Re: Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II
James Laver wrote: On 21 Oct 2009, at 01:24, Paul Makepeace wrote: PS for the real layout nerds, http://colemak.com/ is a better choice than Dvorak if you're going to start from scratch http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ is worth a mention too. I got myself up to about one-quarter-speed on that last time I tried. OK I'll bite which is best for perl? :-) Or perhaps what would be the ideal tag layout for perl on a standard UK/US keyboard layout? Jacqui FYI: I always fancied having a perl keyboard - just for the pure nerdyness of it - I already have the pink rubber rollup keyboard which oddly enough is better than you would think given its wibbly wobblyness :-)
Re: Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II
Jacqui Caren-home writes: James Laver wrote: On 21 Oct 2009, at 01:24, Paul Makepeace wrote: PS for the real layout nerds, http://colemak.com/ is a better choice than Dvorak if you're going to start from scratch http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ is worth a mention too. I got myself up to about one-quarter-speed on that last time I tried. OK I'll bite which is best for perl? :-) Possibly which editor you use matters, too. I read the Colemak stuff, and it sounds impressive -- enough for me to think I'll probably give it a go. But that site's author says he uses it with a completely different Vim mapping, with keystrokes chosen to suit the Colemak layout. I'm pretty sure I'm not up for that: * Sometimes I have to log into somebody else's server and edit something, without my Vim customizations (or possibly even using a different VI clone). Currently I can cope with that; I'm not quite as efficient as with my config (and probably beep more), but I can get stuff done reasonably quickly. But if I get used to _entirely_ different Vim mappings then effectively I'm no longer a Vim/VI user. * There's mention that the Colemak Vim mappings don't quite support all standard Vim features. I use lots of Vim features, including some which I've seen other people claim can be 'safely' remapped because nobody uses them, and some which I used to think I had no use for but later appreciated. So I'm loth to lose any Vim features. * Lots of other apps use VI-like keystrokes, for example less, Mutt, pinfo, and Bloglines to list just those I've used since reading Paul's link this morning. Remapping just Vim doesn't help with all those. (Yes, many other programs can be re-mapped too. And GreaseMonkey can probably tweak Bloglines. But that's a lot of effort, and doesn't solve the general case.) Another contributor to that site says he uses Vim with minimal remapping: retaining h, j, k, l for movement but swapping which of them moves in which direction to match their physical position with Colemak. That avoids or mitigates some of the above issues. But I doubt I could live with pressing k being down in Vim and up in Mutt -- that still sounds way too confusing! Maybe I should switch to Emacs ... Smylers -- http://twitter.com/Smylers2
Re: Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Smylers smyl...@stripey.com wrote: Maybe I should switch to Emacs ... Same deal. I think I started binding them to different keys in order to use the same finger positions I was used to under QWERTY. --James
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
Jacqui wrote: James Laver wrote: On 21 Oct 2009, at 01:24, Paul Makepeace wrote: PS for the real layout nerds, http://colemak.com/ is a better choice than Dvorak if you're going to start from scratch http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ is worth a mention too. I got myself up to about one-quarter-speed on that last time I tried. OK I'll bite which is best for perl? :-) Or perhaps what would be the ideal tag layout for perl on a standard UK/US keyboard layout? Before you switch keyboards, I think there is an important question about how often you are obliged to use a standard qwerty keyboard. I worked all over Europe for a bit using a large number of the European variations on qwerty (y and z switched for instance and punctuation in unusual places). I found the constant switching meant I was slower on all keyboards - but maybe it was worse because the keyboards were kind of the same. Maybe it's not such a problem if you switch between, say, qwerty and colemak. However... My understanding is that, despite a lot of the top results on google for comparisons between dvorak and qwerty significantly favouring the latter, there is actually very little to choose between the two of them in terms of speed. This is a quote from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DvorakKeyboard Liebowitz and Margolis have expanded their earlier discussion on the supposed 'network effect' of the two types of keyboard in their 1999 book, Winners, Losers Microsoft (ISBN 0-945-99980-1 ). Chapter 2 is titled The Fable of the Keys. In it, they refer to some ergonomic studies (pages 31 to 33) in which the theoretical performance benefit of Dvorak over QWERTY has been calculated. A study by A. Miller and J. C. Thomas concludes that no alternative has shown a realistically significant advantage over the QWERTY for general purpose typing. R.F. Nickells, Jr, found that Dvorak was possibly 6.2 percent faster than QWERTY, while R. Kinkhead found a 2.3% advantage in favour of Dvorak. Ok - even taking the top number without question: 6.2% is obviously better, but, for me, it's not enough to overcome the switching/convenience problem - and also the problem of being able to find a top quality ergonomic keyboard. Can anyone point me towards a Goldtouch style keyboard for dvorak or colemak? It's basically got a ball and socket joint joining two halves of a split keyboard allowing you to control both yaw and roll. It also has the advantage of no numeric keypad - so there's significantly less travel between keyboard and mouse. I haven't had significant RSI since I started using it, and I was in significant pain pre-adoption. I had been seeing an osteopath who pointed out that the natural position for the hand is in shaking hands position - so constantly rotating it flat (as for normal cheap flat keyboards) - and worse, then yawing it to point forward, places a lot of strain on your hands. He also got me to use a shaking hands position mouse. We're kind of switching into public service/health announcement territory here: but if anyone is interested, a good link to buy this sort of stuff is www.ergonomics.co.uk under Products-Accessories. I also use a specialist mouse wrist rest from Fellowes that moves with my wrist. I would be very interested to know if there are any truly independent studies on colemak versus qwerty keyboards - but I would be surprised if the difference came out at more than 10%. Chris _ Stay in touch with your friends through Messenger on your mobile http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/174426567/direct/01/
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Chris Jack chris_j...@msn.com wrote: Before you switch keyboards, I think there is an important question about how often you are obliged to use a standard qwerty keyboard. I worked all over Europe for a bit using a large number of the European variations on qwerty (y and z switched for instance and punctuation in unusual places). I found the constant switching meant I was slower on all keyboards - but maybe it was worse because the keyboards were kind of the same. Maybe it's not such a problem if you switch between, say, qwerty and colemak. A friend of mine in Canada tried it for a few weeks at work only (I figured there was no chance of losing productivity at work) and used qwerty at home and seemed to do fine with switching. No subtle differences, it's a whole different mode of typing. It also has the advantage of no numeric keypad - so there's significantly less travel between keyboard and mouse. That's distinctly not an advantage for those of us who type numeric IDs into database driven applications. I had been seeing an osteopath who pointed out that the natural position for the hand is in shaking hands position - so constantly rotating it flat (as for normal cheap flat keyboards) - and worse, then yawing it to point forward, places a lot of strain on your hands. He also got me to use a shaking hands position mouse. We're kind of switching into public service/health announcement territory here: but if anyone is interested, a good link to buy this sort of stuff is www.ergonomics.co.uk under Products-Accessories. I also use a specialist mouse wrist rest from Fellowes that moves with my wrist. I'm curious about trackballs. I use one ever since i had a minor twinge that might have potentially indicated RSI or CTS and I haven't had a recurrence. They do still require you to twist your arm to use though (but movement of the hand is distinctly reduced). --James
Re: [ANNOUNCE] London.pm November social 2009-11-05, The Victoria, Bayswater W2 2NH
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 11:44:01AM +0100, london.pm-requ...@london.pm.org wrote: Message: 1 Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:55:23 +0100 From: David Dorward da...@dorward.me.uk Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] London.pm November social 2009-11-05, The Victoria, Bayswater W2 2NH To: London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers london.pm@london.pm.org Message-ID: c14c5c49-9338-4c27-90d8-09820225b...@dorward.me.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; delsp=yes On 19 Oct 2009, at 08:38, Philippe Bruhat (BooK) wrote: On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 12:41:30PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote: I for one welcome our new UTF-8 pub overlord! Not to diminish his merits, but he also fits in latin-1. When creating content there are two encodings. ASCII and UTF-8. Let us forget about this legacy ISO-8859 series until such time as we have to parse content that people insist on producing in it - and then we shall tell Buffy and Willow that they are forbidden from taking their ponies to deliver beer to those people until they mend their wicked ways. (It's been a weird evening for me, OK?) Buffy and Willow have ponies? When did that happen? L.
Re: Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II
2009/10/21 Paul Makepeace pa...@paulm.com On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 12:37 AM, gbjk g...@thermeon.com wrote: I've been looking for a datahand pro II. http://www.datahand.com/products/proii.htm I don't have one of those but I do have a Kinesis Advantage, http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm I have one of these at work, the keys mapped to your thumb alone (esc as I'm a vim user from time to time, but also delete and return) is worth it. Took about a week of feeling like I couldn't type at all, then a week at half speed, then back to full speed after that, and I can happily switch to 'normal' keyboards and back again as the layout is mostly the same. If you do get one make sure to follow the manual to help with muscle memory, that made a bigger difference than I thought it would. Leo
Re: Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II
James Laver writes: On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Smylers smyl...@stripey.com wrote: Maybe I should switch to Emacs ... Same deal. Except it wouldn't be for me, cos I don't already know Emacs! I think I started binding them to different keys in order to use the same finger positions I was used to under QWERTY. I could cope with Vim having most command keys in different places; it's only h, j, k, l that are problematic, because of their use as cursor keys, in a single block on the home row. From what I understand Emacs doesn't do that, so might be less disrupted by keys being moved around. (Also: I was joking.) Smylers -- http://twitter.com/Smylers2
Re: Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Smylers smyl...@stripey.com wrote: I could cope with Vim having most command keys in different places; it's only h, j, k, l that are problematic, because of their use as cursor keys, in a single block on the home row. From what I understand Emacs doesn't do that, so might be less disrupted by keys being moved around. Well, ctrl-n, ctrl-p for next and previous line and ctrl-f, ctrl-b for next and previous character. If you're using the arrow keys you don't suffer (but you fail for being insufficiently lazy about moving your hands) but considering how much you use them, your hands are reluctant to change. (Also: I was joking.) Yes, that wasn't lost on me, but I thought it worth mentioning. --James
Re: [ANNOUNCE] London.pm November social 2009-11-05, The Victoria, Bayswater W2 2NH
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Lesley B lesl...@pgcroft.net wrote: Buffy and Willow have ponies? When did that happen? Around about the time they started having pie and pint lunches. HTH. --James
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:05:28 +0100, James Laver wrote: On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Chris Jack chris_j...@msn.com wrote: Before you switch keyboards, I think there is an important question about how often you are obliged to use a standard qwerty keyboard. I worked all over Europe for a bit using a large number of the European variations on qwerty (y and z switched for instance and punctuation in unusual places). I found the constant switching meant I was slower on all keyboards - but maybe it was worse because the keyboards were kind of the same. Maybe it's not such a problem if you switch between, say, qwerty and colemak. A friend of mine in Canada tried it for a few weeks at work only (I figured there was no chance of losing productivity at work) and used qwerty at home and seemed to do fine with switching. No subtle differences, it's a whole different mode of typing. Problem then comes with people who need to help you on your computer. I often help a tester here who has a Natural split keyboard, and find it tough, but doable (I used to use a natural years ago, the problem is using a Natural from a sideways position or standing position while at $co-worker's desk). I can't imagine any way of coping if he had a Dvorak layout. Matt. __ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email __
Re: [ANNOUNCE] London.pm November social 2009-11-05, The Victoria, Bayswater W2 2NH
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Lesley B lesl...@pgcroft.net wrote: Buffy and Willow have ponies? When did that happen? 20th June 2001. http://search.cpan.org/~dcantrell/Acme-Pony-1.1.2/lib/Acme/Pony.pm Mark.
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
Problem then comes with people who need to help you on your computer. I often help a tester here who has a Natural split keyboard, and find it tough, but doable (I used to use a natural years ago, the problem is using a Natural from a sideways position or standing position while at $co-worker's desk). I can't imagine any way of coping if he had a Dvorak layout. When my friend Adam was switching over to Dvorak many years ago, he implemented two small shell scripts to toggle layout: asdf and aoeu It helped keep the problem Matt mentions in check.
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
Chris Jack wrote: I had been seeing an osteopath who pointed out My interest in this thread is two fold. 1) I write or edit a lot of code. Why should I spend my days typing many repetitive words over and over. Does anyone here remember spectrums or ZX81's? :-) 2) My sister has a damaged nerve in her arm and I have sent her various keyboards, trackballs, graphics tablets etc. As she plans upon doing an IT degree and unless she can find soemthign she can work with work in IT is a no-no. And this would be a big loss tothe industry - she is *very* smart! Jacqui
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:32:46 -0400, jesse wrote: Problem then comes with people who need to help you on your computer. I often help a tester here who has a Natural split keyboard, and find it tough, but doable (I used to use a natural years ago, the problem is using a Natural from a sideways position or standing position while at $co-worker's desk). I can't imagine any way of coping if he had a Dvorak layout. When my friend Adam was switching over to Dvorak many years ago, he implemented two small shell scripts to toggle layout: asdf and aoeu It helped keep the problem Matt mentions in check. True-ish. If you occasionally glance at the keys it really screws you over though :) __ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email __
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Matt Sergeant mserge...@messagelabs.com wrote: True-ish. If you occasionally glance at the keys it really screws you over though :) Well unless you're buying labels to stick on the keys you aren't going to be able to look down on Dvorak, and I'd hope that by now you've muscle-memorised QWERTY. --James
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs
James Laver wrote: On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Chris Jack chris_j...@msn.com wrote: It also has the advantage of no numeric keypad - so there's significantly less travel between keyboard and mouse. That's distinctly not an advantage for those of us who type numeric IDs into database driven applications. I have a separate numeric keypad which I could put on the other side of the mouse - but personally I never use it so it sits on the other side of my desk where I sometimes use it to plug USB devices into (cos it's got a couple of USB ports). If you've never had significant pain from RSI, you may not realise how much extra pain travelling over the numeric keypad is. It is a classic bad design. When you travel from the keyboard to the mouse - your hand is in the air and holds extra tension. Numeric keypad = extra travel = extra tension. Extra tension+inflamed tendon = extra pain. Anyway, if you're not suffering from RSI, you may not want to shell out the rather exorbitant sums for such a keyboard - but I suspect it helps ward off getting RSI in the first place - so a mythical future version of yourself with RSI may berate your current self for sticking with a numeric keypad between keyboard and mouse. Chris _ Download Messenger onto your mobile for free http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/174426567/direct/01/
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
Jacqui Caren-home writes: My interest in this thread is two fold. 1) I write or edit a lot of code. Why should I spend my days typing many repetitive words over and over. Does anyone here remember spectrums or ZX81's? :-) You shouldn't; you should use an editor which has completion on words which are used in your project. 2) My sister has a damaged nerve in her arm and I have sent her various keyboards, trackballs, graphics tablets etc. As she plans upon doing an IT degree and unless she can find soemthign she can work with work in IT is a no-no. And this would be a big loss tothe industry - she is *very* smart! A friend with RSI has a keyboard he can use fine, but needs to avoid mousing. Unfortunately[*1] whoever wrote the bespoke software used by his branch of the civil service didn't bother with keyboard access for many features. Last night he was amused to relay that work's health safety advisor has decreed that he must use Dragon Dictate for input -- his job involves using this software while on the phone, and he's not sure how members of the public will take to being told move left or tap right in the middle of calls ... [*1] I say unfortunately, but it's probably because they were the lowest bidder, and whoever wrote the spec wasn't knowledgeable enough to be aware of what was actually required -- which is incompetent, rather than unfortunate. Smylers -- http://twitter.com/Smylers2
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:32:15 +0100, James Laver wrote: On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Matt Sergeant mserge...@messagelabs.com wrote: True-ish. If you occasionally glance at the keys it really screws you over though :) Well unless you're buying labels to stick on the keys you aren't going to be able to look down on Dvorak, and I'd hope that by now you've muscle-memorised QWERTY. On my own keyboard, yes. The point was on someone else's keyboard. __ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email __
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 04:50:19PM +0100, Smylers wrote: A friend with RSI has a keyboard he can use fine, but needs to avoid mousing. Unfortunately[*1] whoever wrote the bespoke software used by his branch of the civil service didn't bother with keyboard access for many features. In the US, that's ~illegal[1]. The UK doesn't have a similar law? [1] http://www.section508.gov/
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 5:21 PM, jesse je...@fsck.com wrote: In the US, that's ~illegal[1]. The UK doesn't have a similar law? [1] http://www.section508.gov/ We have the disability discrimination act which makes it similarly illegal. It also makes it illegal to develop a website that isn't properly accessible, but we've yet to see any prosecutions. Does your §508 have provisions for non-discrimination against healthy people (making concessions for disabled people available to healthy people?) ? That's what I'm using in the UK to justify my chip and signature card. --James
Re: keyboards/RSI/switching costs (was Looking for a secondhand Datahand Pro II)
Smylers wrote: You shouldn't; you should use an editor which has completion on words which are used in your project. I use a few with completions - with no one being best for the various languages I use. Which brings up what perl editors do people use and why? FYI: Currently writing a js SOAPLite driver so have Perl,PHP and Javascript in various editors switching between them for cross referencing/testing. Initially a tad confusing when in the same editor :-)
