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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: RC-1140 on Mon, 17 October 2011, 13:52:23

Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: RC-1140 on Mon, 17 October 2011, 13:52:23
Hey,
I have just come across the German ”NEO-Ergonomic“ Layout which can be seen here (http://neo-layout.org/). (The page is on German, but at the Bottom is a graphic. Hover your mouse over ”Ebene 1-6“ to see the various layers, which make this layout pretty unique in my opinion.)

I think the Idea of the six layers is pretty interesting. I’ve set up my arch linux to use it, and typing texts still takes ages, but even though I noticed how seldom I have to leave the homerow, and how useful the third and fourth layer are. (the fourth is for anything outside the main cluster like ”Enter“, Arrow keys, Backspace and a numpad) If I should really manage to get used to this layout I might even consider Tenkeyless Boards. But now I really feel like having to learn this as I would miss these sweet layers when returning to QWERTZ. (damn I had to search for these keys a while)

How long does it usually take to get used to a new layout, so one is able to type at least half as fast as in QWERTZ/QWERTY?

RC
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: fossala on Mon, 17 October 2011, 14:00:21
I'm on the way from qwerty to dvorak and I am about half the speed 3 weeks in
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: RC-1140 on Mon, 17 October 2011, 14:12:32
This sounds good and gives me some hope, as I feared I would have to port the layers to QWERTZ when switching back, as these are nearly addictive. There is nearly two weeks of Holiday left, so I will have some time to train, and never switch back. Luckily the developers provide a takeaway-solution as a AHK script and I'm an Admin at school, so I am not forced to use QWERTZ there…
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sinis on Mon, 17 October 2011, 14:21:20
only I can tell for this is that ktouch, a ubuntu/kubuntu software, has lections to neo, too.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Playtrumpet on Mon, 17 October 2011, 14:26:25
There are some striking similarities to Dvorak in that layout. Makes me happy. ^_^

Six layers? Sure, why not? You can program extra layers to your layout; just make sure to set the right modifiers and using the right keyboard would help.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: RC-1140 on Mon, 17 October 2011, 14:29:19
Edit: Typing this took long enough for another post to appear. This refers to the post above Playtrumpet's.

Yeah, I knew about this too, (ktouch isn't ubuntu only, it's part of the ”KEdu suite“, and as thus available for any Linux/*BSD and even on Windows) but I don't have much disk space left, and somehow don't want to install all these qt ane KDE libs on my slick Xmonad Arch Linux machine. Im picky about my software.

And well, I had a look on German Dvorak too, but I had the feeling, that the NEO layout would be optimized for German better, and I really liked the possibilities NEO provides for coding. Only downside is that it totally destroys my vim habits. (no more hjkl navigation... :Cry: )
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Tony on Mon, 17 October 2011, 21:37:45
It took around 3 weeks for me to type Colemak with half Qwerty speed.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: dorkvader on Tue, 18 October 2011, 00:27:29
Took me a less than a week to regain my pathetic QWERTY speed in Dvorak. Typing a paper that day helped.

I really mean pathetic. It was like 20 keystrokes a minute in QWERTY.
---
I really like the many layers, though. I use greek letters all the time, but it's usually in the form of $\alpha \Beta$ or similar (in LaTeX).
---
Why isn't layer six shift+mod3? That follows the pattern, while what they have doesn't.

layer 1 is nothing.
2 is shift
3 is 3
4 is 4
5 is shift+3
6 is 3+4
6 sholud be shift+3
---
They could add another two layers by using shift+3 or shift+4. Not like they'd need it.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: bugybunny on Tue, 01 November 2011, 16:59:40
I started using Neo in June this year; I switched from one day to the other at home but typed QWERTZ at work for the first 4 weeks before I changed completely. After this 4 weeks I felt I could write fluently and work nearly as fast as with QWERTZ. Now I have about 400cpm (better that with QWERTZ) and sometimes when I have to type at another computer it’s just a pain. So if you have the possibility to exercise with NEO the whole day and don’t have to switch back for a few hours while working, you should feel confident after a week.
I’m working as a software developer and the 3rd and 4th layer is like heaven. Thanks to the Eclipse IDE and its many shortcuts I rarely leave my keyboard to use the mouse or even leave the homerow.
It’s optimized for German but they considered English too (y on your right pinky for example).

You started about 2 weeks ago, how is it now? :-)

(sorry for my English^^)
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Duraxel on Thu, 10 November 2011, 18:43:50
I'm German, a software developer and I'm considering using Neo 2.0 as my future keyboard layout. Hearing that Neo is heaven when it comes to programming really wants me to begin working on it.  And if anybody knows a way to get keycaps for my Filco blue (ISO layout) printed with Neo 2.0 symbols ;) - that would be perfect!

Here my little story why I'm considering Neo 2.0:
It is literally painful to enter some of the special characters (e.g. '[', ']', '{', '}') needed for programming on a default german keyboard. Although it is possible to enter those characters comfortably with the common english layouts out there, I still have to write german sometimes. Writing german umlauts (ö, ä, ü) for example becomes then rather annoying.
And I don't want to switch between english and german layouts all the time.

I also considered the Colemak and the Dvorak layout, but  both miss an option to enter german characters comfortably. Aside from that I also like that Neo leaves the often used short cuts for copy, cut and paste unchanged ;-)

Please keep posting your experiences with Neo!
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: dorkvader on Thu, 10 November 2011, 22:36:59
Quote from: Duraxel;449628
I'm German, a software developer and I'm considering using Neo 2.0 as my future keyboard layout. Hearing that Neo is heaven when it comes to programming really wants me to begin working on it.  And if anybody knows a way to get keycaps for my Filco blue (ISO layout) printed with Neo 2.0 symbols ;) - that would be perfect!

Yeah, you can get most of them from WASD. They only have ANSI now, so you'll have to forego the enter and shift, etc. They will have ISO, soon. If you want to wait a little.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: RC-1140 on Fri, 11 November 2011, 10:26:39
Yeah I was thinking about a set from WASD (damn, this combination is somewhat hard to find in neo) too, but it was literally impossible to enter all the symbols. I asked them once about it, and they told me, that support for all UTF-8 symbols will come around the same time as ISO. But atm I'm in love with my unicomp, so i wouldn't be able to use these keycaps at all.

And about my current experiences using Neo: I finally stopped switching back to QWERTZ when having to type long texts for school. When at school I get some strange looks for my neo g84-4100. But overall I'm happy about the decision to learn Neo.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: dorkvader on Sat, 12 November 2011, 20:27:27
Quote from: RC-1140;449966
Yeah I was thinking about a set from WASD (damn, this combination is somewhat hard to find in neo) too, but it was literally impossible to enter all the symbols. I asked them once about it, and they told me, that support for all UTF-8 symbols will come around the same time as ISO. But atm I'm in love with my unicomp, so i wouldn't be able to use these keycaps at all.

And about my current experiences using Neo: I finally stopped switching back to QWERTZ when having to type long texts for school. When at school I get some strange looks for my neo g84-4100. But overall I'm happy about the decision to learn Neo.

You can still upload custom graphics to the WASD one, so you can came up with keycaps still.

Nevertheless, I'd wait for UTF-8 and ISO

Glad you switched from QWERTZ!
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: RC-1140 on Mon, 26 December 2011, 15:24:15
Just if anybody is interested in my current progress in learning this new layout, here is the current state:

I’m really getting used to Neo. Typing on QWERTZ feels absolutely strange now, though I can still type as fast in it as before. But I have no intention of leaving Neo. My typing speed in Neo is now 33 WPM, compared to 42 WPM in QWERTZ. That’s fast enough to use it for anything I have to do on a PC, so I never switch back anymore. I’ve found a Keyboard app for Android that allows me to use NEO on my mobile too.

Everything is sorted into layers. I feel good about things. But I can’t read the label, because I'm a hologram. (Let's see if somebody realizes where this comes from)

greetings,

RC
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Playtrumpet on Mon, 26 December 2011, 20:44:07
Quote from: RC-1140;478033
Everything is sorted into layers. I feel good about things. But I can’t read the label, because I'm a hologram. (Let's see if somebody realizes where this comes from)

greetings,

RC

30 Rock?

Neo seems to have a lot of similarities to Dvorak. Nice to see people using it. ^_^
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Mon, 26 December 2011, 22:18:21
I've experimented with NEO a bit, just because I was trying to find a way to enable 5th level shift and assign multiple functions onto a single key (the goal was to have embedded numpad, mousekeys, etc). Out of several layouts I tried only de(neo) and ca(multix) had 5th level shift:  
http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?18965-HHKB-pro2&p=381575&viewfull=1#post381575

I ended up settling on us(altgr-intl) which at least has a 3rd level shift (sadly no 5th level) since US layout works best for my needs.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: What's that? It's NEO! on Thu, 26 January 2012, 04:44:26
Hi,
as far as I can say, the NEO layout when writing german is pretty much better than QUERTZ, writing english does not feel weired either. I switched 100 percent last year when I ordered my filco keyboard and I have never regretted it. Before the switch I wasn't able to type without looking at the characters... oh my.

I started with sticking the characters onto the keys but quickly after some rounds of typing games, I removed them. It took quite a while to get used to NEO but now I really like the functions it has: especially helpful when setting texts with LaTeX. It's just the routine that get's you going.

Be sure that people will ask you about your funny keys...
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: boli on Thu, 26 January 2012, 05:06:21
Quote from: RC-1140;432882
How long does it usually take to get used to a new layout, so one is able to type at least half as fast as in QWERTZ/QWERTY?


Haven't tried NEO, but for the QWERTY to Colemak switch it took me about 3 weeks to get to half my previous QWERTY-speed.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Icarium on Thu, 26 January 2012, 06:51:52
Does anybody have a list of semi-common layouts? And by semi-common I mean let's leave those that are used by only one person out. ;)
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: pyro on Thu, 26 January 2012, 10:42:04
Colemak and Dvorak seem to be the most common alternative layouts. QGMLWB (Carpalx best) is pretty well known, too, but I think very few actually bother to learn it.

Although I haven't encountered anyone in real life using anything besides QWERTZ or QWERTY.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Thu, 26 January 2012, 11:17:56
Really? At work I have bumped into at least 2 people that use Dvorak. One of them was a Kinesis Advantage user, the other was not.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: boli on Thu, 26 January 2012, 13:39:47
I know only two people beside myself who use alternative layouts IRL: one uses Dvorak, the other Colemak. Both are software engineers like myself, one of them works in the same company with 140ish employees (Dvorak user, using Typematrix 2030, has a TE as well but not used yet last I heard); the other I've known since childhood and encouraged to switch to Colemak. :)
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Thu, 26 January 2012, 13:43:49
Does any linux distro have colemak built in ? i tried "setxkbmap colemak" on my ubuntu 11.10 and it didn't work, while I can choose other layouts that way.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: boli on Thu, 26 January 2012, 13:46:40
Quote from: sordna;499794
Does any linux distro have colemak built in ? i tried "setxkbmap colemak" on my ubuntu 11.10 and it didn't work, while I can choose other layouts that way.

Yes, they say Colemak comes installed by default with most modern distributions, and doesn't require any download.
Source: Linux/Unix in graphical mode (preinstalled) (http://colemak.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unix#Linux.2FUnix_in_graphical_mode_.28preinstalled.29)

Dunno if it works, I'm using Mac OS X.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Thu, 26 January 2012, 13:50:11
doh, didn't realize it's a us layout variant, thanks! This worked: setxkbmap 'us(colemak)'
Any idea why dvorak is a separate layout but colemak is a variant of the us layout ?
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: boli on Thu, 26 January 2012, 13:55:16
Quote from: sordna;499799
Any idea why dvorak is a separate layout but colemak is a variant of the us layout ?

No clue. From what I understand both are optimized for English (though I don't think American or British English makes a difference really). Maybe something hardware related, maybe British keyboards have an extra key compared to a US keyboard or something (like many international keyboards do).

BTW even though my native language is (Swiss) German, Colemak works pretty well for me, as German shares 9 of the 10 most frequent letters (those on the home row) with English IIRC. I can't think of any common German letter sequences that are uncomfortable to type, but then again I type a lot of English and code as well... :)
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: dorkvader on Fri, 27 January 2012, 01:37:17
I'd say it's because of how the punctuation is arranged. Colemak is basically a varient, with only capslock being the weird key. Dvorak has all the punctuation changed as well as / ][- and  

I've only met two: one each of dvorak and colemak. Only one was fluent.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Fri, 27 January 2012, 09:24:10
Sean Wrona recommends using Caps Lock. I do too. It's silly of them to get rid of it, it should be up to the user. Controversial stuff like that (reminds me of TE moving Shift on the ASD row) should be left to the user and not forced down one's throat.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Icarium on Fri, 27 January 2012, 10:11:56
Do you use caps lock instead of the normal shift key or just for multiple caps in a row?
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Fri, 27 January 2012, 10:12:48
i use it for let's say 3 or more capital letters in a row.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: erw on Fri, 27 January 2012, 11:49:49
IIRC, Sean Wrona uses it for any number of capitals, including 1, because hitting keys in order is easier than holding one while pressing others, at least at high speed.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: boli on Fri, 27 January 2012, 17:28:36
Quote from: erw;500736
IIRC, Sean Wrona uses it for any number of capitals, including 1, because hitting keys in order is easier than holding one while pressing others, at least at high speed.

I thought that was fascinating, and found this (http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=8851#p8851) at the colemak forum. :)
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Fri, 27 January 2012, 22:50:11
Nice find! I'll copy part of that post here, well, until SOPA/PIPA/ACTA take it down, that is.

Quote
With regard to caps lock vs. shift, I meant exactly what I said there.  When typing capital letters, I virtually always use caps lock, not shift (occasionally there are exceptions).  I infinitely prefer caps lock to shift for a variety of reasons.  I am considerably more accurate with caps lock because when you are holding down the shift key, there are a variety of other things you have to think about that makes typing a capital letter considerably more complicated.  Did I press the key hard enough for it to register?  Did I make sure to release it immediately before typing the next character?  This can be very hard at around 200 wpm (where the vast majority of typos I find are me hitting the space bar one character too early or one character too late).  You have to release the shift key at the exact right moment which at my speed can be very difficult since that would be within a tenth of a second or less, and not making an error there is by no means guaranteed (in fact, I frequently do whenever I have to use shift, i.e. characters such as !@#$%^...)  Furthermore, I don't like shift because it locks my left pinky into place and therefore forces my left hand to be locked into place.  Given my main typing strategy which I detailed above, I like to NOT have a fixed location for either my left or right hand and slightly vary it according to the context of the words.  My left hand is not usually fixed near the shift key when I am typing, so holding down the shift key and locking my left hand into a place I would not normally put it would mess me up.  For these main reasons, I am much more comfortable using caps lock than shift for any capital letters, but obviously I do use shift for the characters I need to.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: erw on Sat, 28 January 2012, 16:38:26
Hm, if I wanted to try this, I wonder what would be a good location for caps lock now that I'm using the key to the left of A as control? I need more thumb keys.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Sat, 28 January 2012, 17:05:23
I plan to add thumb keys, and will document/share everything of course... Wonder if I should update my "Adding extra keys wiki" or create a separate "Adding extra thumb keys" wiki.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Icarium on Sat, 28 January 2012, 18:26:10
Uh...if this is not rhetorical then I'm in favor of updating.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Martin227 on Sun, 12 February 2012, 11:15:17
Quote from: sordna;500626
i use it for let's say 3 or more capital letters in a row.


But Sordna, with your Kinesis don't you put Shift on a thumb-key?
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: sordna on Sun, 12 February 2012, 11:57:44
I only recently assigned Shift to a thumb, when I added more keys (http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:26579) to it.
Perhaps my use of Caps Lock will decline in time, we shall see.
Title: Has anyone experiences with the german ”NEO“ layout?
Post by: Zehkul on Tue, 14 February 2012, 08:02:17
So... any experiences with NEO/DVORAK and typing fast? I'm not talking about lousy 40wpm here, rather about the 100-130 I'm at. Would it take me years to get anywhere near that with NEO?