Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
Am 19.11.2014 um 10:07 schrieb Chow Loong Jin: I'm happily touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard (Thinkpad X230 user here) at 120WPM. I don't really have much of a problem hitting backspace or return/enter. I'm also an Emacs user, and the only thing that really bothered me was the location of the Ctrl key, which my CapsLock key has become. For backspace and return, I usually flick my wrist clockwise and back. Pinky goes on the Enter key, and fourth finger goes on the Backspace key. It doesn't seem to affect my wrist too much when I do that. I get RSI pains occasionally, but they stopped being much of a problem after I found this useful video[1] on stretching your muscles when they ache. I believe that in my case at least, the RSI pains are just muscle fatigue in the same way your calves burn after a strenuous run. What could the current situation be improved? Nothing that wouldn't break the collective muscle memories of Ubuntu users unfortunately. Remapping the backspace and enter keys aren't really an option if you want to keep things usable for end-users. Usability is on my mind. That's why don't want to use alternative keyboard layouts like neo or colemak. I want an extension, not a replacement. Creating a new layer with the CapsLock key could be an solution. I hope I have time to create a table of my requirements before 2015. I will post a link here. Emacs was my favorite editor until I switched to pyCharm. Emacs works good for touch typers. Copy+Paste with ctrl-k ctrl-y feels like flying. I started to configure pyCharm but then I realised: Why modify this single program for ergonomic touch typing? I want ergonomic touch typing everywhere! Thomas -- http://www.thomas-guettler.de/ -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 02:34:11PM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: Am 19.11.2014 um 10:07 schrieb Chow Loong Jin: I'm happily touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard (Thinkpad X230 user here) at 120WPM. I don't really have much of a problem hitting backspace or return/enter. I'm also an Emacs user, and the only thing that really bothered me was the location of the Ctrl key, which my CapsLock key has become. For backspace and return, I usually flick my wrist clockwise and back. Pinky goes on the Enter key, and fourth finger goes on the Backspace key. It doesn't seem to affect my wrist too much when I do that. I get RSI pains occasionally, but they stopped being much of a problem after I found this useful video[1] on stretching your muscles when they ache. I believe that in my case at least, the RSI pains are just muscle fatigue in the same way your calves burn after a strenuous run. What could the current situation be improved? Nothing that wouldn't break the collective muscle memories of Ubuntu users unfortunately. Remapping the backspace and enter keys aren't really an option if you want to keep things usable for end-users. Usability is on my mind. That's why don't want to use alternative keyboard layouts like neo or colemak. I want an extension, not a replacement. Creating a new layer with the CapsLock key could be an solution. Which would then break things for the CapsLock as Control people. I hope I have time to create a table of my requirements before 2015. I will post a link here. Emacs was my favorite editor until I switched to pyCharm. Emacs works good for touch typers. Copy+Paste with ctrl-k ctrl-y feels like flying. I started to configure pyCharm but then I realised: Why modify this single program for ergonomic touch typing? I want ergonomic touch typing everywhere! Gtk+ has emacs keybindings if you wish set it somewhere in gsettings, but as we all know, emacs keybindings aren't really very standard, so we can't use that as default without confusing everyone. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
Am 21.11.2014 um 05:45 schrieb Chow Loong Jin: On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 02:34:11PM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: Am 19.11.2014 um 10:07 schrieb Chow Loong Jin: I'm happily touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard (Thinkpad X230 user here) at 120WPM. I don't really have much of a problem hitting backspace or return/enter. I'm also an Emacs user, and the only thing that really bothered me was the location of the Ctrl key, which my CapsLock key has become. For backspace and return, I usually flick my wrist clockwise and back. Pinky goes on the Enter key, and fourth finger goes on the Backspace key. It doesn't seem to affect my wrist too much when I do that. I get RSI pains occasionally, but they stopped being much of a problem after I found this useful video[1] on stretching your muscles when they ache. I believe that in my case at least, the RSI pains are just muscle fatigue in the same way your calves burn after a strenuous run. What could the current situation be improved? Nothing that wouldn't break the collective muscle memories of Ubuntu users unfortunately. Remapping the backspace and enter keys aren't really an option if you want to keep things usable for end-users. Usability is on my mind. That's why don't want to use alternative keyboard layouts like neo or colemak. I want an extension, not a replacement. Creating a new layer with the CapsLock key could be an solution. Which would then break things for the CapsLock as Control people. I don't know the percentage of ubuntu users who have modified the CapsLock mapping. What's your guess? -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 08:24:07AM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: [...] I don't know the percentage of ubuntu users who have modified the CapsLock mapping. What's your guess? No idea. Probably half of the Emacs users. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 09:23:36AM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: I think the usability of the keyboard/mouse input could be improved a lot. touch typing the letters A-Z blind is quite easy to learn. But still you need to do yoga with you fingers for keys like Backspace or Del. Event Return is finger gym if you want to keep your pointing finger on F and J. There exists completely different keyboard layouts like neo or colemark. But the switch is hard, too hard. Are there any touch typers out there? Don't you feel the pain when pressing Backspace? That's not ergonomic - and at least I - press this key very often. I'm happily touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard (Thinkpad X230 user here) at 120WPM. I don't really have much of a problem hitting backspace or return/enter. I'm also an Emacs user, and the only thing that really bothered me was the location of the Ctrl key, which my CapsLock key has become. For backspace and return, I usually flick my wrist clockwise and back. Pinky goes on the Enter key, and fourth finger goes on the Backspace key. It doesn't seem to affect my wrist too much when I do that. I get RSI pains occasionally, but they stopped being much of a problem after I found this useful video[1] on stretching your muscles when they ache. I believe that in my case at least, the RSI pains are just muscle fatigue in the same way your calves burn after a strenuous run. What could the current situation be improved? Nothing that wouldn't break the collective muscle memories of Ubuntu users unfortunately. Remapping the backspace and enter keys aren't really an option if you want to keep things usable for end-users. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUyMNyrOHJQ -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
Am 19.11.2014 um 10:16 schrieb Chow Loong Jin: On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 04:27:51PM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: [...] I have seen such keyboards before, but I don't want to leave my concave lenovo trackpoint. This way the switch between keyboard is very small. I have not seen ergonomic keyboards with a trackpoint yet. But even with a ergonomic keyboards with a trackpoint there are a lot of small places where ergonmic work with ubuntu could be improved. But Thinkpad keyboards *are* ergonomic. ;-) You just need to figure out how ton keep your wrist straight and let your arm follow your hand while typing. Trackpoints aren't ergonomic, though. Those things are terrible for the tendons on the back of your hand because of how much pressure you need to put into them. I still use mine heavily though, with an aggressive sensitivity setting. I replaced the convex trackpoint with a concav trackpoint and it's much better. You need much less force. There exist several concav trackpoints. Some are good, but some are too flat. Thomas -- http://www.thomas-guettler.de/ -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
Hi, I think the usability of the keyboard/mouse input could be improved a lot. touch typing the letters A-Z blind is quite easy to learn. But still you need to do yoga with you fingers for keys like Backspace or Del. Event Return is finger gym if you want to keep your pointing finger on F and J. There exists completely different keyboard layouts like neo or colemark. But the switch is hard, too hard. Are there any touch typers out there? Don't you feel the pain when pressing Backspace? That's not ergonomic - and at least I - press this key very often. What could the current situation be improved? Thomas Güttler PS: Here are related questions I asked during the last weeks: http://askubuntu.com/questions/520370/emacs-keybindings-for-all-text-inputs http://askubuntu.com/questions/401595/autocomplete-at-desktop-level -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
Hello Thomas, Thomas Güttler [2014-11-18 9:23 +0100]: Are there any touch typers out there? Don't you feel the pain when pressing Backspace? That's not ergonomic - and at least I - press this key very often. I exclusively touch-type, and indeed every move to the mouse or someplace else is a nuisance. After I got RSI I got myself a Kinesis Advantage keyboard (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/products/) some 10 years ago, which solves both the RSI and the outward keys are hard to reach problem very elegantly. Took me some 3 days to adjust, but I don't want to give it away any more :-) Martin -- Martin Pitt| http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Thomas Güttler wrote on 18/11/14 08:23: ... But still you need to do yoga with you fingers for keys like Backspace or Del. Event Return is finger gym if you want to keep your pointing finger on F and J. ... What could the current situation be improved? ... The Keyboard Shortcuts tab in System Settings could include the ability to swap the Alt keys with Backspace and Delete. (And I'm sure some people would like the ability to swap Caps Lock with Ctrl, too.) Right now if I click + in that tab, I get a Custom Shortcut dialog with a Command field. I have no idea what I'm supposed to type in there. - -- mpt -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAlRrB6oACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecpdNwCgmDpkKWlLh7h3fsTh5d4esGfL +U0An2ga0AygOEVaIJdNx4k0GJUPKBQ0 =xIi2 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
Am 18.11.2014 um 09:35 schrieb Martin Pitt: Hello Thomas, Thomas Güttler [2014-11-18 9:23 +0100]: Are there any touch typers out there? Don't you feel the pain when pressing Backspace? That's not ergonomic - and at least I - press this key very often. I exclusively touch-type, and indeed every move to the mouse or someplace else is a nuisance. After I got RSI I got myself a Kinesis Advantage keyboard (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/products/) some 10 years ago, which solves both the RSI and the outward keys are hard to reach problem very elegantly. Took me some 3 days to adjust, but I don't want to give it away any more :-) Hello Martin, I have seen such keyboards before, but I don't want to leave my concave lenovo trackpoint. This way the switch between keyboard is very small. I have not seen ergonomic keyboards with a trackpoint yet. But even with a ergonomic keyboards with a trackpoint there are a lot of small places where ergonmic work with ubuntu could be improved. Thomas -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
