this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

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

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

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

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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
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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.

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[–] AxZxP 1 points 1 year ago

Ok so I use a split since two months and the switch is certainly not automatic but the solutions are fairly simple. I’m a good exemple of a user scenario that requires a lot of one-handed operations because I mainly edit text and not writing it and I use a lot of GUI related to graphic work (illustrator mainly but also photoshop). For the following process, I should make clear that I’m on a Mac and it’s clearly a big plus since this platform promotes consistent patterns of shortcuts.

Text edition :

  • I have a ⇧ and a ⌘ key on my thumbs and arrows on a layer triggered by a thumb. Lateral arrows are set to trigger ⎇+arrow when long press and ⌘+arrow when double presses. With the ⇧ on the right thumb and the arrows (and the layer switch key) on my left hand. Give it a try, I can really quickly select words, lines, etc. For a quick word selection/replacement I have also a simple macro that trigger : “⎇+⬅️, ⇧+⎇+➡️, ⌘-c” (the copy part is just in case I want this bit of text in my pasteboard.
  • I use vim whenever I can. It makes the use of a mouse irrelevant, don’t worry the main selection operation are easy to learn.

GUI

  • It’s more tricky but I really advise to take a note of every friction in your workflow and find a solution when mandatory. I could give some of my settings but it’s very specific to the app I use. The only advice that could match any situation is a “esc” signal that is always accessible as a combo with the W+E combination, in every layer, I also have a space and I try to get the maximum access of elementary keys but when it replicates a primary action on my right hand, I hide it on my left hand (combo, double-tap)

I should mention that I use Colemak and that it certainly help compared to layout leaning toward hand switch (Dvorak, Bepo…). But if you’re on QWERTY it should be good.