about finger strength, not something I had considered. Another issue is the dataset used for evaluation here. If they used a sample of the regular English language, that's likely to differ from the sort of typing that a programmer does, not just in punctuation, or it's likely to differ for those who type other languages. It's a shame the cost of learning a new layout is so high, because there's so much scope to optimise for each person, what they type, how they type.
  - eimrine 5y ago
    > It's a shame the cost of learning a new layout is so high Haven't you mean the cost of _creation_ a new layout? Learning is super easy for any non-QWERTY person because since you have managed to realize that default layout is bad - you have all freedoms possible to fix this obstruction. Sometimes the number of freedoms is too high, that's why it is so hard to create a layout which will be really used by anybody. What about learning a new layout per se - the cost of getting rid of QWERTY in my opinion is doubling for every year of touchtyping QWERTY or QWERTY-like layouts. Layout is something that you will be carrying in all your muscles for the rest of your life but after your first switch you will not consider switching layout that hard especially if you really love your new one. > Another issue is the dataset used for evaluation here. A beauty of a layout is kind of a beauty of a girl - it must be measured by heart, not by numbers. Layout is something that you will be carrying in all your muscles for the rest of your life. I do not respect any attempts to fix QWERTY (like Colemak and Workman) because QWERTY is so broken that there are no reasons to fix it (coining more and more of fancy metrics usually) except if QWERTY sits too deep in your muscles. And there is not much difference in using three rows of symbols when somebody either programs or writes a letter to his lovely ones. > You make a good point about finger strength, not something I had considered. Maybe yes but maybe I haven't disclose my opinion fully. I used to touchtype Dvorak way before some musical instruments gave additional strength for my fingers and I do not remember any desire to rearrange any letters. There are lots researches going on for enhancing QWERTY, based on rearranging as few keys as possible. They usually are based on: the datasets, somebody's opinions about finger strength, some ideas of alternation of fingers or hands, now AI has joined to the army of fancy metrics. I do not respect any attempts to fix QWERTY (like Colemak and Workman) because QWERTY is so broken that there is no good reason to fix it, except of for users who have QWERTY sitting too deep in their muscle level. The Halmak's idea of punctuation in the middle of the board is really interesting, I haven't see this idea on any layout I have tried. But my message is that layouts must be created not by complicated calculation's call but by heart's call.
baxtr 5y ago
I love the prominence of the "Swedish Road sign" aka "Command Key" aka "Apple Key". ⌘
- pirkko 5y ago
  Actually "Finnish road sign" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square
  - lancebeet 5y ago
    Now that the doors of pedantry have been opened, the sources used in the article don't actually specify that it was a Finnish "road sign" first, only that it was first suggested as an official symbol by the Finnish national local history association in the 1950s (having been used in all of the nordics in an unofficial capacity a lot longer), and that it started being used in all of the nordics in this official capacity in the 60s. The sources that say where Susan Kare got the inspiration more specifically than "from the nordic/Scandinavian countries" all seem to state a Swedish road sign, though exactly where she/apple got the inspiration (if they even remember correctly) is probably unimportant.
- progre 5y ago
  "Swedish road sign" as this is the sign for interesting old stuff near the road. Various dictionaries like translate "fornlämning" to "ancient site" or "ancient monument". I think americans have the term "heritage site"? I think thats a better translation.
namanyayg 5y ago
Apart from the technical merits, I always appreciate "hacker" naming of software. "The name is a combination of HAL-9000, as a reference to the layout being designed by an AI. And, Dvorak as a gratitude to Mr. Dvorak for his dedication to the layouts optimizations process. The letter m in between is just to make it sound nicer. Or is it!?..." I suppose the "m" is for MadRabbit, the author. Nice touch.
- airstrike 5y ago
  Also kinda makes it sound like "hallmark" which makes the name catchier
- Findecanor 5y ago
  > I suppose the "m" is for MadRabbit, the author. My first thought was that he had put "Colemak" into the word mix. (<https://colemak.com/ https://colemak.com/>)
minimilian 5y ago
Wonder how this compares to QGMLWB, which is also designed by a program. http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization
perihelions 5y ago
Does there exist any project like this, but for chords and chord sequences?
hans1729 5y ago
After having tried Dvorak for a couple of days (weeks?) a couple years back, I found my peace with the american default layout. Typing on dvorak was fun, and the learning process was really fun, too - fighting two decades of muscle memory was quite the experience. But at some point I realized that I now have to adapt all the bindings - without a solution to this, I'm not willing to try out different stuff. I need vi to work out of the box, especially because I also use the vi-bindings in tmux, zsh and firefox. Sigh. Looks really interesting though.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Is it possible to use a keyboard layout when typing text, but revert to QWERTY when doing ctrl+V or other key combinations? At the most basic level, you could simply have the keyboard layout change whenever Ctrl, Alt, or Meta/Super is pressed...
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Yes, Mac OS has this built in as one of their Dvorak options.
dtx1 5y ago
i rarely find myself in a situation where my typing speed on a regular layout is the limiting factor for input speed. When coding I don't type a lot and i'd likely get the same input speed on any reasonable layout after a while and when typing normal text i'm much more bound by how fast i can think about what i want to write. The only time i feel limited is when trying to transcribe while someone is talking but that's also a solved case since Shorthand and special typing equipment for that exists. I doubt you can type on any ascii based layout as fast as someone can on a shorthand typing system with equal training when it comes to natural language transcription.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  Increased typing speed is the secondary purpose. Improved comfort is the primary purpose.
yewenjie 5y ago
I am planning to switch to Colemak soon. I would love to know experience reports of users who use this layout as their daily driver.
- frisia 5y ago
  I switched late high school to exclusively use Colemak and have since. It's harder to reflect now about the difference of it as it have just became the new normal for me, but I remember my initial reactions after getting fluent in colemak was that: 1. for me personally it didn't improve typing speed significantly 2. It felt much more ergonomic. I don't move my hands as much. 3. this was an unexpected side effect, but I noticed how horrible the symbol layout is for programmers on the default swedish layout. colemak symbol layout is much more similiar to the english qwerty which is so much better.
- lycopodiopsida 5y ago
  I've done Colemak for 2 years and have switched to Colemak-DH since, which is a rather small change. It is not a problem. The only problem is that if you also use a non-latin layout, it will do a remapping to the latin one for shortcuts. This latin layout was always qwerty under macOS. So, in the end, I've built with Ukulele a custom layout and that was it.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  I learned QWERTY in high school, and by the end of college was up to around 100wpm. As I started getting older, I had some wrist trouble, mostly from mouse, but also from keyboard, and decided to switch to a more ergonomic layout. It took me a month or so (not full-time use) to get my Colemak speed up to 40wpm (minimal usable), and a couple more months to get it up to 80wpm. I've never really regained my 100wpm speed (been using Colemak for 8 years now), but my wrists thank me. I'm still able to touch-type QWERTY, but I have to look at the keyboard to give me the "context" for it, and my QWERTY speed is today only about 40wpm. Lately, I sometimes think about going back to QWERTY just to simplify my life; mouse avoidance has been more important to me than keyboard layout switching, I think. But at this point, it would be as much a pain to go back as it was to switch in the first place.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alemelis 5y ago
fwiw, running the same evolutionary algorithm on Julia, Python and C++ files returned this layout ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = c l r b z ; q u d j [ ] \ s h n t , . a e o i ' \n f m v w ? y g x k p 11 7 13 14 13 13 9 19 , 45 | 55 Symmetry: 61 Evenness: 81 Overheads: F:37%, H:12%, S:9%
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Now do Perl scripts. (:
mertnesvat 5y ago
Dvorak is one of the well-known layouts and even now we can't have it on the iPad, so I don't think keyboard layout is only about efficiency it's also popularity and availability.
ekianjo 5y ago
Why is the enter key and backspace out of scope for optimization? Makes no sense to exclude those.
- aendruk 5y ago
  About a year ago I moved Enter to the middle of the keyboard. It feels nice but I still occasionally press it when going for the letter that used to be there, and that can be a harmful typo to make.
addandsubtract 5y ago
The problem with any non-QWERTY keyboard layout is that all app and web shortcuts go out the window. You want to save an image for the web? Good luck growing a third hand. Want to open the quick menu on a site using ⌘+/, but your / key is only accessible using the shift key? Tough luck. Need to change the font size in your editor? Just navigate down these 3 easy sub-menus, because the keyboard shortcut for that is already reassigned to alleviate one of the other 300 broken shortcuts.
- gillesjacobs 5y ago
  There really should be a keyboard-shortcut standard. Some sort of configurable mapping of common actions/intents to key combinations that is set by the OS and shared between all apps.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  There's definitely some issues, but since lots of normal people already use different keyboards for language reasons, this isn't as bad as you make out. The built in Dvorak on the Mac has an option to let the keys go back to normal for CMD usage, though I prefer learning them as typable letters than physically located chords.
- V1ndaar 5y ago
  This is an almost complete non-issue in practice. It sounds like an expectation someone has that hasn't actually switched to a different keyboard layout. I'm typing on neo [0] and it's no problem at all. [0]: https://neo-layout.org https://neo-layout.org
  - cyounkins 5y ago
    Wikipedia says this project targets English, but I don't see any way to switch the website language to English so I can't read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout)
- f1refly 5y ago
  > Want to open the quick menu on a site using ⌘+/, but your / key is only accessible using the shift key? Welcome to the wonderful world of everyone whose countries native layout doesn't have a dedicated key for /, like most of europe.
AlphaGeekZulu 5y ago
Alternative keyboard layouts are fascinating, but always raise a couple of questions for me and I wonder if anyone here can come up with actual experiences regarding the following topics: - I have been using standard german QWERTZ for about 42 years now, in average certainly not less than 3 hours every day. I was originally educated in proper 10 finger blind typing in a dedicated typing school as part of my typesetter apprenticeship. I am typing really fast. Today I am even using "daskeyboard ultimate" - a completely unlabeled keyboard. Is it really possible to improve 42 years typing practice with a new layout? - Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at the same time? I have a partial answer myself. For one, I managed to learn standard Emacs shortcuts (a lot of them!) some of which contradict common OS shortcuts (like copy/paste etc) and I have both sets in muscle memory and I can seamlessly switch between both sets as I switch applications (most of the time that is). And I use three computers with three OSs (Linux, Win, Mac) with one keyboard per Synergy software. Same layout for the standard characters, but different OS specific layouts for special characters like "@", "€" etc. I can seamlessly switch between them as well and that is the reason for the unlabeled keyboard. A labeled keyboard would show only one layout and puzzle me if I had to enter special characters for another. So, while I know I can handle some number of characters in alternate layouts in muscle memory - will this be possible for the entire character set as well? - If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout, isn't it a problem if you have to use some other computer (where you cannot change the layout) for whatever reason, for example in an Internet cafe?
- adamhp 5y ago
  I think you bring up really great points, and it's probably the main reason there isn't more heterogeneity. There is a nice middle ground though, in customizable keyboards with macro buttons. I have the ErgoDox which is a split keyboard with these columns of three keys on each side of the split, and a cluster of thumb buttons. Really is nifty (once you get used to it) for programming. Even simple things like having one of the thumb buttons be a macro to enter "=>" which I use heavily in JavaScript is really nice.
  - AlphaGeekZulu 5y ago
    > I have the ErgoDox This keyboard sure looks extremely nice! The price tag, though! On the other hand, the keyboard is my main tools of trade, and the perfect solution is certainly worth a price between 250 to 400 bucks. I would want to try the hardware before doing the investment. That could actually be a business: renting out keyboards for evaluation.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
This feels like over fitting if it's not allowed to make basic changes like a capslock being control when held and escape when used on its own. There's a bunch of things like that which would have a bigger impact if they could be measured but are ignored by this methodology. I use standard Dvorak, but thumb keys are the real game changer (the Kinesis introduced me to them) so CMD keys that act as backspace and enter when used alone are good, as is using space as a shift key to get numbers and symbols. Two keys (j+k) at once for esc and : and home row mods are other quantum leaps. Oh and the data is from non-ortholinear keyboards, so will be skewed for non staggered keyboards.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
gillesjacobs 5y ago
CarpalX [1] is also a keyboard modeling approach that includes typing effort and corpus loading. I would love to hear about the difference in typing effort modeling and approach for CarpalX. CarpalX is a linear parametrized model with configurable parameters and weights for different types of strokes, so you can weigh the effort. You on the otherhand have made measurements of your hand movement. Very impressive and valuable! In the explainer [2] you mention the datasets briefly skipping over specifics: - Are the hand-movement metrics a measurement of the center of the hand from an video-based object detector? - Do you have individual finger detection too (doubt it is very precise due to occlusion)? My guess is relative hand movement is a good approximation of overall finger movement though. - Any typing effort model based on this data will not be applicable to ortholinear or alternative layout boards such as a split hand (Ergodox, Corne, Moonlander or Plank). - You briefly mention removing any manually determined effort-based objectives (like those in CarpalX) from the genetic algorithm optimization. You say they are highly similar to the purely trigram data-driven approach, but I am still very curious to see the results with these objectives included. I am not trying to put you down though: It is still very commendable to research a better layout for the most common staggered 60% lay-out. I have been keylogging myself for three years now and will definitely try out your approach though, looks very promising! 1. http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ40gmfDFfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ40gmfDFfQ
eigengrau 5y ago
An interesting related project is the AdNW (http://www.adnw.de/ http://www.adnw.de/) layout, which was created by defining metrics based on Dvorak’s ideas and running a genetic optimization algorithm on a corpus of German (50%) and English (50%) text. The symbol layers were copied from the Neo2 layout, which afaik were arranged manually.
brainzap 5y ago
why does it not use the thumbs
- mkl 5y ago
  Because it's designed to be used on existing hardware, where the spacebar is really big and taking up the space where thumb keys would be, and where there's no row of keys below that.
socar 5y ago
But it is still a slab of plastic with buttons...
medstrom 5y ago
Y'all need to know the background of past efforts [1], people keep making the same observations over and over again as if they're new. In the area of computer-generated layouts, there's been lots of rich discussion on the AdNW [2] and MTGAP [3] projects. For "improving Dvorak", that was solved back in 2004 with Capewell-Dvorak [4]. To the author: what is supposed to be AI here? I don't see a mention of a ML method or neural network here, is it "just" an evolutionary algorithm like CarPalx, AdNW and MTGAP (not that it's bad)? [1] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts [2] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#AdNW_.28Aus_der_Neo-Welt.29 https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Ad... [3] https://mathematicalmulticore.wordpress.com/category/keyboards/ https://mathematicalmulticore.wordpress.com/category/keyboar... [4] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Capewell-Dvorak https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Ca...
- gillesjacobs 5y ago
  I agree that I would love a discussion by OP acknowledging previous efforts and comparing approaches. Having multiple minds working at the same problem is great, but not engaging with prior art diminishes the value of their own work IMO.
  - ddalex 5y ago
    Am I the only one that finds that the typing speed doesn't matter... it takes me way longer to figure out what I want to write then actually writing it...
- mkl 5y ago
  They probably mean ML. They're mutating keyboard layouts with a simple genetic algorithm. "Just" an evolutionary algorithm, but still arguably ML.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  Evolutionary algorithms are a form of machine learning and an established branch of artificial intelligence research. See e.g. wikipedia page with box "Part of a series on Artificial Intelligence": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm Are you using "AI" to mean "deep learning"?
tragomaskhalos 5y ago
As a chronically fat-fingered typist working in English, all those vowels next to each other gives me the willies - far too easy to get the wrong one and for autocorrect to not spot the error. The adjacency of U, I and O on qwerty gives me enough aggro in this regard already.
andai 5y ago
I used the QGMLWY layout by Carpalx[0] for a year or so. The site is really interesting, worth a read. Afaik they made a list of the most common trigrams (three letter combinations) then used a genetic algorithm to optimize the layout for most of the same factors listed in OP's GitHub Readme (minimizing same finger sequences, certain kinds of movement). In the end I switched back to qwerty for 3 reasons: 1. keyboard shortcuts ending up in weird places and behaving inconsistently between programs (at least on Windows, some of them seemed to respond to the physical key rather than the letter). 1b. so for games i'd be used to WASD but WASD ended up in different places so I'd either have to remap the keys in every game, or switch to QWERTY while using them. Same with browsers, the Ctrl+N and Ctrl+T ended up in weird places I somehow never got used to. 2. different preferences in terms of how my hands work and how comfortable each key is to access. (e.g. i'd rather move up a row than reach to the middle of the keyboard. Minor but it adds up with use.) 3. frequently switching devices. I think there was no QGMLWY support for MacOS (but I also recall rearranging my keyboard keys -- perhaps I had switched to Colemak at that point because it was built in.) [0] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ Also somewhat related, regarding programming comfort specifically, something I thought was cool is swapping the numbers and symbols in Vim, so you can access symbols without Shift. I don't use Vim but I kind of wish there was a system-wide toggle for that kind of thing. (Maybe with AutoHotKey, and then porting it to HammerSpoon or whatever the cross-platform one was called :)
dpwm 5y ago
Interesting to compare it to my preferred keyboard layout, BÉPO [0][1]. In Halmak, the vowels are clustered around the right hand rather than the left. Like BÉPO, the punctuation is reachable with index fingers. There is some difference with the home row consonants, but otherwise this looks like an interesting layout. Although BÉPO is a French layout, I’ve found it works well for English – despite giving space to accented characters that are not often used in English. [0] https://bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil https://bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil (in French) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%89PO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%89PO
- sylware 5y ago
jtian 5y ago
AI decides that ctrl is still there? Look at many Japanese made (ANSI) keyboards: they simply put ctrl where caps lock locates. This is a life changer to me, and inspires me to change all my keyboards: no new layout required. Even though they can claim movement is decreased, having little finger hitting ctrl at the original location for hundreds to thousands of times is never a fun. It’s ergonomically bad.
kschiffer 5y ago
I'm three months into colemak now, together with learning touch typing (and switching to vim as main editor). I've managed to get up to around 50 wpm coming from 75 wpm with normal qwerty without touch typing (just 6 finger freestyle). I've still some time to go to get over my initial typing speed. A really cool thing about colemak for me is replacing caps lock with backspace, which in itself is getting rid of so much finger/hand-travel, but that can obviously also easily be hacked into qwerty as well. To this point, I don't know if I would recommend switching to anyone for the following reasons: - You will slowly use muscle memory of normal qwerty, which can become quite awkward whenever you forced to use another computer. It's not like you cannot type it anymore, but you will be quite slow and inaccurate when typing. However, these situation barely exists for me in everyday life. - Learning the new layout is quite a feat that takes time and daily dedication. I decided early on to use the new layout in my job (frontend dev) which definitely speed up adoption for me but also slowed me down considerably for some days. Even then it will take quite some time to get back to your initial speed. - Depending on your profession, typing speed may not at all be a bottle neck. This is true for me as a software developer, where you spend the most time thinking about how to solve problem before typing them in small chunks. - Wrt touch-typing, I weirdly found out for myself that it can actually cause some wrist and hand strain rather than protect from it. To me it feels that by using a lot more muscles to type it also increases chance of wear-and-tear. This is especially true for the pinkies for me, which I never used much for typing before. Good thing about colemak wrt keyboard shortcuts is that it only changes letters (no symbols, punctuation, etc.) and then as few letters as possible to still achieve the best finger travel. In practice that means that many shortcuts stay the same, e.g. the common ones as CTRL-Z/X/C/A/Q/W etc. I sort of did the switch as a self-experiment after being intrigued by all the science behind optimized layouts, and also to challenge myself to learn a new skill for the new year. I wanted to learn touch typing after decades of freestyle typing which I increasingly noticed was very error-prone. I figured that learning a new keyboard layout at the same time is a very good opportunity. Not sure if I will stick to colemak permanently but so far it's still fun to try to gradually improve on it.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
It occurs to me that optimal keyboard layouts depend primarily on use cases: by human language, by activity, and so on. I might well imagine that a Perl-optimized keyboard layout would look different than one intended for writing fiction, and so on.
- eimrine 5y ago
  I have not seen from your comment where is the difference between layouts for different activities. Isn't Programmer Dvorak enough optimized for Perl? Because for writing some graphomania any Dvorak fits just perfect. I can not even imagine a reason for having several different layouts for same Latin letters.
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    APL has had dedicated keyboard layouts since its inception, but that might be a bit unusual. If you lisp, you might want easily accessible parenthesis. In C, semicolon is useful. Bash uses dollar and sharp a lot.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Presumably not Latin letters so much as special chars used in the language syntax. I suppose there's room for optimisation in Latin chars used in keywords (if applicable) too though.
- mormegil 5y ago
  That reminds me of keyboard heat maps for programming languages: https://g-liu.com/blog/2013/09/reblog-programming-languages-by-heatmap/ https://g-liu.com/blog/2013/09/reblog-programming-languages-... (the winner being, obviously, LISP :-))
  - tgvaughan 5y ago
    Really cool, but these heatmaps seem to be compiled from source code. I wonder how much the _actual_ distribution of keys pressed would differ. (I use paredit to write scheme code, and I'm assuming IDEs would skew the distribution in other languages.)
js8 5y ago
Interesting that ETAOIN SHRDLU seems to be on highly symmetric positions.
penjelly 5y ago
people are saying it takes a year to reach proficiency with a new layout. tbh that seems like a really long time for a for someone who types for a living. + 10-15 wpm isnt worth it for me
whoomp12342 5y ago
can AI design keyboard layouts individually for the most popular programming languages please?
ajoy 5y ago
Something I was developing on my spare time :) : https://github.com/aj0y/fitjoy https://github.com/aj0y/fitjoy The main difference with other layouts is that I take finger length into account. (Eg. the pinky is usually much shorter than your ring finger, so putting them all on the same row means your ring finger need to curl up more and less relaxed). Also tried to reduce changes to the most common shortcuts we (programmers) use. Feedback welcome!
dangerface 5y ago
I used dvorak for two years got no benefit from it. It was no more comfortable than touch typing on qwerty, words per minute (a pathetic 80) and accuracy was the same. Switching between dvorak and a qwerty keyboard was impossible even tho I knew how to touch type on both. The big win from my dvorak experiment was learning that when coding typing speed doesn't matter. I spend more time thinking about my code than implementing it, removing shortened non descriptive variables or functions with long winded names has improved my productivity immensely.
bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
One issue I've always had with QWERTY (and probably this new layout as well) is that "similar" letters are often next to each other on the keyboard, making typo detection nearly impossible in English. For instance, in English, many short words with a "i" as the only vowel remain a valid word when the "i" is replaced by an "o" or a "u" -- pit/pot/put, bit/bot/but, tip/top/tup, pig/pog/pug, bitch/butch/botch, etc. This means if you go to hit the "i" key but accidentally hit the "u" or "o" keys, the typo won't necessarily look like a typo to either to the author or the reader. Similarly with "s" and "d" -- pretty much every verb can be conjugated to end with either an "s" or a "d", so if you press "d" when you meant to press "s" or vice versa, it probably remains a valid verb, and thus is harder to catch. For these purposes, my ideal layout would have interchangeable letters sufficiently far apart from each other to make typo detection+resolution easier. The most commonly used letters should be surrounded by the least commonly used letters so that, for instance, if you "jqb" I know you meant "job" and not, say, "jib". This would also make swipe typing on phones far easier to use, as it would be much less ambiguous which letters you were aiming for.
- njsubedi 5y ago
  New idea: AI generated least-error prone swipe keyboard.
- doubled112 5y ago
  I've had a number of, perhaps inappropriate, typos in work messages thanks to the letters directly to the left or right. I'd never thought of optimizing a layout so that typos are obvious nonsense. At the same time, I think I'd find a way regardless. Some real examples include: "Any update on your free/busty time?" instead of busy. "It is just milf kitty indigestion" instead of mild. You just have to hope your client or coworker makes typos too, and finds amusement in it.
- jdc0589 5y ago
  new idea, ai generated layout to intentionally create the most fun typos
codedokode 5y ago
As we are discussing layouts, I would like to point to a bigger problem (in my opinion) with keyboards: they don't have enough keys. Let me explain. While Latin alphabet has only 26 letters, many languages have more of them. For example, Russian alphabet has 33 letters. Therefore, to fit these letters there must be 7 more keys. But we also need two keys to switch layouts - so in total there should be 9 extra keys. Sadly, manufacturers (including Apple that claims to "think different", but in this case thinks exactly the same as PC vendors) don't want to add even a single key, instead they put extra letters onto keys with symbols, so you have to switch layouts to type those symbols. Furthermore, several characters like period or comma are located on different keys in different layouts. Guess, how easy it becomes to make a mistake. Switching layouts is inconvenient. Instead of having two dedicated keys for switching to each language, OS vendors add single switching combination like Shift + Alt (Windows) or Cmd + Space (Mac). Also, on keyboard itself there is no indication that these keys can switch layout. One could argue that it is difficult to find more space on laptops. Well, I think that this can be solved somehow. For example, one could add an extra row. But it is absolutely possible on desktop PC keyboards, and yet nobody is doing this.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  >>Sadly, manufacturers (including Apple that claims to "think different", but in this case thinks exactly the same as PC vendors) don't want to add even a single key, Realistically, it's the opposite - they look to reduce and minimize keys; Home/End/Pg keys, arrow keys, all are being mangled/reduced/moved/killed. Every manufacturer wants to make its own bespoke layout for every model they make seemingly, presumably in a valiant effort to make muscle memory thing of the past :-) . Standards are for wussies!
- slim 5y ago
  I'd go even further and want a 200 key keboard. to each glyph a separate key. I don't want to switch (I write arabic/latin)
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
I like it just because it will annoy fellow vim users who brag about never having to leave the home row to move around a buffer. (You can remap, but you must also remap your muscle memory)
readingnews 5y ago
After using a split spacebar for some time now, I just can not see the idea of a single spacebar being optimal. I have two thumbs. Why not use them? My right spacebar is space, my left is enter. I have never done anything else so profoundly productive to my computer.
- celeritascelery 5y ago
  Interesting. I was thinking of doing something similar, but replacing the other space bar with backspace. For me enter is a really easy key to reach, backspace is much farther. Either that or escape.
- linsomniac 5y ago
  This. But on steroids. One of the primary reasons I went with the ErgoDox was to reduce the load on my pinkies and add some load to my underused thumbs. I have left thumb doing space/backspace, and right doing enter/tab.
  - ajford 5y ago
    Same. Pinky/ring finger RSI lead me to split ergos for this same reason, landing on the Moonlander by ZSA. I've got Space, Bk Space, Shift/(, and Alt on left thumb cluster; Enter, Tab, Shift/), and Esc/Ctrl on the right thumb cluster. Pinkies have far less to do now.
    - linsomniac 5y ago
      I have the ErgoDox Ez, from before the Moonlander. Thankfully I don't have RSI problems, knock on wood. I really should do something better with the thumb cluster, particularly that third easy to reach key. I have Win/Esc left of 'a' and Win/' right of ';', and Ctl/z and Ctl// in the z// positions. The whole lower row is basically unused. Win because I use i3wm and use Win a lot for window navigation.
kortex 5y ago
Has anyone already learned Dvorak and made the switch to some other "more efficient" layout, such as Colemak, Workman, Neo, this new one, etc? Has it actually been more ergonomic, efficient, and/or faster than Dvorak? I have a Moonlander and have it totally tricked out so I have no problem with qwerty hotkey locations. It's basically just the time delta to grind a new layout. When I learned Dvorak around 2009, it took me about a month to reach parity. It might be even faster this time around since I'm constantly messing with my layout with small tweaks and having to relearn muscle memory. Also if you aren't using some kind of layer scheme to map things like ~./()= up/down/left/right to home keys, you are really missing out :p
- rstacruz 5y ago
  Me! I was a Dvorak user for around 6-8 years, but switched to Colemak mod-DH. I found it to be worth it. Colemak mod-DH is more ergonomic for ortholinear keyboards, less "alternate hand" keys, more balanced left/right hand ratio, and overall (for me) more pleasant to use.
pedalpete 5y ago
When talking about keyboard layout, I'd like to see more experimentation in the physical layout beyond the 4 rows with 13 staggered columns, etc etc I understand "keyboard layout" often means just changing the position of the keys on existing hardware, but perhaps we shouldn't be so limited, particularly when we can experiment with alternative layouts on touch devices.

164 points by michidk 5y ago

I'd like to see that AI project ran on different codebases. For example, a C++ corpus is going to be weighted differently than a Python one.

verisimi 5y ago

Not as good as this! https://www.charachorder.com/ https://www.charachorder.com/ 500wpm apparently!

xcambar 5y ago
Is this for real? To me, it looks way too error prone (3D movement per key... wat) and english only. I honestly wondered whether it was a stunt from Cards Against Humanity or The Onion. But if not, you got me curious.
- verisimi 5y ago
  I know what you mean.. but apparently you can buy one! I haven't, so I can't verify it. And there seem to be training manuals etc.
ivanche 5y ago
They need to check marketing copy. "500% less keystrokes" is mathematically impossible. "80% less keystrokes" is.
mkl 5y ago
500wpm for a few seconds to type in a single massively practised sentence. Big discussion from a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827461

jonplackett 5y ago

Semi-colon gets pride of place (presumably for coding) but no sign of a hash key

nolok 5y ago
I'm not sure ; is due to coding, this keyboard would be terrible for coding (# ? ! % * + | [] { } ...)
- jonplackett 5y ago
  That just makes it weirder. Who else uses a semi colon so much?

ZephyrOhm 5y ago

If there's ever an Android keyboard app, I'd love to give it a shot

unkoman 5y ago

Having a dedicated capslock key seems a bit much.

moss2 5y ago

Looks cool :) Can't use it cause my alphabet has three more letters than the English.

hans1729 5y ago
fwiw, I speak German and find the german layout to be insultingly unusable, especially for coding. So I use the american hardware layout (which lack three german letters) and type Umlaute äöü with alt+u+{a|o|u}. It doesn't feel like it adds significant overhead, I've built the muscle memory within minutes. Any acceptable operating system should allow for such mappings, on macos this is active by default.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  I use EurKEY [0]. It has Ctrl+Alt+o for ö and also a ton of other characters. [0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/ https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/

aivisol 5y ago

What about digits?

xcambar 5y ago
the very top row of the very first screenshot has what you're looking for.
- aivisol 5y ago
  I see that. I mean why they are not shuffled
riidom 5y ago
Yea wondered about that too. No idea why this got downvoted

eimrine 5y ago

Dvorak touchtyper since 2010 is here ^_^ I appreciate any attempts to make August Dvorak's work even better. For example, that claster of wovels is not AI's work but Dvorak's. BTW there is one strange claim from my POW: > QWERTY - 0% (baseline) > Dvorak - +77% > Colemak - +84% > Workman - +101% > Halmak - +134% If author considers Colemak and Workman more efficient than Dvorak, I should not even to give this layout a try :) because I have tried these and can not report such experience. Probably it is because I am a piano player since 2016 and the fingers which are weak on average people are not that weak for me. Another rebuke to mention is that Halmak is not compatible with Programmer Dvorak. That idea of 7531902468 and three pairs of brackets, braces, parentheses (all paired symbols except diamond braces) is extremely handy while programming. AFAIK, 7531902468 is also August's gem of mind, can your AI/HAL/whatever to design a layout with that row and at least [{}(=*)+] cluster untouched?

danpalmer 5y ago
You make a good point about finger strength, not something I had considered. Another issue is the dataset used for evaluation here. If they used a sample of the regular English language, that's likely to differ from the sort of typing that a programmer does, not just in punctuation, or it's likely to differ for those who type other languages. It's a shame the cost of learning a new layout is so high, because there's so much scope to optimise for each person, what they type, how they type.
- eimrine 5y ago
  > It's a shame the cost of learning a new layout is so high Haven't you mean the cost of _creation_ a new layout? Learning is super easy for any non-QWERTY person because since you have managed to realize that default layout is bad - you have all freedoms possible to fix this obstruction. Sometimes the number of freedoms is too high, that's why it is so hard to create a layout which will be really used by anybody. What about learning a new layout per se - the cost of getting rid of QWERTY in my opinion is doubling for every year of touchtyping QWERTY or QWERTY-like layouts. Layout is something that you will be carrying in all your muscles for the rest of your life but after your first switch you will not consider switching layout that hard especially if you really love your new one. > Another issue is the dataset used for evaluation here. A beauty of a layout is kind of a beauty of a girl - it must be measured by heart, not by numbers. Layout is something that you will be carrying in all your muscles for the rest of your life. I do not respect any attempts to fix QWERTY (like Colemak and Workman) because QWERTY is so broken that there are no reasons to fix it (coining more and more of fancy metrics usually) except if QWERTY sits too deep in your muscles. And there is not much difference in using three rows of symbols when somebody either programs or writes a letter to his lovely ones. > You make a good point about finger strength, not something I had considered. Maybe yes but maybe I haven't disclose my opinion fully. I used to touchtype Dvorak way before some musical instruments gave additional strength for my fingers and I do not remember any desire to rearrange any letters. There are lots researches going on for enhancing QWERTY, based on rearranging as few keys as possible. They usually are based on: the datasets, somebody's opinions about finger strength, some ideas of alternation of fingers or hands, now AI has joined to the army of fancy metrics. I do not respect any attempts to fix QWERTY (like Colemak and Workman) because QWERTY is so broken that there is no good reason to fix it, except of for users who have QWERTY sitting too deep in their muscle level. The Halmak's idea of punctuation in the middle of the board is really interesting, I haven't see this idea on any layout I have tried. But my message is that layouts must be created not by complicated calculation's call but by heart's call.

baxtr 5y ago

I love the prominence of the "Swedish Road sign" aka "Command Key" aka "Apple Key". ⌘

pirkko 5y ago
Actually "Finnish road sign" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square
- lancebeet 5y ago
  Now that the doors of pedantry have been opened, the sources used in the article don't actually specify that it was a Finnish "road sign" first, only that it was first suggested as an official symbol by the Finnish national local history association in the 1950s (having been used in all of the nordics in an unofficial capacity a lot longer), and that it started being used in all of the nordics in this official capacity in the 60s. The sources that say where Susan Kare got the inspiration more specifically than "from the nordic/Scandinavian countries" all seem to state a Swedish road sign, though exactly where she/apple got the inspiration (if they even remember correctly) is probably unimportant.
progre 5y ago
"Swedish road sign" as this is the sign for interesting old stuff near the road. Various dictionaries like translate "fornlämning" to "ancient site" or "ancient monument". I think americans have the term "heritage site"? I think thats a better translation.

namanyayg 5y ago

Apart from the technical merits, I always appreciate "hacker" naming of software. "The name is a combination of HAL-9000, as a reference to the layout being designed by an AI. And, Dvorak as a gratitude to Mr. Dvorak for his dedication to the layouts optimizations process. The letter m in between is just to make it sound nicer. Or is it!?..." I suppose the "m" is for MadRabbit, the author. Nice touch.

airstrike 5y ago
Also kinda makes it sound like "hallmark" which makes the name catchier
Findecanor 5y ago
> I suppose the "m" is for MadRabbit, the author. My first thought was that he had put "Colemak" into the word mix. (<https://colemak.com/ https://colemak.com/>)

minimilian 5y ago

Wonder how this compares to QGMLWB, which is also designed by a program. http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization

perihelions 5y ago

Does there exist any project like this, but for chords and chord sequences?

hans1729 5y ago

After having tried Dvorak for a couple of days (weeks?) a couple years back, I found my peace with the american default layout. Typing on dvorak was fun, and the learning process was really fun, too - fighting two decades of muscle memory was quite the experience. But at some point I realized that I now have to adapt all the bindings - without a solution to this, I'm not willing to try out different stuff. I need vi to work out of the box, especially because I also use the vi-bindings in tmux, zsh and firefox. Sigh. Looks really interesting though.

londons_explore 5y ago
Is it possible to use a keyboard layout when typing text, but revert to QWERTY when doing ctrl+V or other key combinations? At the most basic level, you could simply have the keyboard layout change whenever Ctrl, Alt, or Meta/Super is pressed...
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Yes, Mac OS has this built in as one of their Dvorak options.

dtx1 5y ago

i rarely find myself in a situation where my typing speed on a regular layout is the limiting factor for input speed. When coding I don't type a lot and i'd likely get the same input speed on any reasonable layout after a while and when typing normal text i'm much more bound by how fast i can think about what i want to write. The only time i feel limited is when trying to transcribe while someone is talking but that's also a solved case since Shorthand and special typing equipment for that exists. I doubt you can type on any ascii based layout as fast as someone can on a shorthand typing system with equal training when it comes to natural language transcription.

Symbiote 5y ago
Increased typing speed is the secondary purpose. Improved comfort is the primary purpose.

yewenjie 5y ago

I am planning to switch to Colemak soon. I would love to know experience reports of users who use this layout as their daily driver.

frisia 5y ago
I switched late high school to exclusively use Colemak and have since. It's harder to reflect now about the difference of it as it have just became the new normal for me, but I remember my initial reactions after getting fluent in colemak was that: 1. for me personally it didn't improve typing speed significantly 2. It felt much more ergonomic. I don't move my hands as much. 3. this was an unexpected side effect, but I noticed how horrible the symbol layout is for programmers on the default swedish layout. colemak symbol layout is much more similiar to the english qwerty which is so much better.
lycopodiopsida 5y ago
I've done Colemak for 2 years and have switched to Colemak-DH since, which is a rather small change. It is not a problem. The only problem is that if you also use a non-latin layout, it will do a remapping to the latin one for shortcuts. This latin layout was always qwerty under macOS. So, in the end, I've built with Ukulele a custom layout and that was it.
NoGravitas 5y ago
I learned QWERTY in high school, and by the end of college was up to around 100wpm. As I started getting older, I had some wrist trouble, mostly from mouse, but also from keyboard, and decided to switch to a more ergonomic layout. It took me a month or so (not full-time use) to get my Colemak speed up to 40wpm (minimal usable), and a couple more months to get it up to 80wpm. I've never really regained my 100wpm speed (been using Colemak for 8 years now), but my wrists thank me. I'm still able to touch-type QWERTY, but I have to look at the keyboard to give me the "context" for it, and my QWERTY speed is today only about 40wpm. Lately, I sometimes think about going back to QWERTY just to simplify my life; mouse avoidance has been more important to me than keyboard layout switching, I think. But at this point, it would be as much a pain to go back as it was to switch in the first place.

deleted 5y ago

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alemelis 5y ago

fwiw, running the same evolutionary algorithm on Julia, Python and C++ files returned this layout ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = c l r b z ; q u d j [ ] \ s h n t , . a e o i ' \n f m v w ? y g x k p 11 7 13 14 13 13 9 19 , 45 | 55 Symmetry: 61 Evenness: 81 Overheads: F:37%, H:12%, S:9%

jonnycomputer 5y ago
Now do Perl scripts. (:

mertnesvat 5y ago

Dvorak is one of the well-known layouts and even now we can't have it on the iPad, so I don't think keyboard layout is only about efficiency it's also popularity and availability.

ekianjo 5y ago

Why is the enter key and backspace out of scope for optimization? Makes no sense to exclude those.

aendruk 5y ago
About a year ago I moved Enter to the middle of the keyboard. It feels nice but I still occasionally press it when going for the letter that used to be there, and that can be a harmful typo to make.

addandsubtract 5y ago

The problem with any non-QWERTY keyboard layout is that all app and web shortcuts go out the window. You want to save an image for the web? Good luck growing a third hand. Want to open the quick menu on a site using ⌘+/, but your / key is only accessible using the shift key? Tough luck. Need to change the font size in your editor? Just navigate down these 3 easy sub-menus, because the keyboard shortcut for that is already reassigned to alleviate one of the other 300 broken shortcuts.

gillesjacobs 5y ago
There really should be a keyboard-shortcut standard. Some sort of configurable mapping of common actions/intents to key combinations that is set by the OS and shared between all apps.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
There's definitely some issues, but since lots of normal people already use different keyboards for language reasons, this isn't as bad as you make out. The built in Dvorak on the Mac has an option to let the keys go back to normal for CMD usage, though I prefer learning them as typable letters than physically located chords.
V1ndaar 5y ago
This is an almost complete non-issue in practice. It sounds like an expectation someone has that hasn't actually switched to a different keyboard layout. I'm typing on neo [0] and it's no problem at all. [0]: https://neo-layout.org https://neo-layout.org
- cyounkins 5y ago
  Wikipedia says this project targets English, but I don't see any way to switch the website language to English so I can't read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout)
f1refly 5y ago
> Want to open the quick menu on a site using ⌘+/, but your / key is only accessible using the shift key? Welcome to the wonderful world of everyone whose countries native layout doesn't have a dedicated key for /, like most of europe.

AlphaGeekZulu 5y ago

Alternative keyboard layouts are fascinating, but always raise a couple of questions for me and I wonder if anyone here can come up with actual experiences regarding the following topics: - I have been using standard german QWERTZ for about 42 years now, in average certainly not less than 3 hours every day. I was originally educated in proper 10 finger blind typing in a dedicated typing school as part of my typesetter apprenticeship. I am typing really fast. Today I am even using "daskeyboard ultimate" - a completely unlabeled keyboard. Is it really possible to improve 42 years typing practice with a new layout? - Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at the same time? I have a partial answer myself. For one, I managed to learn standard Emacs shortcuts (a lot of them!) some of which contradict common OS shortcuts (like copy/paste etc) and I have both sets in muscle memory and I can seamlessly switch between both sets as I switch applications (most of the time that is). And I use three computers with three OSs (Linux, Win, Mac) with one keyboard per Synergy software. Same layout for the standard characters, but different OS specific layouts for special characters like "@", "€" etc. I can seamlessly switch between them as well and that is the reason for the unlabeled keyboard. A labeled keyboard would show only one layout and puzzle me if I had to enter special characters for another. So, while I know I can handle some number of characters in alternate layouts in muscle memory - will this be possible for the entire character set as well? - If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout, isn't it a problem if you have to use some other computer (where you cannot change the layout) for whatever reason, for example in an Internet cafe?

adamhp 5y ago
I think you bring up really great points, and it's probably the main reason there isn't more heterogeneity. There is a nice middle ground though, in customizable keyboards with macro buttons. I have the ErgoDox which is a split keyboard with these columns of three keys on each side of the split, and a cluster of thumb buttons. Really is nifty (once you get used to it) for programming. Even simple things like having one of the thumb buttons be a macro to enter "=>" which I use heavily in JavaScript is really nice.
- AlphaGeekZulu 5y ago
  > I have the ErgoDox This keyboard sure looks extremely nice! The price tag, though! On the other hand, the keyboard is my main tools of trade, and the perfect solution is certainly worth a price between 250 to 400 bucks. I would want to try the hardware before doing the investment. That could actually be a business: renting out keyboards for evaluation.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

This feels like over fitting if it's not allowed to make basic changes like a capslock being control when held and escape when used on its own. There's a bunch of things like that which would have a bigger impact if they could be measured but are ignored by this methodology. I use standard Dvorak, but thumb keys are the real game changer (the Kinesis introduced me to them) so CMD keys that act as backspace and enter when used alone are good, as is using space as a shift key to get numbers and symbols. Two keys (j+k) at once for esc and : and home row mods are other quantum leaps. Oh and the data is from non-ortholinear keyboards, so will be skewed for non staggered keyboards.

deleted 5y ago
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gillesjacobs 5y ago

CarpalX [1] is also a keyboard modeling approach that includes typing effort and corpus loading. I would love to hear about the difference in typing effort modeling and approach for CarpalX. CarpalX is a linear parametrized model with configurable parameters and weights for different types of strokes, so you can weigh the effort. You on the otherhand have made measurements of your hand movement. Very impressive and valuable! In the explainer [2] you mention the datasets briefly skipping over specifics: - Are the hand-movement metrics a measurement of the center of the hand from an video-based object detector? - Do you have individual finger detection too (doubt it is very precise due to occlusion)? My guess is relative hand movement is a good approximation of overall finger movement though. - Any typing effort model based on this data will not be applicable to ortholinear or alternative layout boards such as a split hand (Ergodox, Corne, Moonlander or Plank). - You briefly mention removing any manually determined effort-based objectives (like those in CarpalX) from the genetic algorithm optimization. You say they are highly similar to the purely trigram data-driven approach, but I am still very curious to see the results with these objectives included. I am not trying to put you down though: It is still very commendable to research a better layout for the most common staggered 60% lay-out. I have been keylogging myself for three years now and will definitely try out your approach though, looks very promising! 1. http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ40gmfDFfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ40gmfDFfQ

eigengrau 5y ago

An interesting related project is the AdNW (http://www.adnw.de/ http://www.adnw.de/) layout, which was created by defining metrics based on Dvorak’s ideas and running a genetic optimization algorithm on a corpus of German (50%) and English (50%) text. The symbol layers were copied from the Neo2 layout, which afaik were arranged manually.

brainzap 5y ago

why does it not use the thumbs

mkl 5y ago
Because it's designed to be used on existing hardware, where the spacebar is really big and taking up the space where thumb keys would be, and where there's no row of keys below that.

socar 5y ago

But it is still a slab of plastic with buttons...

medstrom 5y ago

Y'all need to know the background of past efforts [1], people keep making the same observations over and over again as if they're new. In the area of computer-generated layouts, there's been lots of rich discussion on the AdNW [2] and MTGAP [3] projects. For "improving Dvorak", that was solved back in 2004 with Capewell-Dvorak [4]. To the author: what is supposed to be AI here? I don't see a mention of a ML method or neural network here, is it "just" an evolutionary algorithm like CarPalx, AdNW and MTGAP (not that it's bad)? [1] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts [2] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#AdNW_.28Aus_der_Neo-Welt.29 https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Ad... [3] https://mathematicalmulticore.wordpress.com/category/keyboards/ https://mathematicalmulticore.wordpress.com/category/keyboar... [4] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Capewell-Dvorak https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts#Ca...

gillesjacobs 5y ago
I agree that I would love a discussion by OP acknowledging previous efforts and comparing approaches. Having multiple minds working at the same problem is great, but not engaging with prior art diminishes the value of their own work IMO.
- ddalex 5y ago
  Am I the only one that finds that the typing speed doesn't matter... it takes me way longer to figure out what I want to write then actually writing it...
mkl 5y ago
They probably mean ML. They're mutating keyboard layouts with a simple genetic algorithm. "Just" an evolutionary algorithm, but still arguably ML.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Evolutionary algorithms are a form of machine learning and an established branch of artificial intelligence research. See e.g. wikipedia page with box "Part of a series on Artificial Intelligence": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm Are you using "AI" to mean "deep learning"?

tragomaskhalos 5y ago

As a chronically fat-fingered typist working in English, all those vowels next to each other gives me the willies - far too easy to get the wrong one and for autocorrect to not spot the error. The adjacency of U, I and O on qwerty gives me enough aggro in this regard already.

andai 5y ago

I used the QGMLWY layout by Carpalx[0] for a year or so. The site is really interesting, worth a read. Afaik they made a list of the most common trigrams (three letter combinations) then used a genetic algorithm to optimize the layout for most of the same factors listed in OP's GitHub Readme (minimizing same finger sequences, certain kinds of movement). In the end I switched back to qwerty for 3 reasons: 1. keyboard shortcuts ending up in weird places and behaving inconsistently between programs (at least on Windows, some of them seemed to respond to the physical key rather than the letter). 1b. so for games i'd be used to WASD but WASD ended up in different places so I'd either have to remap the keys in every game, or switch to QWERTY while using them. Same with browsers, the Ctrl+N and Ctrl+T ended up in weird places I somehow never got used to. 2. different preferences in terms of how my hands work and how comfortable each key is to access. (e.g. i'd rather move up a row than reach to the middle of the keyboard. Minor but it adds up with use.) 3. frequently switching devices. I think there was no QGMLWY support for MacOS (but I also recall rearranging my keyboard keys -- perhaps I had switched to Colemak at that point because it was built in.) [0] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ Also somewhat related, regarding programming comfort specifically, something I thought was cool is swapping the numbers and symbols in Vim, so you can access symbols without Shift. I don't use Vim but I kind of wish there was a system-wide toggle for that kind of thing. (Maybe with AutoHotKey, and then porting it to HammerSpoon or whatever the cross-platform one was called :)

dpwm 5y ago

Interesting to compare it to my preferred keyboard layout, BÉPO [0][1]. In Halmak, the vowels are clustered around the right hand rather than the left. Like BÉPO, the punctuation is reachable with index fingers. There is some difference with the home row consonants, but otherwise this looks like an interesting layout. Although BÉPO is a French layout, I’ve found it works well for English – despite giving space to accented characters that are not often used in English. [0] https://bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil https://bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil (in French) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%89PO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%89PO

sylware 5y ago

jtian 5y ago

AI decides that ctrl is still there? Look at many Japanese made (ANSI) keyboards: they simply put ctrl where caps lock locates. This is a life changer to me, and inspires me to change all my keyboards: no new layout required. Even though they can claim movement is decreased, having little finger hitting ctrl at the original location for hundreds to thousands of times is never a fun. It’s ergonomically bad.

kschiffer 5y ago

I'm three months into colemak now, together with learning touch typing (and switching to vim as main editor). I've managed to get up to around 50 wpm coming from 75 wpm with normal qwerty without touch typing (just 6 finger freestyle). I've still some time to go to get over my initial typing speed. A really cool thing about colemak for me is replacing caps lock with backspace, which in itself is getting rid of so much finger/hand-travel, but that can obviously also easily be hacked into qwerty as well. To this point, I don't know if I would recommend switching to anyone for the following reasons: - You will slowly use muscle memory of normal qwerty, which can become quite awkward whenever you forced to use another computer. It's not like you cannot type it anymore, but you will be quite slow and inaccurate when typing. However, these situation barely exists for me in everyday life. - Learning the new layout is quite a feat that takes time and daily dedication. I decided early on to use the new layout in my job (frontend dev) which definitely speed up adoption for me but also slowed me down considerably for some days. Even then it will take quite some time to get back to your initial speed. - Depending on your profession, typing speed may not at all be a bottle neck. This is true for me as a software developer, where you spend the most time thinking about how to solve problem before typing them in small chunks. - Wrt touch-typing, I weirdly found out for myself that it can actually cause some wrist and hand strain rather than protect from it. To me it feels that by using a lot more muscles to type it also increases chance of wear-and-tear. This is especially true for the pinkies for me, which I never used much for typing before. Good thing about colemak wrt keyboard shortcuts is that it only changes letters (no symbols, punctuation, etc.) and then as few letters as possible to still achieve the best finger travel. In practice that means that many shortcuts stay the same, e.g. the common ones as CTRL-Z/X/C/A/Q/W etc. I sort of did the switch as a self-experiment after being intrigued by all the science behind optimized layouts, and also to challenge myself to learn a new skill for the new year. I wanted to learn touch typing after decades of freestyle typing which I increasingly noticed was very error-prone. I figured that learning a new keyboard layout at the same time is a very good opportunity. Not sure if I will stick to colemak permanently but so far it's still fun to try to gradually improve on it.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

It occurs to me that optimal keyboard layouts depend primarily on use cases: by human language, by activity, and so on. I might well imagine that a Perl-optimized keyboard layout would look different than one intended for writing fiction, and so on.

eimrine 5y ago
I have not seen from your comment where is the difference between layouts for different activities. Isn't Programmer Dvorak enough optimized for Perl? Because for writing some graphomania any Dvorak fits just perfect. I can not even imagine a reason for having several different layouts for same Latin letters.
- MayeulC 5y ago
  APL has had dedicated keyboard layouts since its inception, but that might be a bit unusual. If you lisp, you might want easily accessible parenthesis. In C, semicolon is useful. Bash uses dollar and sharp a lot.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Presumably not Latin letters so much as special chars used in the language syntax. I suppose there's room for optimisation in Latin chars used in keywords (if applicable) too though.
mormegil 5y ago
That reminds me of keyboard heat maps for programming languages: https://g-liu.com/blog/2013/09/reblog-programming-languages-by-heatmap/ https://g-liu.com/blog/2013/09/reblog-programming-languages-... (the winner being, obviously, LISP :-))
- tgvaughan 5y ago
  Really cool, but these heatmaps seem to be compiled from source code. I wonder how much the _actual_ distribution of keys pressed would differ. (I use paredit to write scheme code, and I'm assuming IDEs would skew the distribution in other languages.)

js8 5y ago

Interesting that ETAOIN SHRDLU seems to be on highly symmetric positions.

penjelly 5y ago

people are saying it takes a year to reach proficiency with a new layout. tbh that seems like a really long time for a for someone who types for a living. + 10-15 wpm isnt worth it for me

whoomp12342 5y ago

can AI design keyboard layouts individually for the most popular programming languages please?

ajoy 5y ago

Something I was developing on my spare time :) : https://github.com/aj0y/fitjoy https://github.com/aj0y/fitjoy The main difference with other layouts is that I take finger length into account. (Eg. the pinky is usually much shorter than your ring finger, so putting them all on the same row means your ring finger need to curl up more and less relaxed). Also tried to reduce changes to the most common shortcuts we (programmers) use. Feedback welcome!

dangerface 5y ago

I used dvorak for two years got no benefit from it. It was no more comfortable than touch typing on qwerty, words per minute (a pathetic 80) and accuracy was the same. Switching between dvorak and a qwerty keyboard was impossible even tho I knew how to touch type on both. The big win from my dvorak experiment was learning that when coding typing speed doesn't matter. I spend more time thinking about my code than implementing it, removing shortened non descriptive variables or functions with long winded names has improved my productivity immensely.

bobbylarrybobby 5y ago

One issue I've always had with QWERTY (and probably this new layout as well) is that "similar" letters are often next to each other on the keyboard, making typo detection nearly impossible in English. For instance, in English, many short words with a "i" as the only vowel remain a valid word when the "i" is replaced by an "o" or a "u" -- pit/pot/put, bit/bot/but, tip/top/tup, pig/pog/pug, bitch/butch/botch, etc. This means if you go to hit the "i" key but accidentally hit the "u" or "o" keys, the typo won't necessarily look like a typo to either to the author or the reader. Similarly with "s" and "d" -- pretty much every verb can be conjugated to end with either an "s" or a "d", so if you press "d" when you meant to press "s" or vice versa, it probably remains a valid verb, and thus is harder to catch. For these purposes, my ideal layout would have interchangeable letters sufficiently far apart from each other to make typo detection+resolution easier. The most commonly used letters should be surrounded by the least commonly used letters so that, for instance, if you "jqb" I know you meant "job" and not, say, "jib". This would also make swipe typing on phones far easier to use, as it would be much less ambiguous which letters you were aiming for.

njsubedi 5y ago
New idea: AI generated least-error prone swipe keyboard.
doubled112 5y ago
I've had a number of, perhaps inappropriate, typos in work messages thanks to the letters directly to the left or right. I'd never thought of optimizing a layout so that typos are obvious nonsense. At the same time, I think I'd find a way regardless. Some real examples include: "Any update on your free/busty time?" instead of busy. "It is just milf kitty indigestion" instead of mild. You just have to hope your client or coworker makes typos too, and finds amusement in it.
jdc0589 5y ago
new idea, ai generated layout to intentionally create the most fun typos

codedokode 5y ago

As we are discussing layouts, I would like to point to a bigger problem (in my opinion) with keyboards: they don't have enough keys. Let me explain. While Latin alphabet has only 26 letters, many languages have more of them. For example, Russian alphabet has 33 letters. Therefore, to fit these letters there must be 7 more keys. But we also need two keys to switch layouts - so in total there should be 9 extra keys. Sadly, manufacturers (including Apple that claims to "think different", but in this case thinks exactly the same as PC vendors) don't want to add even a single key, instead they put extra letters onto keys with symbols, so you have to switch layouts to type those symbols. Furthermore, several characters like period or comma are located on different keys in different layouts. Guess, how easy it becomes to make a mistake. Switching layouts is inconvenient. Instead of having two dedicated keys for switching to each language, OS vendors add single switching combination like Shift + Alt (Windows) or Cmd + Space (Mac). Also, on keyboard itself there is no indication that these keys can switch layout. One could argue that it is difficult to find more space on laptops. Well, I think that this can be solved somehow. For example, one could add an extra row. But it is absolutely possible on desktop PC keyboards, and yet nobody is doing this.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
>>Sadly, manufacturers (including Apple that claims to "think different", but in this case thinks exactly the same as PC vendors) don't want to add even a single key, Realistically, it's the opposite - they look to reduce and minimize keys; Home/End/Pg keys, arrow keys, all are being mangled/reduced/moved/killed. Every manufacturer wants to make its own bespoke layout for every model they make seemingly, presumably in a valiant effort to make muscle memory thing of the past :-) . Standards are for wussies!
slim 5y ago
I'd go even further and want a 200 key keboard. to each glyph a separate key. I don't want to switch (I write arabic/latin)

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

I like it just because it will annoy fellow vim users who brag about never having to leave the home row to move around a buffer. (You can remap, but you must also remap your muscle memory)

readingnews 5y ago

After using a split spacebar for some time now, I just can not see the idea of a single spacebar being optimal. I have two thumbs. Why not use them? My right spacebar is space, my left is enter. I have never done anything else so profoundly productive to my computer.

celeritascelery 5y ago
Interesting. I was thinking of doing something similar, but replacing the other space bar with backspace. For me enter is a really easy key to reach, backspace is much farther. Either that or escape.
linsomniac 5y ago
This. But on steroids. One of the primary reasons I went with the ErgoDox was to reduce the load on my pinkies and add some load to my underused thumbs. I have left thumb doing space/backspace, and right doing enter/tab.
- ajford 5y ago
  Same. Pinky/ring finger RSI lead me to split ergos for this same reason, landing on the Moonlander by ZSA. I've got Space, Bk Space, Shift/(, and Alt on left thumb cluster; Enter, Tab, Shift/), and Esc/Ctrl on the right thumb cluster. Pinkies have far less to do now.
  - linsomniac 5y ago
    I have the ErgoDox Ez, from before the Moonlander. Thankfully I don't have RSI problems, knock on wood. I really should do something better with the thumb cluster, particularly that third easy to reach key. I have Win/Esc left of 'a' and Win/' right of ';', and Ctl/z and Ctl// in the z// positions. The whole lower row is basically unused. Win because I use i3wm and use Win a lot for window navigation.

kortex 5y ago

Has anyone already learned Dvorak and made the switch to some other "more efficient" layout, such as Colemak, Workman, Neo, this new one, etc? Has it actually been more ergonomic, efficient, and/or faster than Dvorak? I have a Moonlander and have it totally tricked out so I have no problem with qwerty hotkey locations. It's basically just the time delta to grind a new layout. When I learned Dvorak around 2009, it took me about a month to reach parity. It might be even faster this time around since I'm constantly messing with my layout with small tweaks and having to relearn muscle memory. Also if you aren't using some kind of layer scheme to map things like ~./()= up/down/left/right to home keys, you are really missing out :p

rstacruz 5y ago
Me! I was a Dvorak user for around 6-8 years, but switched to Colemak mod-DH. I found it to be worth it. Colemak mod-DH is more ergonomic for ortholinear keyboards, less "alternate hand" keys, more balanced left/right hand ratio, and overall (for me) more pleasant to use.

pedalpete 5y ago

When talking about keyboard layout, I'd like to see more experimentation in the physical layout beyond the 4 rows with 13 staggered columns, etc etc I understand "keyboard layout" often means just changing the position of the keys on existing hardware, but perhaps we shouldn't be so limited, particularly when we can experiment with alternative layouts on touch devices.