I want to add a small caveat: If you're a user who isn't writing most of their work in English, be careful with the alternative layouts out there. Depending on your language *and* usecase, the alternatives might not be optimal, or even downright harmful. Most popular alternative layouts are built with the English word corpus in mind and arrange the keys so that the most used letters in English are the ones typed by your strongest fingers. This might or might not work with your locale. For example: Standard Dvorak doesn't work with German simply because it's missing the special characters like ä, ß, etc. Even the changed Typ-II version isn't really that well made because German and English have different letter commonness.
this is a really good reminder and was something i struggle a bit when trying to find a good layout that would fit both english and portuguese. most layouts tends to just move 'q', 'x' and 'z' really far away as their are not common on english, but they are extremely common in portuguese, same thing with y an k on the homerow, two letter that are only used in portuguese to type foreign words
@@juliofreitas1652 its one of the options i had. its seems pretty good and wouldnt be bad to any of those language, i use ISRT which is pretty similar all thing consider
I use a custom layout myself (ENDe), but I think before going that route you should first make the other improvements (split KB, nav-layer, easy to access often used symbols and characters). There the real gain is made. The non-qwerty layout is just nice to have, but comes with a high cost timewise!
Totally agree. Arrow keys without moving your hands is way more useful than choosing one of dozens of different non-qwerty layouts. I will be happy to move from qwerty once everyone else decides what they are moving to. haha.
It's the keyboard shortcuts that make leaving QWERTY so difficult. They're *designed* with certain hand configurations in mind. And even if I could technically customize them, configuring that-and maintaining those configurations-in every app is so much work I'd never get my normal job done.
I mean, you could just have holding Ctrl/Alt/Windows/Shift move you to a QWERTY layer on your keyboard. Sure, that means you have to keep "remembering" QWERTY, but I think that's wise to do regardless, as being able to type on a different setup seems like a good skill to have anyway.
actually when you learn even a little other layouts you will see that it is a minor problem. Optimization for qwerty is kinda bad to begin with. Homerow mods or any other sensible modifiers positions make any optimization for qwerty laughable in comparison.
For me it was just a friend who didn't believe I could learn a new layout and me wanting to prove him wrong. Worked wonders for the motivation :) And I'm still typing on it to this day! As of now even on a custom, handwired 40% that I build on top of cardboard (and also a cardboard case around it).
You should give layouts using a letter on thumb a try :D (current modern layout-wise, there's Night - My own, Dusk, Bunya - Gallium port, and a few more stat-focused ones). Night has near minimum SFBs (nearly 1/3 SFBs of Graphite) and focuses on alternation; Dusk is every so slightly worse on SFBs (a little under 1/2 of Graphite) but has more rolls, and Bunya is a port of Gallium that avoids the C-index of the other two (sitting also a little under 1/2 SFBs of Graphite). Currently, 185 WPM on Night so it's tried and tested :D (making website for it soon™). As for Dusk, I'm not sure who's the fastest at the moment, but it's around 120-140 WPM. Bunya I'm not sure if there have been any users yet. For those who are curious, multi-thumb layouts have been considered, but haven't really found merit. The thumb is rather complicated, being strong, but rather slow. Unlike other fingers, techniques such as sliding and alt-fingering aren't as viable so avoiding SFBs and SFSs are a must - unfortunately it's hard to use any good letter parings with these requirements. Statistic wise, it hasn't proven to beat single-thumb in any statistics yet, but maybe we'll see in the future. Also, as a reference point, current SFB floor is 0.22% (1/4 of Graphite) but is compromised with ridiculous SFSs. *all of these stats are based off Keysolve like the document, if you are from the AKL discord, that is why the stats may look a bit off.
I don't mind qwerty that much. I am happy to not look at the keyboard while typing, I could use better placement for symbols though. Love your videos Ben. Your videos are fun to watch and I learn a lot hearing your perspective.
Yeah, I think the best middle ground is a Corne keyboard with a custom number/symbol layer. I'm actually pretty happy with default QWERTY, though maybe I'll try a different layout eventually out of curiosity.
there is funny thing about layouts: you don't feel badness of qwerty because all your fingers have a lot movements. But when people try learn colemak, they notice and complain that, for example, h (which on the same position) is uncomfortable now in comparison with other keys.
@@inevespace Colemak is not a good option anyways, when you invest in learning a new layout. Too many downsides -- mostly the right hand way to busy and not enough hand alterations.
@@nickgoogle4525 I didn't say that Colemak is good option. I was talking about other thing. I also don't think that investment to learn is big if you are relatively slow. In last half year I switched layout 2 times without problems just because my speed is 40-50wpm to begin with. And hand alternation is preference, not disadvantage. Colemak was designed to have rolls instead alternations.
ohh yeah. I tried typing on azerty while staying with a friend from france. It was actually miserable. The symbols are all over the place and everything is just weird.
The main app I work on uses `\` as a core markup character. In training the AZERTY users get taught how to type it with ALT+NUM codes because there's built-in key combo for it.🤦♂
1:20 Have you ever tried stenography? It has a steep learning curve but once you start getting the hang of it you can completely replace your normal QWERTY (or other layout) keyboard with a stenography one. I use a steno keyboard instead of a QWERTY one. It's the most ergonomic and amazing typing experience I've ever tried.
Absolute hats off to you! I did try it but gave up very quickly! I think part of what put me off was it always needs software running so you can't just plug your board into an iPad etc.
@@BenVallack Take a look at Embedded Steno. It's a custom firmware for steno keyboards that puts all the functionality (including the word list/dictionary) into the firmware, so it works without any software running on the host machine. There are videos of it being used on mobile devices like a phone.
@@BenVallack There are steno keyboards (uni v4 polyglot etc) that allow you to have the steno software onboard, you can even update the dictionary using it. this allows you to, for example, use steno on your smartphone.
@@BenVallack I'm very happy with my Jarne with Javelin firmware. No software needed. I'm using Lapwing as my base dictionary. I'm a few months in and still not very fast, but the ergonomics are worth it. I had to power through the first couple weeks before it really started to click, but now I can't go back.
The main problem that is rarely, if ever, mentioned in alternative keyboard layout videos is how unrealistic using an alternative layout is for gamers. Not all games allow you to remap keybindings which makes them unplayable with WASD, and even the games that do, don't change the game tips. For example, when told to press a key in the tutorial, you'll have to figure out where that key would be on a QWERTY keyboard before finally pressing it, and maybe by then it's too late. Layout switching is also unrealistic because many games use the keyboard for chat, writing text/labels, etc. Layout switching in between a quick message to a teammate or even just trying to quickly label a sign when building something has a ton of friction. I've never loved typing more than I did when using Colemak-DH, especially as a developer, but the struggle it was gaming forced me to switch back. I can only hope that the movement to leave QWERTY becomes large enough that alternatives become viable for everybody.
That layout try out site is a brilliant idea, had a 10 minute typing session with DVORAK and the comfort factor for an extended typing session became very apparent. I'm on the fence about throwing out my QWERTY muscle memory when I'm comfortably typing in the 115 wpm range. Not really looking to go faster, and my fatigue concerns have largely been addressed with the split tented keyboard.
Check out penguify's video where he learns a whole new layout and tries going back to qwerty. iirc, he was around 120wpm for qwerty, then learned a new layout and reached the same wpm. He had a tough time going back to qwerty for a little bit, but it quickly came back and he was right back to his usual speed. He also talked about a guy that was able to do a typing test where it swapped between several different layouts and he crushes it well over 100wpm the entire time. Anyway, I mention this because while learning a new layout is tough and can be frustrsting, it's typically worth it and you won't lose that qwerty muscle memory
Don't -- would be my advise. Except you pay the price to get much slower and taking many months to get back to old speed, although then typing with a bit more comfort.
As usual, amazing video!!! This highly motivates me to move away from qwerty as well and learn a new layout. You are the reason, I started building my first custom keyboards from scratch and document the process. What a lovely hobby!! Going to a split keyboard ortholinear already made typing so much better. lets see if a new layout does improve it even further
There are people who have come up with potentially better layouts for the two-layer board now I think - details are in the alternative keyboard layouts discord.
As always, thank you for the great video, content and helpful links. I feel like I learn a lot from your videos and they are are always precise and to the point. I appreciate that!
The layout I switched to is "RSTLNE" layout from the video "Using AI to create the perfect keyboard" it was pretty easy to learn and the changes weren't so drastic, it swapped E with D, R with F, I with K, and there are still many letters from QWERTY that are in the same place. This wasn't the best result from the algorithm but it was much better than QWERTY anyway. Graphite looks interesting to me but there are things I prefer from RSTLNE, maybe I'll try to combine them into one.
Awesome vid! As a happy owner of a Voyager (since your review), I wanted to incorporate all four thumb keys into my typing action, so I'm using a modified version of Colemak DH where I've placed the 'E' and 'A' letters on my right-hand thumb keys, with space and backspace on the left, which already feels pretty amazing. But although that document is so freaking filled with info that it almost hurts my head-in a good way-I’d like to know if there are any layouts that have been thoroughly analyzed like that and attempt a similar approach?
That doc is next level isn't it. Moving letters to thumb keys has definitely been looked at but not sure how the analysers deal with them or if the've been included in the wider comparisons.
Bought a voyager after watching your video. First custom keyboard. Had it about a month. Set to ISRT. Finally getting it, around 40 wpm. My favorite keyboard now. Now, you have me considering the switch to Graphite lol. It's interesting that all of the vowels are on the right. Which keyswitches do you have? I tried browns, pro red, twilight, and ended up with sunset with the silcone pads from ZSA
Graphite it great. I've been using it for a few months and have no problems with it so far. It's really fun to type on once you get passed the slow typing stages.
😀 I'm currently looking for improvements for my keyboard myself and simply switching from the German to the US one already sped up my coding skills. I just had to fiddle around with your tool a little bit to make it (partially) work for my old German Laptop keyboard, but being a coder myself, I already got teased to create a similar tool, probably even for different layers or stuff like that, but overall, well done! 🙂
I'm back on my Iris with Colemak dh, I had a 2 year break. I'm back to square one but I like the challenge though and the split keyboard world. I've recently been rewatching your great videos. There are plenty of rabbit holes with this hobby, like 1u spacebars :)
Great video ! I heard about the Graphite layout a while back, but I am still going to stay with MTGAP I think, just because it fits all three languages I daily use.
How to check layouts for a different languages? Like German, Polish or other? Great video! I really admire your dedication and work you put in these videos.
I'm assuming one of the languages would be English. It depends on how many characters differ. For example I need only the ä and ö characters so I have them on a separate layer on top of a and o with a momentary layer toggle on one of my thumb keys. However if you need a completely separate set of characters then a toggleable layer would be better.
great video! sadly, this only works if you need to type in english. not only the communities around keyboard layouts for different languages are orders of magnitude smaller, but also when you have to actually type in multiple languages, you can't really have a non-standard layout for each of them. and having to use multiple differnet platforms (e.g. linux+windows) takes this onto another level of compexity upd: i'm mostly talking about technical difficulties. e.g. you have to switch layout on both device's graphical environment level and your keyboard's firmware level
@@night_h4nter wweeeeellll, I beg to differ. I’m commonly typing in both French and English, with a bit of Spanish and Italian here and there and a lot of programming languages in the mix. That didn’t have a massive impact on how hard it was to switch to another layout from qwerty. To an extent, me being a vim user was much more of an issue.
@@bricecarpentier5817 would you mind sharing your setup? how do you implement this? you have to switch both "hardware" and "software" layouts at the same time. i was unable to figure this out without digging into complex things like qmk's raw hid feature or custom keyboard drivers
@@night_h4nter I'm never switching any software layout and I'm not sure why you'd need to. Software side macOS believes my keyboard is a US International one. The layout I'm using is actually based on a workman one, but the whole thing would work the same with bepo or colemak or even qwerty for that matter. I've only setup combos for accents, ie. pressing three specific keys at the same time yields an acute accent key, which I then follow with an e if I want an acute e for example. This much is provided by the "US international" layout. I then do the same with three other keys and the grave accent and so on and so forth. I type at around 90-100wpm in both french and english which is more than enough to never feel like you need to improve any further. You could do that using zmk (that's how I do it) but you could also do that using vial or zsa's software or karabiner and so on.
@@bricecarpentier5817 oh, missed the fact that all you need to type is latin characters, and the languages are from the same family. yeah, it makes sense why it's much easier in your case. thanks for sharing your setup nonetheless!
Thanks Ben! I recently found your channel and love your content (+ production value) - our interests overlap almost perfectly! I also write code every day and have been considering buying the ZSA voyager for a while now but have two concerns: 1. Will I be able to do learn _and_ remain relatively productive? 2. Will I still be able to type on a staggered QWERTY layout if I work remotely and don't want to carry a separate keyboard around? Finally in your opinion do you think it's best to go all out and get a new keyboard immediately + switch layout simultaneously, or trial a layout in a suboptimal way on a staggered keyboard? I kinda feel like I have a better chance of maintaining my ability to type on a traditional staggered qwerty layout if my brain mentally associates a new layout with a new physical keyboard, similar to how switching between my manual and automatic car is completely subconscious for me now...
I agree that Qwerty is not an optimised keyboard, but if you look at the history of changes that produced Qwerty there were ergonomic tweaks that went into the layout: the move from two rows of letters to three, putting the i and o keys, which were also the original 1 an 0 keys, near the 9 key was about making typing 20th century years quicker. This type of gradual modification makes me sympathetic to the Colmak layout as a gradual improvement, but I think giving up my ugly, less-than-perfect Qwerty layout (that I kind of like anyway) would be too much work for not enough benefit to me.
While I do use a non-traditional keyboard (Glove 80), I have shied away from using a different layout for one reason: vim. I would have no idea how to start. Do I move my muscle memory over like with everything else? Or do I keep the placement of the keys but lose the mnenoic meaning of the motions and commands. So customized qwerty it is.
I use Colemak-DH. HJKL are in a pretty terrible position, all on the right index finger. I decided not to remap any keys for vim, it doesn't take to long to rebuild the muscle memory for mnemonic keys. However, I have a layer key on my thumb that puts the arrow keys in the hjkl position. So if I want to use hjkl to navigate I still can. This also has the nice effect of allowing home row arrow navigation in any program, not just vim.
if you are on custom keyboard, what the point of hjkl in vim? Just map arrow keys to that position on layer or combo. In my opinion H and L shouldn't be used for navigation to begin with.
::Ben:: Oh my goodness, what have you done to me this time? LOL. First off-another new layout for me to stupidly try and commit to memory?!? You mad lad-I don’t know what to do with you. Also, secondly, giving me a new tool to fuss around with to make learning how to use, or (gasp) even modify new layouts on the fly?!? Holy crap, my guy. I have sat down and just attempted to learn graphite, not even ten minutes after watching your video, and I’m already getting some interesting results. I swapped three pairs of letters around (for a couple different reasons)-but this layout is rather comfy to type on and makes way more sense than colmak-dhm ever did. I swapped the O and U so that they stay U and O. I didn’t move the placement, just swapped them. Same with T and S-RST has a nicer roll, I think. And M C is now C M, though this was done because I have a hard time finding the C key on qwerty for some reason. I think it’s because I want to use my index finger for it, likely a hold over from when I would use row stagger boards over column stagger, but using my index finger for the M makes more sense since the M is more often used than the C for me. Also, just because of how my board is set up while I’m using my Reviung33, I left the period and comma keys alone. I have my question mark on a thumb key, so there is no real advantage to fussing around with the muscle memory for most of the punctuation. I am not sure if I will commit to trying this new layout, for the long haul, but I think that it’s rather interesting. It’s very comfortable to type on and I think that I could get rather speedy on it, if I were to try. Another great video and another terrible habit you’ve given me. Keep ‘em coming, I guess. lol.
Some good mods there! I do wonder about swapping C and M too. I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to actually modifying layouts myself - super worried I'll introduce some horrible side effect! I do wonder if I might end up with something slightly more roll-based and slightly less alternation.
@@BenVallack Yeah, M is the most annoying letter to get used to on graphite, but it can be done. That being said, I was interested in seeing what layout I could achieve by moving M to index, and ended up with a layout called comet. The only thing is that it's more optimized for row stagger and encourages a nonstandard fingermap, where qwerty R is pressed with middle, and qwerty C is pressed with index. If you're interested in using M on index and with traditional fingerings, you could take a look at pine-v4, which comet is heavily inspired by. I'm currently on comet, and I really really like it. If you're on row stagger, I'd recommend comet, and if you're on column stagger, I'd recommend graphite or pine-v4
@@BenVallack I didn’t think it would be too much to add those two rolls because they were already present, they just went outward rather than inward. Typing “you” has it and typing anything with “st” will have it, so making that slight alteration made it less hurty on my brain and muscles. C and M just needed swapped because I kept hunting for M with my eyes too much. Swapping them around has almost eliminated that entirely. But that’s just me.
How do you deal with vim in these alt layouts? I don’t mind a nav layer to replace hjkl but something like cw (change word) is often on the same finger for many alt layouts which is even worse than qwerty.
Have you tried the Svalboard? I'm interested in your thoughts about its input method. I've been on my own little flavor of Dvorak for over a decade now and on the Redox for around 6 years. Recently I've been looking for my next keyboard+layout, but I was aiming for a more radical improvent than a "simple" layout or typical keyboards switch would bring - which is how I encountered the Svalboard. Current plans are to change the 3D print to be smaller, remove the flexibility, and fit me perfectly. But that's a very time consuming project to get right so I've just been looking around at opinions and talking with people so far.
What made you decide to go back from 32-or-less key layouts back to what looks like a 4x6 layout? I remember a lot of videos you made about lowering the amount - would be super interesting to see a video on why or at least hear your thoughts.
@@BenVallack I recently took the plunge and ordered a Voyager, and now I'm using an alternate layout on it full-time. Thanks for getting me started down this rabbit hole, it's been quite the journey.
You mention you are in search for a more comfortable typing experience and therefore switch between layouts. What about the key arrangement? The Gergoplex had the main (middle) thumb at a different spot then the main (inner) thumb key on the Voyager. I am very much surprised that you liked the Gergoplex, but also the Voyager, because the thumb position is much different and only one can fit best to your hand size, keyboard angle, stagger and hand/ keyboard position. From the videos it looks the Gergoplex should feel much more natural for you (and likely most people). The thumb key is what gets me tripping over, when using the Voyager. It just does not feel right and you have to have the thumb in a specific position instead being able to press the key, just where the thumb naturally falls. You also seem to need to stretch the thumb a bit outwards to reach the Voyager main (inner) thumb key. Which is possibly working ok for you, because of relative large hands. I have size 9, so middle sized hands, and can reach the thumb key, but it takes effort not needed on the Lily58 (with a wide thumb key in the middle) for example. Curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Hey Ben just curious why you switched from Colemak DH to Graphite, and are the benefits that more significant than Colemak DH? I've been using Colemak DH for 4+ years.
I would say that graphite is in a new tier of keyboard layouts that not only take letter frequency and basic principles into account but also take a lot of hand movement ergonomics into account (using much smarter optimizers that understand more complex ergonomics statistics). If you look at the stats from the keyboard doc, you can see it has many times less redirects and essentially all annoying hand movements have better stats. I have been using Colemak for 8 years or so and just from messing with graphite a bit, I do think it has an ergonomics edge on top of Colemak. I would say qwerty to Colemak is a huge jump. Colemak to Dvorak or other older layouts is about no difference. Older layouts to modern layouts like graphite is another medium sized but not crazy jump.
@@brendanhansknecht4650 The insane thing is that I switched to QWERTY a few weeks ago. Just one less hassle, and not having to worry about how I am going to get my system setup on a new device.
Wow never heard of graphite before this. I learned Dvorak and it is comfortable when typing English paragraphs. But the increase in speed is minimal (if any) when programming. I went back to QWERTY but can switch to dvorak when I want to. I get about 100 wpm on QWERTY but only about 70 wpm on Dvorak
Ahhh now I'm tempted to learn Graphite but not sure if it's worth it... (My journey has been AZERTY -> QWERTY -> Colemak-DH and I type in English/French/Spanish.)
You would need to check the two extra languages. I guess Graphite will not work that good for this language mix. That is true for all layouts highly optimized for a specific language/ corpus.
Ive been using ISRT, largely because of your use in previous videos for somewhere around the last year. While its better than qwerty for sure, it has never quite felt right. im tempted to try graphite as well, but i wonder if im letting perfect be the enemy of good. Im really tempted to keep trying to optimize, but much like trying to build the perfect nvim configuration, am i letting the desire for a small improvement prevent me from actually getting work done? Its an interesting balance to try and find.
Just ordered my Voyager a few days ago, mostly because of yours and some other youtubers reviews! Going to change over to colemak-DH at the same time, so probably gonna be rough for a few weeks, but wish me luck!
@@BenVallack Yep it's my first! I figured that since my main reason for getting the voyager was preventing RSI, i might as well go all the way and swap to a better layout at the same time
I would love to switch to colemak DH because most of the shortcuts stay in the same place but the problem i face is the fact that colemak isn't on windows without installing something. I also worry about being useless on other keyboards when I have to use someone else's setup.
During covid I was by myself and I started learning workman because I was literally sitting in home using my own computer I even managed to break my previous typing speed record. When I returned to university after covid I immediately felt the pain of everything being in qwerty. I have gone back to qwerty after two years of workman and I have already forgotten workman. I'm not sure if it's possible to learn and type in both layouts at the same time.
On graphite I think that PO, OP & CL would get annoying and uncomfortable for me. The layout has 0.41% scissors and 0.97% 2u row jumps. Monkey-type and the like are ok for testing your speed, but they are not deliberate practice because the words you type are picked randomly from a list. The weakspot funbox tries to give you words that you've made mistakes on but I don't think it does a very good job. I use a tool that brings up words I haven't typed in a while and words I've made mistakes on or are slow at more often so I get to do deliberate practice on these words
I suggest you switch the Language to English 1k or 5k since you would have a large pool of words to practice. My choice is to only type quotes set to Long or Thicc, it's a great way to practice typing full sentences and symbols.
The main challenge I’m trying to overcome with alternate layouts is: so many applications use vim-like key bindings (especially for navigation). How do you 1) efficiently remap those key bindings, and 2) deal with key conflicts resulting for updated key bindings?
One example is for Colemak, I’ve remapped hjkl to hnei. Some neovim reconfiguration figured most of this out. But now I have multiple other apps that depend on hjkl that need to be remapped as well (or can’t). Have you found a way to deal with this problem?
For vim I just try and keep the knock-on effects to a minimum - i.e remap hjkl but then just find unused keys for the ones you displace so you're not moving things around all over the place. I also use the inverted-t shape for movement rather than the straight line hjkl style. I use the same keys as arrow keys on another layer. This has the funny effect of keeping h as left for me on Graphite even though it's moved over one space.
We need to ****#pragma** ban** emojis at a high level! This way, people will start using **/* programming symbols */** instead and won’t **touch_typing("simple words")**. And if they do practice, let's throw in **{other_symbols[]}** right away! =]]
honestly I don't even think qwerty is a problem anymore, at least not for me personally anything longer then a couple sentences gets voice typed whenever possible and on my phone I haven't been pressing individual buttons for years at this point, since I discovered keyboards you can swap through (I think it was like 2013-2014?)
"I" or "A" on the pinky is a big NO for me. I do not understand why frequent characters are placed on the pinkies in keyboard layouts. The fact that they are in the main row does not affect me. Ask anyone about which fingers hurt them, and the answer will always be "the pinkies".
Yeah agree re pinkies - I think the fateuge comes from movement of them though - a tap in their resting positions doesn't seem to be bothering me too much. Although b is quite common too (left pinkie top row)
@@BenVallack Right now, I'm training on the keybr, trying to increase the speed, and my left pinky finger is warm from the tension. Even though it doesn't produce any shifts (I'm practicing another letter), I thought that if only one letter could be changed in the QWERTY layout, then it would be worthwhile changing "w" and "a". It would save a lot of pinkies.
Learning new layouts is fun, and probably good for your brain, but I think it is worth noting that the fastest typists in the world are still using querty. That is not to say that querty is better, just to point out that there is probably not real efficiency to be gained by switching. The use case for switching probably has more to do with reducing RSI than anything else. If you ever have to work on devices that are not yours, even typing on a friends phone, it can be a challenge. God help you if you need to need to type an email on a friends laptop. That's why I ended up switching back to querty. For my personal set up, I use querty on the Dygma Raise with an extra layer for symbols. typing is almost all the exact same as you would find on anyone else's computer, but I have the symbols on an extra layer at the home row which makes work faster and easier while still being able to type on a library computer.
I disagree. I switched to the Noted layout with minor changes to fit on my 32 key keyboard. The process of learning the new layout was a little tough. I did it slowly over a few months using keybr. For the whole time, I continued using qwertz (German layout) at work and even at home. Then, once I got good enough in Noted, I started taking my new split board to work. Now I use my split board 99% of the time, but can easily switch between the two layouts. Sometimes, when helping out colleagues or working on a different PC, I still need to use qwertz and it really is not an issue at all.
Eh, I'd take that with a grain of salt. The pool of people interested in alternate layouts, and the pool of people interested in competition typing, are both so incredibly small. And while on the surface you might think those pools have strong overlap, I don't think that's actually true; no one's a *professional* speed typist, as anyone truly interested in maximum practical speed would be using stenography. So the "fastest typist" competitions are entirely just hobbyists who have gotten incredibly fast at the standard. That said, because steno is clearly better at the goal of fast, ergonomic typing, I think most people would be best off just sticking with QWERTY for regular typing and learning a form of steno if they truly want to take things to a new level.
@@Aurora12488 I agree. For writing actual text, that is. I have never really looked into steno, but as far as I know, it is not suitable for coding. And that is what I mostly use my keyboard for. I believe for my use case, my layout is close to optimal. The alpha layout plays a smaller part in that than the symbol layers and homerow mods, though. Switching alpha layouts in my eyes is more something to do for fun and because it feels nicer to type. I don't think it's a huge productivity boost.
@@Ole485 Actually, steno not working for code is a bit of a myth/outdated. Check out Aerick's videos: one called "How I use steno for everything!" discusses it, and others show specifically him coding C and writing LaTeX. He's switched to steno as his sole input system for over a year now. Now I don't think chords could realistically match the *max* speed of single-finger'd letter input for symbols (though most coders are relatively quite slow at typing symbols regardless), you'd make up for any speed differences with the rest of the non-symbol output. I also suspect you could create certain chords that'd be just as fast, too; symbols are primarily on the shifted layer of the QWERTY keyboard, and I see no reason you couldn't have a shifted layer on the chorded keyboard that would have one hand hold down a chorded "shift" and the other hand press single keys for the symbol. Aerick has a chord that locks into an arrow-key layer, for instance, that will automatically unlock when he presses a non-arrow key.
@@BenVallack How come? From my investigations, it looks like there's a whole bunch of custom bindings you'd need to make as you fill out your Plover dictionary, but that the final result is pretty incredible and ergonomic. Same with CharaChorder. Seems like if you're investing so much time into exploring various layouts, might as well commit one exploration into chording!
@@BenVallack Very understandable. My worry with not picking it is that I'd spend long enough moving between half measures that I might as well have just learned it.
@@Aurora12488 steno is good for natural languages, but simultaneously create additional friction to use computer with a keyboard. Although I studied steno very little, I'm not 100% convinced to go deep. But I take ideas from there about abbreviations and some design philosophy (low force keys, for example). Also, quality of voice typing now is so good, that simultaneous voice recognition + keyboard make you very fast without steep learning curve.
This Qwerty sucks argument to me is pretty dumb. First off, if it were so bad then please explain why the All of the fastest typists use qwerty and not some other layout. The next problem is that switching layouts will cause you a massive disruption in speed for very little benefit, EVER. You will more than likely type very slowly for over a year and every single computer you step up to will require you to switch back to qwerty unless you plan to carry a keyboard around with you everywhere you go. Sure, you might move your hands less with another layout, but you won't find the problems with the layout until you've invested a massive amount of time into learning it. You even admit that you loved a particular format until you got faster and you hope the current one isn't going to cause similar problems once you get faster. You're misleading people into switching by claiming that qwerty is so bad but you're arguments are weak at best. Splitting your keyboards into halves and getting more comfortable will solve more problems than changing your entire layout. I'd also love to hear how you deal with neovim with graphite since the main keys you use to navigate are all over the keyboard.
When your sample size is as large as qwerty's you're bound to have some outliers. As for vim, you can use a nav layer to bind the arrow keys to the center of the keyboard. That solves the hjkl problem. Also, I use a split space bar. My non dominant thumb takes care of the nav layer through the split spacebar.
I use a navigation layer for vim and it works just great. I can even do certain things a lot easier than relying on some godawful vim shortcuts on a regular keyboard. Why don't you ask someone like the primeagen that's on dvorak on vim for years. He's not struggling. The arguments you provided for qwerty also make no sense. Obviously when 99,9+% of people use it, it'll be difficult to find alt layouts represented in the typing elite. That's what happens when you're this omnipresent. That's just statistics. Additionally, the fastest typists use steno, not qwerty, and there are still quite a few champions on colemak and dvorak last i checked. The reality is every layout has a feature tradeoff. But that's only true for the most optimal layouts. Qwerty just does everything bad. Every layout will feel smoother after that. The "layout problems" you mention, are largely exaggerated, as we're into hyper-optimization territory, and are not "reasons to not switch from qwerty". And of course, no one is forcing you to switch, nor trying to sell you on anything you yourself aren't interested in. It's your life, your hands, you use what you want to. You don't have to deny facts to do that.
After more than 20 years of using keyboard, I've just started learning to properly touch typing with, of course, qwerty layout. Now I hear that it's the worst one. 😅
Instead of optimizing the keyboard to the language, you should optimize the language to the keyboard. Joke aside, nice video. I saw many "next-gen keyboards" with joystick-like keys. Wouldn't it be the solution for you?
Yes QWERTY is terrible. But, it's the industry standards, and if switch jobs and you don't want to appear like a drunken monkey at the keyboards at your interviews (especially if you are in IT) then don't stop using QWERTY.
Devorac can be switched to with a single hot key in any windows computer. I frankly do not understand why it is completely being ignored since it was the original alternative and is so popular it is actually an automatic option in windows with no need to configure anything cost a crtl shortcut that you can switch back and forth between the two. I type QWERTY but my best friend uses devorac and swears by it says it saved him from carpal tunnel. So if you use it, this isn’t a fair point because you can use the exact same setup as anyone else and switch it back when you give them the controls.
Step 1: Don't. There's no solid evidence that the other layout types are any more efficient/ergonomic/expedient as opposed to the benefits of simply using a split keyboard.
Step 6 remapping and\or relearning all the hotkeys. I didn't see any comparison of qwerty vs other layout in actual work tasks. I mean yes, I am aware that qwerty is made for 200 year old typewriters and not very effective at writing in english. But is it as bad in coding? Aren't availability of special symbols, autocompletion and usage of VIM accounts for far bigger part of workflow improvements than the change in button layout? And again. Hotkeys. You either need to redo & relearn all the hotkeys (which are often built with qwerty in mind) or use hotkeys from qwerty along with better layout. Which sound cumbersome and not something people would want to try without some proof of positive outcome.
Next we can fix English to make it more ergonomic to type too!
This deserves an LOL over a thumbs up
😂
we should abolish physical typing, and get cheap and practical mind typing
I would start with Chinese and Japanese.
And fix how we write the words, so it has at least SOME level of consistency xD
I want to add a small caveat: If you're a user who isn't writing most of their work in English, be careful with the alternative layouts out there. Depending on your language *and* usecase, the alternatives might not be optimal, or even downright harmful. Most popular alternative layouts are built with the English word corpus in mind and arrange the keys so that the most used letters in English are the ones typed by your strongest fingers. This might or might not work with your locale.
For example: Standard Dvorak doesn't work with German simply because it's missing the special characters like ä, ß, etc. Even the changed Typ-II version isn't really that well made because German and English have different letter commonness.
this is a really good reminder and was something i struggle a bit when trying to find a good layout that would fit both english and portuguese. most layouts tends to just move 'q', 'x' and 'z' really far away as their are not common on english, but they are extremely common in portuguese, same thing with y an k on the homerow, two letter that are only used in portuguese to type foreign words
I was just thinking about this, since we in Danish also have æ, ø and å. Do you know if there are any layouts specifically for non-English languages?
@@IsraelFragaWhat do you think about Colemak-DH for portuguese and english typing?
@@juliofreitas1652 its one of the options i had. its seems pretty good and wouldnt be bad to any of those language, i use ISRT which is pretty similar all thing consider
@@IsraelFragaEstou pensando em aprender Colemak-DH. Você achou outro layout melhor para português?
I use a custom layout myself (ENDe), but I think before going that route you should first make the other improvements (split KB, nav-layer, easy to access often used symbols and characters). There the real gain is made. The non-qwerty layout is just nice to have, but comes with a high cost timewise!
Totally agree. Arrow keys without moving your hands is way more useful than choosing one of dozens of different non-qwerty layouts. I will be happy to move from qwerty once everyone else decides what they are moving to. haha.
It's the keyboard shortcuts that make leaving QWERTY so difficult. They're *designed* with certain hand configurations in mind. And even if I could technically customize them, configuring that-and maintaining those configurations-in every app is so much work I'd never get my normal job done.
I mean, you could just have holding Ctrl/Alt/Windows/Shift move you to a QWERTY layer on your keyboard. Sure, that means you have to keep "remembering" QWERTY, but I think that's wise to do regardless, as being able to type on a different setup seems like a good skill to have anyway.
@@Aurora12488that’s is such a good solution
actually when you learn even a little other layouts you will see that it is a minor problem. Optimization for qwerty is kinda bad to begin with. Homerow mods or any other sensible modifiers positions make any optimization for qwerty laughable in comparison.
@@AlexMercadoGo some layouts like colemak try to keep the main keyboard shortcuts in the same position
I really have never found this to be a problem. I don't think like Ctrl+Z as in the location on the board, I think of the letter itself.
For me it was just a friend who didn't believe I could learn a new layout and me wanting to prove him wrong. Worked wonders for the motivation :)
And I'm still typing on it to this day! As of now even on a custom, handwired 40% that I build on top of cardboard (and also a cardboard case around it).
You should give layouts using a letter on thumb a try :D (current modern layout-wise, there's Night - My own, Dusk, Bunya - Gallium port, and a few more stat-focused ones). Night has near minimum SFBs (nearly 1/3 SFBs of Graphite) and focuses on alternation; Dusk is every so slightly worse on SFBs (a little under 1/2 of Graphite) but has more rolls, and Bunya is a port of Gallium that avoids the C-index of the other two (sitting also a little under 1/2 SFBs of Graphite).
Currently, 185 WPM on Night so it's tried and tested :D (making website for it soon™). As for Dusk, I'm not sure who's the fastest at the moment, but it's around 120-140 WPM. Bunya I'm not sure if there have been any users yet.
For those who are curious, multi-thumb layouts have been considered, but haven't really found merit. The thumb is rather complicated, being strong, but rather slow. Unlike other fingers, techniques such as sliding and alt-fingering aren't as viable so avoiding SFBs and SFSs are a must - unfortunately it's hard to use any good letter parings with these requirements. Statistic wise, it hasn't proven to beat single-thumb in any statistics yet, but maybe we'll see in the future.
Also, as a reference point, current SFB floor is 0.22% (1/4 of Graphite) but is compromised with ridiculous SFSs.
*all of these stats are based off Keysolve like the document, if you are from the AKL discord, that is why the stats may look a bit off.
You nailed it! It's a very good video and now the sponsor segment is very much OK! Thank you! And thanks for attaching all the resources!
Whew! Many thanks!
I don't mind qwerty that much. I am happy to not look at the keyboard while typing, I could use better placement for symbols though.
Love your videos Ben. Your videos are fun to watch and I learn a lot hearing your perspective.
Thanks!
Yeah, I think the best middle ground is a Corne keyboard with a custom number/symbol layer. I'm actually pretty happy with default QWERTY, though maybe I'll try a different layout eventually out of curiosity.
there is funny thing about layouts: you don't feel badness of qwerty because all your fingers have a lot movements. But when people try learn colemak, they notice and complain that, for example, h (which on the same position) is uncomfortable now in comparison with other keys.
@@inevespace Colemak is not a good option anyways, when you invest in learning a new layout. Too many downsides -- mostly the right hand way to busy and not enough hand alterations.
@@nickgoogle4525 I didn't say that Colemak is good option. I was talking about other thing. I also don't think that investment to learn is big if you are relatively slow. In last half year I switched layout 2 times without problems just because my speed is 40-50wpm to begin with. And hand alternation is preference, not disadvantage. Colemak was designed to have rolls instead alternations.
ahah, qwerty being the worst layout is a myth. I dare you to try the french azerty!
ohh yeah. I tried typing on azerty while staying with a friend from france. It was actually miserable. The symbols are all over the place and everything is just weird.
haha yes azerty is the absolute worst
The main app I work on uses `\` as a core markup character. In training the AZERTY users get taught how to type it with ALT+NUM codes because there's built-in key combo for it.🤦♂
That's because you're supposed to type French on it, so it's not really comparable to QWERTY, which is made to type English.
@ to be honest it’s not great at typing French neither 😅
1:20 Have you ever tried stenography? It has a steep learning curve but once you start getting the hang of it you can completely replace your normal QWERTY (or other layout) keyboard with a stenography one. I use a steno keyboard instead of a QWERTY one. It's the most ergonomic and amazing typing experience I've ever tried.
Absolute hats off to you! I did try it but gave up very quickly! I think part of what put me off was it always needs software running so you can't just plug your board into an iPad etc.
@@BenVallack Take a look at Embedded Steno. It's a custom firmware for steno keyboards that puts all the functionality (including the word list/dictionary) into the firmware, so it works without any software running on the host machine. There are videos of it being used on mobile devices like a phone.
@@BenVallack There are steno keyboards (uni v4 polyglot etc) that allow you to have the steno software onboard, you can even update the dictionary using it. this allows you to, for example, use steno on your smartphone.
@@BenVallack I'm very happy with my Jarne with Javelin firmware. No software needed. I'm using Lapwing as my base dictionary. I'm a few months in and still not very fast, but the ergonomics are worth it.
I had to power through the first couple weeks before it really started to click, but now I can't go back.
Thanks for sharing the links and tools great ideas to test different layouts, good to see you back on the productive keyboard layout 👍
The main problem that is rarely, if ever, mentioned in alternative keyboard layout videos is how unrealistic using an alternative layout is for gamers. Not all games allow you to remap keybindings which makes them unplayable with WASD, and even the games that do, don't change the game tips. For example, when told to press a key in the tutorial, you'll have to figure out where that key would be on a QWERTY keyboard before finally pressing it, and maybe by then it's too late. Layout switching is also unrealistic because many games use the keyboard for chat, writing text/labels, etc. Layout switching in between a quick message to a teammate or even just trying to quickly label a sign when building something has a ton of friction. I've never loved typing more than I did when using Colemak-DH, especially as a developer, but the struggle it was gaming forced me to switch back. I can only hope that the movement to leave QWERTY becomes large enough that alternatives become viable for everybody.
i recommend having both enabled, just use ctrl+shift to switch layouts.
You can use a dedicated QWERTY layer for gaming or maintain 2 keyboard layouts. It requires more time and practice but is definitely worth it.
Thanks 😀
Thank you so much!
That layout try out site is a brilliant idea, had a 10 minute typing session with DVORAK and the comfort factor for an extended typing session became very apparent.
I'm on the fence about throwing out my QWERTY muscle memory when I'm comfortably typing in the 115 wpm range. Not really looking to go faster, and my fatigue concerns have largely been addressed with the split tented keyboard.
Check out penguify's video where he learns a whole new layout and tries going back to qwerty. iirc, he was around 120wpm for qwerty, then learned a new layout and reached the same wpm. He had a tough time going back to qwerty for a little bit, but it quickly came back and he was right back to his usual speed. He also talked about a guy that was able to do a typing test where it swapped between several different layouts and he crushes it well over 100wpm the entire time.
Anyway, I mention this because while learning a new layout is tough and can be frustrsting, it's typically worth it and you won't lose that qwerty muscle memory
Don't -- would be my advise. Except you pay the price to get much slower and taking many months to get back to old speed, although then typing with a bit more comfort.
Dvorak is not the way to go these days. There are much better layouts now as can be seen in the linked layout doc.
As usual, amazing video!!! This highly motivates me to move away from qwerty as well and learn a new layout. You are the reason, I started building my first custom keyboards from scratch and document the process. What a lovely hobby!!
Going to a split keyboard ortholinear already made typing so much better. lets see if a new layout does improve it even further
I love your videos!
I now have a 16 key split-keyboard using a modified ISRT layout. Your videos were my inspiration for this - thank you. Tim
Thanks! You went right to bottom of the rabbit hole there!
There are people who have come up with potentially better layouts for the two-layer board now I think - details are in the alternative keyboard layouts discord.
Can't believe you left the piano layout! Cheers for going that deep into design and testing
As always, thank you for the great video, content and helpful links. I feel like I learn a lot from your videos and they are are always precise and to the point. I appreciate that!
The layout I switched to is "RSTLNE" layout from the video "Using AI to create the perfect keyboard" it was pretty easy to learn and the changes weren't so drastic, it swapped E with D, R with F, I with K, and there are still many letters from QWERTY that are in the same place. This wasn't the best result from the algorithm but it was much better than QWERTY anyway. Graphite looks interesting to me but there are things I prefer from RSTLNE, maybe I'll try to combine them into one.
Awesome vid! As a happy owner of a Voyager (since your review), I wanted to incorporate all four thumb keys into my typing action, so I'm using a modified version of Colemak DH where I've placed the 'E' and 'A' letters on my right-hand thumb keys, with space and backspace on the left, which already feels pretty amazing. But although that document is so freaking filled with info that it almost hurts my head-in a good way-I’d like to know if there are any layouts that have been thoroughly analyzed like that and attempt a similar approach?
That doc is next level isn't it. Moving letters to thumb keys has definitely been looked at but not sure how the analysers deal with them or if the've been included in the wider comparisons.
Yes there are. Check out the top level comment by Valorance where they talk about thumb layouts that have been battle tested.
Bought a voyager after watching your video. First custom keyboard. Had it about a month. Set to ISRT. Finally getting it, around 40 wpm. My favorite keyboard now.
Now, you have me considering the switch to Graphite lol. It's interesting that all of the vowels are on the right.
Which keyswitches do you have? I tried browns, pro red, twilight, and ended up with sunset with the silcone pads from ZSA
Graphite it great. I've been using it for a few months and have no problems with it so far. It's really fun to type on once you get passed the slow typing stages.
😀 I'm currently looking for improvements for my keyboard myself and simply switching from the German to the US one already sped up my coding skills. I just had to fiddle around with your tool a little bit to make it (partially) work for my old German Laptop keyboard, but being a coder myself, I already got teased to create a similar tool, probably even for different layers or stuff like that, but overall, well done! 🙂
I'm back on my Iris with Colemak dh, I had a 2 year break. I'm back to square one but I like the challenge though and the split keyboard world. I've recently been rewatching your great videos.
There are plenty of rabbit holes with this hobby, like 1u spacebars :)
You need a discord for your community!
Have you ever tried Arno's Engram layout, and have any thoughts on it?
Having watched your keyboard videos many times each, I’d like to hear more about why you’ve switched back to a single layer layout.
The two-layer was just too error prone - got a bit frustrating!
@@BenVallack I'm in the middle of designing my own reduced keys keyboard but now you've got me slightly worried😅
Great video ! I heard about the Graphite layout a while back, but I am still going to stay with MTGAP I think, just because it fits all three languages I daily use.
So, what do you do about vim? I really liked colemak but the vim bindings kept pulling me back.
How to check layouts for a different languages? Like German, Polish or other? Great video! I really admire your dedication and work you put in these videos.
Keyboard video!!! Liked on the 1st sec 😅
Legend!
Thanks for the video! How to approach building a layout for typing in two languages? Are there any tools for that? Any tips?
Sorry wouldn't know where to start there!!
You could add a toggle layer button and have multiple languages or layouts on a single keyboard you can swap between
I'm assuming one of the languages would be English. It depends on how many characters differ. For example I need only the ä and ö characters so I have them on a separate layer on top of a and o with a momentary layer toggle on one of my thumb keys. However if you need a completely separate set of characters then a toggleable layer would be better.
great video! sadly, this only works if you need to type in english. not only the communities around keyboard layouts for different languages are orders of magnitude smaller, but also when you have to actually type in multiple languages, you can't really have a non-standard layout for each of them. and having to use multiple differnet platforms (e.g. linux+windows) takes this onto another level of compexity
upd: i'm mostly talking about technical difficulties. e.g. you have to switch layout on both device's graphical environment level and your keyboard's firmware level
Eek yes no doubt!
@@night_h4nter wweeeeellll, I beg to differ. I’m commonly typing in both French and English, with a bit of Spanish and Italian here and there and a lot of programming languages in the mix.
That didn’t have a massive impact on how hard it was to switch to another layout from qwerty. To an extent, me being a vim user was much more of an issue.
@@bricecarpentier5817 would you mind sharing your setup? how do you implement this? you have to switch both "hardware" and "software" layouts at the same time. i was unable to figure this out without digging into complex things like qmk's raw hid feature or custom keyboard drivers
@@night_h4nter I'm never switching any software layout and I'm not sure why you'd need to.
Software side macOS believes my keyboard is a US International one.
The layout I'm using is actually based on a workman one, but the whole thing would work the same with bepo or colemak or even qwerty for that matter.
I've only setup combos for accents, ie. pressing three specific keys at the same time yields an acute accent key, which I then follow with an e if I want an acute e for example. This much is provided by the "US international" layout.
I then do the same with three other keys and the grave accent and so on and so forth.
I type at around 90-100wpm in both french and english which is more than enough to never feel like you need to improve any further.
You could do that using zmk (that's how I do it) but you could also do that using vial or zsa's software or karabiner and so on.
@@bricecarpentier5817 oh, missed the fact that all you need to type is latin characters, and the languages are from the same family. yeah, it makes sense why it's much easier in your case. thanks for sharing your setup nonetheless!
Thanks Ben! I recently found your channel and love your content (+ production value) - our interests overlap almost perfectly!
I also write code every day and have been considering buying the ZSA voyager for a while now but have two concerns:
1. Will I be able to do learn _and_ remain relatively productive?
2. Will I still be able to type on a staggered QWERTY layout if I work remotely and don't want to carry a separate keyboard around?
Finally in your opinion do you think it's best to go all out and get a new keyboard immediately + switch layout simultaneously, or trial a layout in a suboptimal way on a staggered keyboard? I kinda feel like I have a better chance of maintaining my ability to type on a traditional staggered qwerty layout if my brain mentally associates a new layout with a new physical keyboard, similar to how switching between my manual and automatic car is completely subconscious for me now...
I agree that Qwerty is not an optimised keyboard, but if you look at the history of changes that produced Qwerty there were ergonomic tweaks that went into the layout: the move from two rows of letters to three, putting the i and o keys, which were also the original 1 an 0 keys, near the 9 key was about making typing 20th century years quicker. This type of gradual modification makes me sympathetic to the Colmak layout as a gradual improvement, but I think giving up my ugly, less-than-perfect Qwerty layout (that I kind of like anyway) would be too much work for not enough benefit to me.
Not interested at all in performance shots personally, but I really appreciate the highlighting of the sponsorship up front!
While I do use a non-traditional keyboard (Glove 80), I have shied away from using a different layout for one reason: vim. I would have no idea how to start. Do I move my muscle memory over like with everything else? Or do I keep the placement of the keys but lose the mnenoic meaning of the motions and commands. So customized qwerty it is.
Yeah I think mnemonics takes a bit of a back seat with non-qwerty layouts and vim.
I use Colemak-DH. HJKL are in a pretty terrible position, all on the right index finger. I decided not to remap any keys for vim, it doesn't take to long to rebuild the muscle memory for mnemonic keys. However, I have a layer key on my thumb that puts the arrow keys in the hjkl position. So if I want to use hjkl to navigate I still can. This also has the nice effect of allowing home row arrow navigation in any program, not just vim.
if you are on custom keyboard, what the point of hjkl in vim? Just map arrow keys to that position on layer or combo. In my opinion H and L shouldn't be used for navigation to begin with.
@@inevespace vim is about way more than hjkl.
::Ben:: Oh my goodness, what have you done to me this time? LOL. First off-another new layout for me to stupidly try and commit to memory?!? You mad lad-I don’t know what to do with you. Also, secondly, giving me a new tool to fuss around with to make learning how to use, or (gasp) even modify new layouts on the fly?!? Holy crap, my guy.
I have sat down and just attempted to learn graphite, not even ten minutes after watching your video, and I’m already getting some interesting results. I swapped three pairs of letters around (for a couple different reasons)-but this layout is rather comfy to type on and makes way more sense than colmak-dhm ever did.
I swapped the O and U so that they stay U and O. I didn’t move the placement, just swapped them. Same with T and S-RST has a nicer roll, I think. And M C is now C M, though this was done because I have a hard time finding the C key on qwerty for some reason. I think it’s because I want to use my index finger for it, likely a hold over from when I would use row stagger boards over column stagger, but using my index finger for the M makes more sense since the M is more often used than the C for me.
Also, just because of how my board is set up while I’m using my Reviung33, I left the period and comma keys alone. I have my question mark on a thumb key, so there is no real advantage to fussing around with the muscle memory for most of the punctuation. I am not sure if I will commit to trying this new layout, for the long haul, but I think that it’s rather interesting. It’s very comfortable to type on and I think that I could get rather speedy on it, if I were to try.
Another great video and another terrible habit you’ve given me. Keep ‘em coming, I guess. lol.
Some good mods there! I do wonder about swapping C and M too. I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to actually modifying layouts myself - super worried I'll introduce some horrible side effect! I do wonder if I might end up with something slightly more roll-based and slightly less alternation.
@@BenVallack Yeah, M is the most annoying letter to get used to on graphite, but it can be done. That being said, I was interested in seeing what layout I could achieve by moving M to index, and ended up with a layout called comet. The only thing is that it's more optimized for row stagger and encourages a nonstandard fingermap, where qwerty R is pressed with middle, and qwerty C is pressed with index. If you're interested in using M on index and with traditional fingerings, you could take a look at pine-v4, which comet is heavily inspired by. I'm currently on comet, and I really really like it. If you're on row stagger, I'd recommend comet, and if you're on column stagger, I'd recommend graphite or pine-v4
@@BenVallack I didn’t think it would be too much to add those two rolls because they were already present, they just went outward rather than inward. Typing “you” has it and typing anything with “st” will have it, so making that slight alteration made it less hurty on my brain and muscles. C and M just needed swapped because I kept hunting for M with my eyes too much. Swapping them around has almost eliminated that entirely. But that’s just me.
Great video ben
Thanks!
How do you deal with vim in these alt layouts? I don’t mind a nav layer to replace hjkl but something like cw (change word) is often on the same finger for many alt layouts which is even worse than qwerty.
Can one get access to that google doc write up? It looks a very interesting read.
Link should be in the description. It is amazing.
should i can if my current layout is colemak DH ?
Hi Ben, can you recommend good layout for 36 key split keyboard? Currently im using colemak dh. Thank you ;)
I went Dvorak for many years, eventually swapping over to something called POQTEA that I really really like!
Have you tried the Svalboard? I'm interested in your thoughts about its input method.
I've been on my own little flavor of Dvorak for over a decade now and on the Redox for around 6 years. Recently I've been looking for my next keyboard+layout, but I was aiming for a more radical improvent than a "simple" layout or typical keyboards switch would bring - which is how I encountered the Svalboard. Current plans are to change the 3D print to be smaller, remove the flexibility, and fit me perfectly. But that's a very time consuming project to get right so I've just been looking around at opinions and talking with people so far.
I like neo2 with its 5/6 Layers (lowercase, uppercase, programming, navigation, math), but the base is optimised for German.
I had a chuckle at the irony of the last chapter title, "Step 5: Leaning a new layout" 😂
OMG lol! (Fixed)
Where can i find your graphite + single layer configuration? github or zsa oryx? Thanks! Also karabiner config for space as meh key
Not sure if this will work! Karabina config below. Layout: configure.zsa.io/voyager/layouts/XgZ46/latest/0
{
"description": "Space → Meh Key (⌃⌥⇧) (Space if alone)",
"manipulators": [
{
"from": { "key_code": "spacebar" },
"to": [
{
"key_code": "left_shift",
"modifiers": ["left_control", "left_option"]
}
],
"to_if_alone": [{ "key_code": "spacebar" }],
"type": "basic"
}
]
}
@@BenVallack - Thanks! That worked!
What made you decide to go back from 32-or-less key layouts back to what looks like a 4x6 layout? I remember a lot of videos you made about lowering the amount - would be super interesting to see a video on why or at least hear your thoughts.
Hey Ben, any chance we could get a link to your new Oryx layout?
configure.zsa.io/voyager/layouts/XgZ46/latest/0 added to description too - I'm not sure it doesn't seem to come up when you search in Oryx.
@@BenVallack I recently took the plunge and ordered a Voyager, and now I'm using an alternate layout on it full-time. Thanks for getting me started down this rabbit hole, it's been quite the journey.
You mention you are in search for a more comfortable typing experience and therefore switch between layouts. What about the key arrangement? The Gergoplex had the main (middle) thumb at a different spot then the main (inner) thumb key on the Voyager. I am very much surprised that you liked the Gergoplex, but also the Voyager, because the thumb position is much different and only one can fit best to your hand size, keyboard angle, stagger and hand/ keyboard position. From the videos it looks the Gergoplex should feel much more natural for you (and likely most people). The thumb key is what gets me tripping over, when using the Voyager. It just does not feel right and you have to have the thumb in a specific position instead being able to press the key, just where the thumb naturally falls. You also seem to need to stretch the thumb a bit outwards to reach the Voyager main (inner) thumb key. Which is possibly working ok for you, because of relative large hands. I have size 9, so middle sized hands, and can reach the thumb key, but it takes effort not needed on the Lily58 (with a wide thumb key in the middle) for example. Curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Hey Ben just curious why you switched from Colemak DH to Graphite, and are the benefits that more significant than Colemak DH?
I've been using Colemak DH for 4+ years.
I would say that graphite is in a new tier of keyboard layouts that not only take letter frequency and basic principles into account but also take a lot of hand movement ergonomics into account (using much smarter optimizers that understand more complex ergonomics statistics). If you look at the stats from the keyboard doc, you can see it has many times less redirects and essentially all annoying hand movements have better stats.
I have been using Colemak for 8 years or so and just from messing with graphite a bit, I do think it has an ergonomics edge on top of Colemak.
I would say qwerty to Colemak is a huge jump. Colemak to Dvorak or other older layouts is about no difference. Older layouts to modern layouts like graphite is another medium sized but not crazy jump.
@@brendanhansknecht4650 The insane thing is that I switched to QWERTY a few weeks ago. Just one less hassle, and not having to worry about how I am going to get my system setup on a new device.
Wow never heard of graphite before this. I learned Dvorak and it is comfortable when typing English paragraphs. But the increase in speed is minimal (if any) when programming. I went back to QWERTY but can switch to dvorak when I want to. I get about 100 wpm on QWERTY but only about 70 wpm on Dvorak
Incredible websites that you share to learn a custom keyboard layout, have you ever though about using a vowel on thumb? (e)
Ahhh now I'm tempted to learn Graphite but not sure if it's worth it... (My journey has been AZERTY -> QWERTY -> Colemak-DH and I type in English/French/Spanish.)
You would need to check the two extra languages. I guess Graphite will not work that good for this language mix. That is true for all layouts highly optimized for a specific language/ corpus.
gracias
Ive been using ISRT, largely because of your use in previous videos for somewhere around the last year. While its better than qwerty for sure, it has never quite felt right. im tempted to try graphite as well, but i wonder if im letting perfect be the enemy of good. Im really tempted to keep trying to optimize, but much like trying to build the perfect nvim configuration, am i letting the desire for a small improvement prevent me from actually getting work done? Its an interesting balance to try and find.
Yeah sometimes I think I should have just stuck with Qwerty!
Just ordered my Voyager a few days ago, mostly because of yours and some other youtubers reviews! Going to change over to colemak-DH at the same time, so probably gonna be rough for a few weeks, but wish me luck!
If it's your first layout change it is really hard - it gets easier each time you change again in the future though!!
@@BenVallack Yep it's my first! I figured that since my main reason for getting the voyager was preventing RSI, i might as well go all the way and swap to a better layout at the same time
I would love to switch to colemak DH because most of the shortcuts stay in the same place but the problem i face is the fact that colemak isn't on windows without installing something. I also worry about being useless on other keyboards when I have to use someone else's setup.
During covid I was by myself and I started learning workman because I was literally sitting in home using my own computer I even managed to break my previous typing speed record. When I returned to university after covid I immediately felt the pain of everything being in qwerty. I have gone back to qwerty after two years of workman and I have already forgotten workman. I'm not sure if it's possible to learn and type in both layouts at the same time.
Yeah there are plenty of people who do manage to keep both.
Ive noticed you are using voyager in all your recent vids. Liking it better than custom?
For now yeah - it's just nice not worrying about dodgy soldering etc!
On graphite I think that PO, OP & CL would get annoying and uncomfortable for me. The layout has 0.41% scissors and 0.97% 2u row jumps.
Monkey-type and the like are ok for testing your speed, but they are not deliberate practice because the words you type are picked randomly from a list. The weakspot funbox tries to give you words that you've made mistakes on but I don't think it does a very good job. I use a tool that brings up words I haven't typed in a while and words I've made mistakes on or are slow at more often so I get to do deliberate practice on these words
I suggest you switch the Language to English 1k or 5k since you would have a large pool of words to practice. My choice is to only type quotes set to Long or Thicc, it's a great way to practice typing full sentences and symbols.
The main challenge I’m trying to overcome with alternate layouts is: so many applications use vim-like key bindings (especially for navigation). How do you 1) efficiently remap those key bindings, and 2) deal with key conflicts resulting for updated key bindings?
One example is for Colemak, I’ve remapped hjkl to hnei. Some neovim reconfiguration figured most of this out. But now I have multiple other apps that depend on hjkl that need to be remapped as well (or can’t). Have you found a way to deal with this problem?
For vim I just try and keep the knock-on effects to a minimum - i.e remap hjkl but then just find unused keys for the ones you displace so you're not moving things around all over the place. I also use the inverted-t shape for movement rather than the straight line hjkl style. I use the same keys as arrow keys on another layer. This has the funny effect of keeping h as left for me on Graphite even though it's moved over one space.
@@BenVallackthanks. That context helps a lot. Really enjoy your videos. They’ve changed the way I approach work.
Would be very interested in getting your views on charachorder keyboard!!!
We need to ****#pragma** ban** emojis at a high level! This way, people will start using **/* programming symbols */** instead and won’t **touch_typing("simple words")**. And if they do practice, let's throw in **{other_symbols[]}** right away! =]]
honestly I don't even think qwerty is a problem anymore, at least not for me personally
anything longer then a couple sentences gets voice typed whenever possible
and on my phone I haven't been pressing individual buttons for years at this point, since I discovered keyboards you can swap through (I think it was like 2013-2014?)
Well, switch the layout on all keyboards you encouter out in the wild and I can consider learning a new layout.
Yeah this is a big problem!
"I" or "A" on the pinky is a big NO for me. I do not understand why frequent characters are placed on the pinkies in keyboard layouts. The fact that they are in the main row does not affect me. Ask anyone about which fingers hurt them, and the answer will always be "the pinkies".
Yeah agree re pinkies - I think the fateuge comes from movement of them though - a tap in their resting positions doesn't seem to be bothering me too much. Although b is quite common too (left pinkie top row)
@@BenVallack Right now, I'm training on the keybr, trying to increase the speed, and my left pinky finger is warm from the tension. Even though it doesn't produce any shifts (I'm practicing another letter), I thought that if only one letter could be changed in the QWERTY layout, then it would be worthwhile changing "w" and "a". It would save a lot of pinkies.
first comment no way
Learning new layouts is fun, and probably good for your brain, but I think it is worth noting that the fastest typists in the world are still using querty. That is not to say that querty is better, just to point out that there is probably not real efficiency to be gained by switching. The use case for switching probably has more to do with reducing RSI than anything else. If you ever have to work on devices that are not yours, even typing on a friends phone, it can be a challenge. God help you if you need to need to type an email on a friends laptop. That's why I ended up switching back to querty. For my personal set up, I use querty on the Dygma Raise with an extra layer for symbols. typing is almost all the exact same as you would find on anyone else's computer, but I have the symbols on an extra layer at the home row which makes work faster and easier while still being able to type on a library computer.
Absolutely - 100% valid points.
I disagree.
I switched to the Noted layout with minor changes to fit on my 32 key keyboard. The process of learning the new layout was a little tough. I did it slowly over a few months using keybr. For the whole time, I continued using qwertz (German layout) at work and even at home. Then, once I got good enough in Noted, I started taking my new split board to work. Now I use my split board 99% of the time, but can easily switch between the two layouts. Sometimes, when helping out colleagues or working on a different PC, I still need to use qwertz and it really is not an issue at all.
Eh, I'd take that with a grain of salt. The pool of people interested in alternate layouts, and the pool of people interested in competition typing, are both so incredibly small. And while on the surface you might think those pools have strong overlap, I don't think that's actually true; no one's a *professional* speed typist, as anyone truly interested in maximum practical speed would be using stenography. So the "fastest typist" competitions are entirely just hobbyists who have gotten incredibly fast at the standard.
That said, because steno is clearly better at the goal of fast, ergonomic typing, I think most people would be best off just sticking with QWERTY for regular typing and learning a form of steno if they truly want to take things to a new level.
@@Aurora12488 I agree. For writing actual text, that is. I have never really looked into steno, but as far as I know, it is not suitable for coding. And that is what I mostly use my keyboard for.
I believe for my use case, my layout is close to optimal. The alpha layout plays a smaller part in that than the symbol layers and homerow mods, though. Switching alpha layouts in my eyes is more something to do for fun and because it feels nicer to type. I don't think it's a huge productivity boost.
@@Ole485 Actually, steno not working for code is a bit of a myth/outdated. Check out Aerick's videos: one called "How I use steno for everything!" discusses it, and others show specifically him coding C and writing LaTeX. He's switched to steno as his sole input system for over a year now. Now I don't think chords could realistically match the *max* speed of single-finger'd letter input for symbols (though most coders are relatively quite slow at typing symbols regardless), you'd make up for any speed differences with the rest of the non-symbol output.
I also suspect you could create certain chords that'd be just as fast, too; symbols are primarily on the shifted layer of the QWERTY keyboard, and I see no reason you couldn't have a shifted layer on the chorded keyboard that would have one hand hold down a chorded "shift" and the other hand press single keys for the symbol. Aerick has a chord that locks into an arrow-key layer, for instance, that will automatically unlock when he presses a non-arrow key.
Have you looked into stenography at all?
Yeah - very quickly decided against it!
@@BenVallack How come? From my investigations, it looks like there's a whole bunch of custom bindings you'd need to make as you fill out your Plover dictionary, but that the final result is pretty incredible and ergonomic. Same with CharaChorder. Seems like if you're investing so much time into exploring various layouts, might as well commit one exploration into chording!
@@BenVallack Very understandable. My worry with not picking it is that I'd spend long enough moving between half measures that I might as well have just learned it.
@@Aurora12488 steno is good for natural languages, but simultaneously create additional friction to use computer with a keyboard. Although I studied steno very little, I'm not 100% convinced to go deep. But I take ideas from there about abbreviations and some design philosophy (low force keys, for example). Also, quality of voice typing now is so good, that simultaneous voice recognition + keyboard make you very fast without steep learning curve.
Why do I have to learn a new layout?
Are we gonna just ignore devorac and the fact that it only takes a single keyboard shortcut in windows to switch to devorac or back to QWERTY
This Qwerty sucks argument to me is pretty dumb. First off, if it were so bad then please explain why the All of the fastest typists use qwerty and not some other layout. The next problem is that switching layouts will cause you a massive disruption in speed for very little benefit, EVER. You will more than likely type very slowly for over a year and every single computer you step up to will require you to switch back to qwerty unless you plan to carry a keyboard around with you everywhere you go.
Sure, you might move your hands less with another layout, but you won't find the problems with the layout until you've invested a massive amount of time into learning it. You even admit that you loved a particular format until you got faster and you hope the current one isn't going to cause similar problems once you get faster. You're misleading people into switching by claiming that qwerty is so bad but you're arguments are weak at best. Splitting your keyboards into halves and getting more comfortable will solve more problems than changing your entire layout.
I'd also love to hear how you deal with neovim with graphite since the main keys you use to navigate are all over the keyboard.
When your sample size is as large as qwerty's you're bound to have some outliers.
As for vim, you can use a nav layer to bind the arrow keys to the center of the keyboard. That solves the hjkl problem. Also, I use a split space bar. My non dominant thumb takes care of the nav layer through the split spacebar.
I use a navigation layer for vim and it works just great. I can even do certain things a lot easier than relying on some godawful vim shortcuts on a regular keyboard. Why don't you ask someone like the primeagen that's on dvorak on vim for years. He's not struggling.
The arguments you provided for qwerty also make no sense. Obviously when 99,9+% of people use it, it'll be difficult to find alt layouts represented in the typing elite. That's what happens when you're this omnipresent. That's just statistics. Additionally, the fastest typists use steno, not qwerty, and there are still quite a few champions on colemak and dvorak last i checked.
The reality is every layout has a feature tradeoff. But that's only true for the most optimal layouts. Qwerty just does everything bad. Every layout will feel smoother after that. The "layout problems" you mention, are largely exaggerated, as we're into hyper-optimization territory, and are not "reasons to not switch from qwerty". And of course, no one is forcing you to switch, nor trying to sell you on anything you yourself aren't interested in. It's your life, your hands, you use what you want to. You don't have to deny facts to do that.
I have that keyboard and having my iPhone next to it makes it restart loop
Really!? Have you spoken to ZSA about that?
After more than 20 years of using keyboard, I've just started learning to properly touch typing with, of course, qwerty layout. Now I hear that it's the worst one. 😅
Ha yeah not an uncommon situation I think!
learning to touch type on qwerty is still a great idea for if you ever have to use someone else's computer or a public computer
I thought it was about stopping using jquery
rofl!
Instead of optimizing the keyboard to the language, you should optimize the language to the keyboard.
Joke aside, nice video. I saw many "next-gen keyboards" with joystick-like keys. Wouldn't it be the solution for you?
Yes QWERTY is terrible. But, it's the industry standards, and if switch jobs and you don't want to appear like a drunken monkey at the keyboards at your interviews (especially if you are in IT) then don't stop using QWERTY.
Definitely a fair point!
Devorac can be switched to with a single hot key in any windows computer. I frankly do not understand why it is completely being ignored since it was the original alternative and is so popular it is actually an automatic option in windows with no need to configure anything cost a crtl shortcut that you can switch back and forth between the two. I type QWERTY but my best friend uses devorac and swears by it says it saved him from carpal tunnel.
So if you use it, this isn’t a fair point because you can use the exact same setup as anyone else and switch it back when you give them the controls.
Step 1: Don't. There's no solid evidence that the other layout types are any more efficient/ergonomic/expedient as opposed to the benefits of simply using a split keyboard.
try using finger movement as a metric!
everything is great aside when you are not in your own machine
My issue exactly - when we can all finally agree on a new standard that's a calculated and proven upgrade over qwerty, that's when I'll switch.
@freescape08 Yeah unfortunately that's almost certainly never going to happen!
lol, here i am just switched from german qwertz to english qwerty because of the programming special characters are shit on qwertz
Step 6 remapping and\or relearning all the hotkeys.
I didn't see any comparison of qwerty vs other layout in actual work tasks.
I mean yes, I am aware that qwerty is made for 200 year old typewriters and not very effective at writing in english. But is it as bad in coding? Aren't availability of special symbols, autocompletion and usage of VIM accounts for far bigger part of workflow improvements than the change in button layout?
And again. Hotkeys. You either need to redo & relearn all the hotkeys (which are often built with qwerty in mind) or use hotkeys from qwerty along with better layout. Which sound cumbersome and not something people would want to try without some proof of positive outcome.
This Morse keyboard looks overtyped.
switching away from QWERTY won't get you a significant productivity boost, it will never even recoup the time wasted learning a new layout
This is almost certainly true - what it does do is drastically reduce fatigue, effort and potentially even RSI.
@@BenVallack more comfortable yes, resolve RSI - no
u just a hater
You'll have to pry qwerty from my cold dead hands :) My main use is writing a novel. 500 words is a good day.
if you type in more English plus another language then it makes no sense switching.
Jokes on you, i have never used QWERTY.
Im usong QWERTZ