The progression from unergonomic garbage default to splits and ~glovey form makes sense (with the future more sensitive per-finger sensors allowing for more gestures?), though it's a pity the health issues were involved, and that the resulting niche is small and expensive. Where are all the cheep rubber dome splits? Those would already offer health advantage without the mechanical premium...
By the way, the layout might better use physical direction mnemonics, so backspace could be a finger move to the left, and delete - move to the right (either by the same finger or maybe by its mirrored counterpart on another hand). Similar thing for <> and -+-+
> north keys are much harder to hit than its south keys,
> find the inward lateral keys much easier to hit than the north keys
So, basically, "grabbing" movements are more natural?
zamalek · 4m ago
The think the premium that these devices suffer from is how niche they are. Mechanical is relatively niche to begin with (programmers and gamers, mostly). Then you add the idea of making a single large investment for the good of your health, and the pool gets even thinner. Just think of all the garbage chairs that people sit on in front of their computer; let alone keyboards, which they barely think of (until they get RSI, that is).
I'm currently designing one that is a crossover between the characorder and a Logitech vertical mouse (but not actually a mouse), and I hope to make it cheap. It has been going poorly, to say the least. The biggest problem so far is smaller hands, multiple designs scrapped when put in front of such a person. Maybe I should take inspiration from Svalboard instead? Furthermore, Average Joe is not going to tolerate the massive dependency on layers that these keyboards often have, so I'm still fighting in my head with an approach for that.
Twey · 14m ago
I agree, I never wanted to get into mechanical keyboards per se — I was always just on the lookout for an ergonomic layout. Mechanical switches are cheaper and cheaper these days, though, and I suspect the premium on high-end keyboards now is more from a combination of the luxury good tax and the lack of economies of scale.
I really wanted to make myself a steno theory for the CharaChorder, but now I don't have time. There's definitely something to be done with keyboards like this and I do reckon you could do better than with the mechanical constraints of the stenotype, but it's not trivial: the extra inputs are hard to make use of if you want to avoid awkward ‘scissoring’ strokes, though there are definitely some comfortable strokes in there to mine.
The physical direction thing is a neat idea but a bit hindered by the fact that the two sides have very different accessibility: typically the inward keypress is much easier than the outward keypress. There might be some pairs that's good for, though, e.g. the backspace/delete pair you mention (if put on the right hand: delete is much less common, in my experience, than backspace).
> So, basically, "grabbing" movements are more natural?
Right, for me at least that seems to be the case. Other Svalboard users seem to pretty unanimously agree that outward movements are worse than inward movements, especially on e.g. the ring finger, but people differ on how the inward/upward/downward movements compare.
By the way, the layout might better use physical direction mnemonics, so backspace could be a finger move to the left, and delete - move to the right (either by the same finger or maybe by its mirrored counterpart on another hand). Similar thing for <> and -+-+
> north keys are much harder to hit than its south keys, > find the inward lateral keys much easier to hit than the north keys
So, basically, "grabbing" movements are more natural?
I'm currently designing one that is a crossover between the characorder and a Logitech vertical mouse (but not actually a mouse), and I hope to make it cheap. It has been going poorly, to say the least. The biggest problem so far is smaller hands, multiple designs scrapped when put in front of such a person. Maybe I should take inspiration from Svalboard instead? Furthermore, Average Joe is not going to tolerate the massive dependency on layers that these keyboards often have, so I'm still fighting in my head with an approach for that.
I really wanted to make myself a steno theory for the CharaChorder, but now I don't have time. There's definitely something to be done with keyboards like this and I do reckon you could do better than with the mechanical constraints of the stenotype, but it's not trivial: the extra inputs are hard to make use of if you want to avoid awkward ‘scissoring’ strokes, though there are definitely some comfortable strokes in there to mine.
The physical direction thing is a neat idea but a bit hindered by the fact that the two sides have very different accessibility: typically the inward keypress is much easier than the outward keypress. There might be some pairs that's good for, though, e.g. the backspace/delete pair you mention (if put on the right hand: delete is much less common, in my experience, than backspace).
> So, basically, "grabbing" movements are more natural?
Right, for me at least that seems to be the case. Other Svalboard users seem to pretty unanimously agree that outward movements are worse than inward movements, especially on e.g. the ring finger, but people differ on how the inward/upward/downward movements compare.