this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

Rules

Keep it ergo

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

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

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

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

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

I spent almost an hour typing this fuckin message.

But hey at least my keyboard looks awesome.

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When learning Colemak I therefore switched to https://first20hours.github.io/keyzen-colemak for which exist many forks, probably also for your layout. Makes you type the letters, learning one after the other. If you mistype, it has you type the wrongly pressed and missed key repeatedly correct before it proceeds to the next letter.

Wow thank you!! I was finally able to drill the entire keyboard after less than an hour and already feel a little less uncomfortable...

I feel keybr is actually much more damaging than helpful. The keys that I drilled the most (I, S and R) are the ones I feel the least comfortable with. I keep mixing them up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm truly very happy to hear that you found a tool which helps you!

Just keep in mind to be focussing extremely and solely on accuracy, no speeding, no bursting.

Drill the keys, the rest happens by itself.

(Up to a speed where you can comforatbly type. Then and only after that, come the specialized trainings for 2/3/n-grams, burstings, read-aheads, finger swaps, etc. - but you need an extremely solid basis for that, where even complicated words just flow out of you without any thinking. Pace yourself, get to at least a constant and repeatable 60 wpm with 99,5+% accuracy on a bad day first before going further)

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, doctor, mechanic, milkman or whatever. People are different and different things work for different perks. I am just telling my personal experiences and the learning plan I chose for me (which probably is ultra-conservative) but which I believe fits my style and brain.