this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
25 points (93.1% liked)

ErgoMechKeyboards

5836 readers
1 users here now

Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

Rules

Keep it ergo

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

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

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

No Spam

No excessive posting/"shilling" for commercial purposes. Vendors are permitted to promote their products/services but keep it to a minimum and use the [vendor] flair. Posts that appear to be marketing without being transparent about it will be removed.

No Buy/Sell/Trade

This subreddit is not a marketplace, please post on r/mechmarket or other relevant marketplace.

Some useful links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
obosob
overby
[email protected]
[email protected]
Hazel
25
Still not used to splits after a year…how do you type one-handed? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/ergomechkeyboards
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I’ve been using a Sofle split for almost a year, probably in about 30-40% of my typing. Despite tweaking my setup as best I can, I still find the experience difficult.

One issue that seems to have a big effect is that I still think of the position of mouse in my dominant hand and keyboard with my other hand as useful.

I use it often for everything from casual surfing to editing. For example during editing you’re often selecting text with the mouse and doing some minor editing with your other hand. Split keyboards seem to really remove this efficient option since both your hands need to be used most times.

A lot of people who extol the benefits of split keyboards are comparing to traditional keyboards when your tasks are static.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Gumshoe 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There are a few different options, though none of them are without trade-offs.

  1. You could try getting a pointing device integrated into your keyboard, like a trackpad, trackpoint, or trackball that could be used with a single finger while the rest of the fingers are more or less still in the home position. For example, a tractyl.
  2. You configure your left hand side (assuming you mouse with the right) to have extra layers which give access to a full keyboard from just that hand. The first thing I would do here is figure out how much you really need to access... Do you just need copy/paste/cut? Do you just need alpha keys? Do you really need a full keyboard including symbols and alt, F-keys, etc? For an extreme version of this, this keyboard using a Taipo layout gives either hand access to a FULL keyboard with only 11 keys per hand, and you have almost 3 times as many keys to work with. You can type entirely with just the left side or entirely with just the right side with that keyboard, though going that small will have a steep learning curve.
  3. Get something with even more keys than a sofle, but for just the left split, and you'd only use those extra keys while one handed typing, so each one of those keys is a duplicate function that can be achieved in a different way when you're using both hands. You could even use a 60% keyboard as your left split, as it would mostly just invade the space between the keyboards which you might have free due to the split.
[–] Aldoo 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It could be interesting to develop a project from idea (3).

What shape should have the left hand side for instance, assuming it should have ~40 keys under a single hand?

[–] Gumshoe 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It could take a lot of shapes. It could look like https://www.beeraider.com/one-handed-keyboard/ or https://tipykeyboard.com/en/?v=fa868488740a or you could check out the split keyboards here with 80+ keys https://jhelvy.shinyapps.io/splitkbcompare/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Here I was thinking that my ergodox ez3000 was cool....

[–] Aldoo 1 points 1 year ago

A split, 2 hands, keyboard that sometimes can be used one-handedly should not be the same as a one hand keyboard.

Somehow, it should include all the uncompromising layout of a typical split keyboard, plus a set of keys on the left side, replicating the right side keys, but maybe with some adaptations. It could also be just another layer on the left side, but I don't believe this would cover the need expressed by op.