What about typing speed here? How much can you get? - http://www.typingstudy.com/en-us_dvorak-3/speedtest
Very interesting, thanks for analyzing those layouts! Maybe you could do it for the Workman layout, too?
I started on Dvorak and ended up with Colemak .....
While trying my layout now I just realized that it's fairly uncomfortable to do 2-grams with H(vowel) which are very common.
- adjacent: bigrams typed with pink/ring (worst), ring/middle (bad) middle/index (somewhat bad). ADNW prefers for instance ring/index or mid/pinky. This in constast to Colemakmiddle/pinky (3–5) is just about as bad as ring/pinky (4–5) IMO, with middle/ring (3–4) being worse than either one, and middle/index (2–3) being not very bad at all. Three-grams using the last three fingers are especially bad, unless it’s a straight roll (especially an inward roll is alright).
- the distribution of weight over the fingers. Optimal (says ADNW) is something like 8/10/18/14Can you explain what these numbers mean? I’m interpreting it as pinky/ring/middle/index finger ratios. As in, among non-space characters, each pinky should get 8% of keypresses, ring finger should get 10%, etc.
OneProduct,mirror302.714 Total score 192.927 base left right
1.598 SameFinger 20.786 Shift-SameFinger upper 9.1 13.3
qyoxj gwdlp* 71.206 Alternation 23.896 Shift-Alternation home 33.9 30.3
hieau mtsrn* 3.474 In/Out Rati 7.473 IndirSameFing lower 4.9 8.5
k**., bvfcz 10.651 adjacent 9.409 Shift-adjacent sum 47.9 52.1
7.4 8.7 18.7 13.1 --.- --.- 17.1 12.4 12.9 9.8 Sh 1.8 1.0
ADNW(Eng, bigr) 262.617 Total score 182.722 base left right
0.737 SameFinger 2.154 Shift-SameFinger upper 5.5 13.6
qyu.* zmldbp 68.832 Alternation 34.746 Shift-Alternation home 40.0 31.1
sieao hnrtcg 1.134 In/Out Ratio 6.990 IndirSameFing lower 3.1 6.7
j**,* fxwkv 9.123 adjacent 10.742 Shift-adjacent sum 48.7 51.3
8.5 8.7 14.2 17.3 --.- --.- 16.4 11.5 13.1 10.3 Sh 1.8 1.0
"sequences like 5–3–4 or 3–4–3 basically need to be executed in two discrete chunks, because they require flexing and then relaxing the relevant muscles before flexing them again"True, I hate most in/out motions.
" the distribution of weight over the fingers. Optimal (says ADNW) is something like 8/10/18/14. Can you explain what these numbers mean? I’m interpreting it as pinky/ring/middle/index finger ratios. As in, among non-space characters, each pinky should get 8% of keypresses, ring finger should get 10%, etc."- Sorry, I was too short here. You interpret this correctly. If you don't count the thumbs, the four remaining fingers of a hand should do 50% of all key presses, the other hand the other 50%. 50% equally distributed over 4 fingers would be 12.5% per finger. But the pinky is weaker and index, middle are stronger.
"The forefinger is much stronger and more agile than any of the other fingers, and controls more keys. Why in the world should it have a lower percentage of keypresses than the middle finger?"
"In any event, I don’t think this weight distribution number is relevant per se. Any useful information it adds to a prediction of layout quality is already present in other better measurements, and most trade-offs that have to be made with other measures to improve this 'distribution' score are IMO likely to be net-negative."- Agreed. And I found out that it doesn' t weigh heaviliy, the algorithm does give many layouts with " skewed" load distributions. Lower same finger etc. is much more important.
"You should explain what weighting you apply to these criteria to decide on a final score, and mention whether you’re trying to score layouts on a 1930s typewriter, an ANSI-ish arrangement laptop scissor keyboard, a Model F, an Ergodox, or what. In particular, Dvorak tries to eliminate bottom row keypresses because they’re really bad on old typewriters. But IMO bottom row keys (especially for index/pinky, though B is a nasty stretch) are great on a flat keyboard."Agreed. Must look this up!
"If you have a particular keyboard in mind, the first step toward making an optimal layout is IMO to figure out the most comfortable placement of the hands. " Agreed again! Although... one factor might be: do you want a layout that you can also use ona regular keyboard? If you want to bring along you own layout (on a USB stick: autohotkey script, karabiner, XKB maps etc) for use on other peoples' PCs, then maybe a layout optimized for regular keyboard is better?
"Keep in mind that this is merely my subjective opinion and is just to promote thought on your part as it's interesting to see other people's point of views."- Thanks for the courtesy, OneProduct :-) and no problem, this is a crazy hobby we share, right? :-)
"1. My layout has approximately 3.4 times the in/out ratio with only a minor amount more adjacency penalty relative to the in/out boost yet this doesn't seem to affect the score very much. Even compared to the eng/ger version my layout has 1.5 times the in/out ratio. What is the weight given to each stat?"- I must look this up! Your layout does extremely well on inrolls, which is (to me) important.
"2. Same finger usage is reduced primarily by removing P and G to pinky keys. If you had to place P and G optimally into the * slots ADNW's same finger usage becomes higher than that in my layout. Of course if I imposed this constraint on you you would clearly generate a different layout rather than forcing them into the current * slots. My main problem is that P and G are not infrequent keys (compared to ZXJQ for example, and even worse with the V and W of ADNW trigram!) and I find that having to press them with the pinky is orders of magnitudes worse than what is gained by putting them off to the side. Also, even with them off to the side we see very little in/out ratio gains from having them being so far outside (keys in outside positions have more potential to contribute to inward rolls)."- I don't think I get the question... do you mean that for a fair comparison we should make layouts for equal physical layouts? ADNW uses more keys. This comes from the German background, the Germans use 4 extra letters (äöüß). The French Azerty layout uses the number row for é è â ç which is a different solution.
"4. As Jacobulus stated, and as championed by the author of the Workman layout, I believe that there are some keys on the bottom row which are more comfortable than those on the top row, yet it is evident to see by the way that certain letters are placed that ADNW does not consider that to be so.... " - Agreed! I did experiment with other scores for the positions, the Adnw software allows for changing the "matrix" in which each key gets a base value. This leads to different layouts. However, as everything impacts everything, this sometimes mean worse scores regarding same finger, alternation, in/out etc.
"5. My layout has one hand with the middle finger doing more work than the index finger, which we both favor. I'm not sure if that taken into account in scoring."- I don't think the finger load distribution counts heavily. I agree on the middle finger thing (strongest finger). jacobolus prefers the index. So this is personal.
"Do the extra pinky keys not cause a significant increase in penalty somewhere for the mere fact that they are not only pinky keys, but must be stretched towards laterally?"- penalty I must look up. Like you, I feared it would feel bad, but it turns out fine! This is on a standard stagger board, meaning that the (right hand) top row sits slightly to the left. On a matrix keyboard this would be harder. The pinky slide on the home row turns out to be easy as well.
"Do you have an ADNW variation that would work on a grid layout keyboard that does not have those extra pinky keys? For example on a Kinesis, Ergodox or Truly Ergonomic there aren't 1-unit keys in the ' and [ position of a QWERTY staggered keyboard. I would be interested to see what you would come up with if constrained to the same 30 positions I used."- yes there is. The Ergodox version is on patorjk, other versions I can look up, or generate. See if I find time for that tomorrow :-)
"I'm not sure I understand what the shift-X stats mean. Could you describe them? I think I understand shift-same finger being (relative QWERTY) holding left shift to shift a right hand key then needing to press A since left shift and A are both pinky keys. If shift-adjacent is based on adjacency rules like shift-->S being uncomfortable then I would argue against that stat as moving the pinky one row down to press the shift key has a considerable impact on which rolls are comfortable. For example, though I consider most rolls on the middle row beginning with A to be uncomfortable, I would consider all rolls on the middle row starting with left shift to be comfortable. Shift-alternation I don't have a clue about. :)"- I have explained that in the beginning of this megapost :-) but I am doubting somewhat, so I'll have to look that up as well !
...tried out the MTGAP layout. Maybe I need much more getting used to, but I did not find it comfortable typing in English as much as my own modified Colemak....the MTGAP just doesn't seem to work well for the movements that I am used to making or maybe I just haven't tried too hard.
...but I did not find it comfortable typing in English as much as my own modified Colemak.
...tried out the MTGAP layout. Maybe I need much more getting used to, but I did not find it comfortable typing in English as much as my own modified Colemak....the MTGAP just doesn't seem to work well for the movements that I am used to making or maybe I just haven't tried too hard.
Yes, on the one hand it's a matter of 'getting used to things'. On the other hand we all have our preferences - and that's a great thing or we would all be typing on the same keyboards! Also, I find it depends on your physical keyboard. Rolls can be comfortable on one keyboard but akward on another.
static int64_t costsCopy[KSIZE_MAX] = {
70, 50, 30, 40, 90, 90, 40, 30, 50, 70,
10, 5, 0, 0, 40, 40, 0, 0, 5, 10,
50, 40, 30, 30, 70, 70, 30, 30, 40, 50,
};
Could you tell a bit about the algorithm you are using?
It looks like a sane layout ! Hand balance (L/R) looks great too. Another important metric I learned from Carpalx: how the distribution over strings is. MTGAP states that words like (on qwerty) askl or port are the best to type, because they are 2 left, 2 right. Too much alternation (lapsos is slower, too little (sweaterdress) is slower too.
The best thing is to try a layout out and see how it feels :) Next best is to make some metric, like above. One might even use this in the optimization itself, for instance a criteria might be "t3Left > 90%" and "t4Right >90%". Meaning you reject layouts that have too long one hand strings. Or - you give a penality for strings over 4 letters.
MTGAP seems to really favor inward rolls- you can set the penalties for in and out rolls at run time. Something like inRoll -20 outRoll 30 and so on. AFAIK you cannot set penalties for use of adjacent fingers, so you'll see a lot of Colemak style rolls. Which you may or may not like (I don't, I prefer Ring-Index over Ring-Middle. Dr. Dvorak (and his brain grand childs, the ADNW layout and other Dvorak style layouts) thought the same, but it is a personal thing, and also dependent on the keyboard. On flat chiclet keyboards, Colemak rolls are fine).
for reasons I don't quite understand it loves to arrange A, E, O, U in a grid rather than have them all on the home row. Perhaps it has something to do with the row change or home/ring jump penalties.I think it is those penalties indeed
and ignore the "Finger work: 0" stat. For some reason this seems to happen sometimes but I don't really know why.Happened to me too when I optimized with MTGAP last summer. Michael, the dev of MTGAP thinks it is a bug somewhere in the code.
My algorithm is actually pretty simple and doesn't measure too many more advanced things like this. I've mostly just been measuring the things you see listed in the screenshot and assigning different weights to each one. However I feel that even a limited set of measurements like this tends to do the large part of defining what a good layout looks like. After that I hand tweak it based on perceived "comfort" and experiences using it to type common words.
...I feel that even a limited set of measurements like this tends to do the large part of defining what a good layout looks like. After that I hand tweak it based on perceived "comfort" and experiences using it to type common words.That is OK. All those numbers are just 'constructs', in the end it is about you typing on a keyboard and how that feels to you.
There have been calculations on " improving Maltron".Is there more detail about what these “calculations” are based on? For example, when judging other keyboard layouts are they including spacebar presses when calculating “alternation”? If hand alternation including the thumb is going to be considered something worth measuring, then each layout should probably be analyzed at least twice, once assuming the use of the right thumb for spacebar, once assuming the use of the left thumb. Otherwise you can’t possibly get a fair comparison to the Malt layout which uses one thumb for E.
it is clear that the E thumb key brings some weaknesses. [...] - it scores worse at hand balance, adjacent keys (Dvorak-style layouts find adjacent keys bad, but Colemak sees it as good) and same finger rate [...] The message is, anyway, that the E Thumb key has it's advantages is also weaknesses. No such thing as a free lunch, it seemsThis seems like arguments about the Maltron layout overall, not specifically about having E on the left thumb.
Quote from: PieterGen on 26-01-2015, 21:32:43
There have been calculations on " improving Maltron".
Is there more detail about what these “calculations” are based on? For example, when judging other keyboard layouts are they including spacebar presses when calculating “alternation”? If hand alternation including the thumb is going to be considered something worth measuring, then each layout should probably be analyzed at least twice, once assuming the use of the right thumb for spacebar, once assuming the use of the left thumb. Otherwise you can’t possibly get a fair comparison to the Malt layout which uses one thumb for E.
TrueQuoteit is clear that the E thumb key brings some weaknesses. [...] - it scores worse at hand balance, adjacent keys (Dvorak-style layouts find adjacent keys bad, but Colemak sees it as good) and same finger rate [...] The message is, anyway, that the E Thumb key has it's advantages is also weaknesses. No such thing as a free lunch, it seemsThis seems like arguments about the Maltron layout overall, not specifically about having E on the left thumb.
There was a thread, either on GH or maybe Colmak, about the Maltron layout efficiency (also including the "E" in the thumb cluster and the dramatic effects of that)Thanks, hope you'll find it !
Here (http://www.adnw.de/index.php?n=Main.Malt) is the page.Yeah, so as they point out on that page, it’s hard to compare to other layouts because their analysis usually excludes spacebar (which is IMO a bad idea, but whatever). So it looks like they have one analysis excluding thumb keys entirely, one analysis excluding spacebar, and one analysis with both E and space.
If vowels and consonants are on one hand, there is a much higher risk of typing long words or even several words with that same hand, which is tiring and unpleasant.The word dearest on QWERTY is indeed pretty tough. By standard fingering, it’s 3-3-5-2-3-4-2. I find the fastest way for me to type that is with three phrases – d, e-a-r, e-s-t – each of which uses all separate fingers, so doesn’t require anything to be lifted in between. For me, it’s hard to shorten the time gap between d and e, and especially the gap between e-a-r and e-s-t. If there were a couple of letters typed with the other hand in between that would be a big overall speed boost for me.
As carpalx states: (http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?keyboard_layouts) QWERTY forces the typist to use the same hand repeatedly, which limits the amount of rest and increases effort. On a qwerty layout, 5% of all left hand runs are 6 letters or more ! Words like "dearest". Those sort of words you will encounter much more on a layout that mixes vowels & consonants.
@PieterGen I did consider changing the inRoll and outRoll parameters but I'm still on the fence about it. I think I rather like the inward rolls so I left things as they were designed in the MTGAP code.I did play with it, changing InRoll, outRoll and sameHand - everything comes at a price though. More nice rolls = more ugly rolls as well, usually. Like medication: the stronger the effects, the stronger the side effects :)
Could it be that preference for (or against) rolls depends a lot on how well you have trained your fingers to use them?I think so! Also, how long are you fingers, how is your keyboard etc. To me, outrolls are not so bad. What I do not like are "broken rolls" such as (qwerty) WRE Even worse are things like WREST
Anyone want to try this with Vibex's JD40 layout? :)Interesting layout! For fun I shall calculated how it scores (using the ADNW scoring algorithm - no absolute truth! You could also score it in Patorjk 's website)
J W U P V B Y M D K
A I S T L R N E O
Z X C G [Enter] F H Q
Hi prdlm2009 - Is having the E on a thumb key a good thing? Maltron's choice sounds logical, but the evidence is mixed.
I did found some stuff on the adnw.de website and the adnw google group. I'll translate some findings:
There have been calculations on " improving Maltron". Maltron is ANISF DTHOR, and at least for the German language, better layouts are conceivable. All while leaving the E at the thumb key.
At the same time, it is clear that the E thumb key brings some weaknesses.
- Alternation is rather low (only 54% of all digrams are alternating in the stock Maltron layout. This is comparable to Qwerty, but much lower than Dvorak and ADNW, that both are around 70%). The " improved Maltrons" are better, at 56-60%, depending on the language. But still lower).
- it scores worse at hand balance, adjacent keys (Dvorak-style layouts find adjacent keys bad, but Colemak sees it as good) and same finger rate
If you' re interested, I can dig deeper in it and find some stats, I don't have time for that now. The message is, anyway, that the E Thumb key has it's advantages is also weaknesses. No such thing as a free lunch, it seems! :)
@prdlm2009 - Seeing you are in Indiana, USA, I assume you write mostly in English, which is a big advantage, because many layouts were specifically optimized for English. For instance Colemak. You may have less need for a custom layout. I had to make a custom one, because I type mostly in Dutch, for which "English" layouts are suboptimal.
As you know, on patorjk's keyboard analyser (http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main) is an easy way to see how well various layouts work for your texts. One may argue with pat's way of calculating things, but it is a nice start and very easy to use. This one is very nice too: a website where you can try out several layouts in the browser (http://blog.mikekuehn.ca/keyboard-layouts/). Recommended ! If the existing layouts don't work well enough for you, you can always modify one or calculate a completely custom one.
BTW, I too hate to use the pinky & ring fingers on the bottom row. On a standard qwerty keyboard I don't use the left pinky on the bottom row. W S and Z are typed with the ring finger. I hate the shifts on the pinkies as well. Maybe I should try out that spacebar/shift idea again:
- Press space, keep it pressed and type a letter (let's say abc) = ABC
- Press space = nothing happens
- Release space = space
I tried it before, what I liked was being able to shift with thumbs, what I did not like was that space comes slow, it only appears on the release of the space bar, which "feels" slow.
Snarfangel, did you run that layout through an optimizer with the E on a thumb key? I never was able to find much good discussion of E on thumb keys and would be curious to know why you chose that particular layout (I'm planning on getting an ergodox or Kinesis Advantage, depending on the merits of the new iterations of both products and how Keyboardio and Axios turn out).
I think in practicality that it would probably be best to leave the letters on the 30 key layout as is and use the thumb keys to take some of the load off the pinkies with respect to shift, enter, backspace, etc. Especially if you keep alternation high, my guess is that the reduced load on the pinkies would be more beneficial than removing e. Especially since it still allows you to use laptop keyboards.
This seems like really the only way you could do it with the
optimizers at this time (pity really, since ADNW, Carpalx,
etc. would give you a broader range of testing metrics).
QuoteThis seems like really the only way you could do it with the
optimizers at this time (pity really, since ADNW, Carpalx,
etc. would give you a broader range of testing metrics).
The AdNW optimizer has support for thumb keys, including allowing for letters
on thumb keys. There is some analysis of Shift on thumbs:
http://adnw.de/index.php?n=Main.OptimierungF%C3%BCrDieGeradeTastaturMitDaumen-Shift
and with letters on thumbs:
http://adnw.de/index.php?n=Main.FehlerfreihheitUndDaumentasten
Do you know if they did an English version with thumbs?
QuoteDo you know if they did an English version with thumbs?
I found this is the mailing list archive. It says the layout with the name 4287 was done for English:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.keyboards.layout.nordtast/700
There is a long thread surrounding this, so it is hard to tell what exactly the optimization criteria were. But it clearly tries to stick with Malt-like criteria, not the default AdNW ones.
I can't run the algorithms myself because I'm primarily a writer interested in keyboards (technical things like compiling C code and running from the command line are a bit above me presently)
This is more or less why I'm at GH pestering people to help me figure out which layout is best
I've skimmed a couple of the papers by Lillian Malt and it is my opinion that there are more important things to optimize for than some of the things she aimed to (such as error reduction).
2313 194.703 total effort 156.063 positional effort left right
0.545 same finger rp 9.584 shift same finger top 7.7 9.4
;.ugf vmlpx 53.761 hand alternat. 53.206 shift hand alter. mid 31.2 29.7
oaisc dtrnh 1.168 inward/outward --.--- indir same finger bot 4.8 5.6
',yjz qkw-b 16.897 adjacent 13.899 shift adjacent sum 43.7 56.3
e 8.8 10.2 11.1 13.6 --.- 11.6 16.5 11.5 9.1 7.7 Sh 1.5 1.3
I was kind of hoping for more of an analysis of what putting a high frequency letter (such as E) on a thumb cluster did to other optimization parameters.