Ergonomic keyboards for heavy emacs use

[vsb]

Hi Geekhack,

First a bit a backstory:

I am a bioinformatician, and I end up writing lots of code and working a lot in the shell. Recently I've had pain my my wrists and forearms. I've had pain in my forearms before, seen a doctor, and both times the doctor has said it's muscular. Luckily, in the past it's gone away relatively quickly (with 3-5 days) and I've had years of pain-free programming.

Recently, I've had a slightly different pain, more in my wrists and lower forearm. I immediately saw a doctor (since this typing is my livelihood, I don't screw around). He had me do the classic CT tests, which were all negative and sent me on my way. After a week of very light computing (no work, just light emailing) the pain didn't disappear, so I took a week of almost zero typing. The pain has gone down with icing, but now that I'm back at work, the pain too is back. While the pain was in both arms before, now it's mostly in my left. Because it's mostly in the left hand, where the control key is, I think it's related to extension of my pinky. I have another doctor's appointment set up by the way.

I'm starting a new job soon and need to heal and get set up with a new keyboard that minimizes the risk of these injuries again. Before I discovered how many keyboard options there are, I bought a Kinesis freestyle. The control key is still what I press most in a day, and I do feel the most pain when using it with C-f or C-b in Emacs. I rest my elbows on the edge of the table and try to let my wrists float over the keyboard (is there something better than this? is this bad?). I did type incorrectly, favoring pressing keys with my index, middle, and ring fingers (except for control and meta), but now I am typing in the more conventional touch typing style (after some retraining). I'm very fast, but with errors and I backwards kill words in emacs quite frequently.

So, I'm looking for a keyboard and possibly other tips to stay healthy when working hard in emacs. I also use command-tab to switch windows probably close to 500 times a day. I am considering investing in the Truly Ergonomic, and retraining myself to hit control and meta with my opposite hand (do other emacs users do this?). An ergodox would be my top choice, but it's my impression that the next Massdrop run will take forever.

My primary wishes in a keyboard are (1) better control position (2) split or angled design (3) matrix layout (4) backspace I can hit easily since I am a messy typist. Any other tips or feedback would be much appreciated! I love coding and hate that it's now a painful activity. I'm willing to retrain anything that needs retraining.

Thanks!
Vince

[ksm123]

1. ErgoDox or Kinesis Advantage, I've chosen the former.
2. I use <space> under left thumb, <backspace> under right thumb, <left-alt> (meta) on second big left key and <enter> on second big right key. Both 1.5x keys in home row are Controls in my layout.
3. I came late to Emacs crowd, so I got onto ErgoEmacs bandwagon .

[yasuo]

But,Kinesis Advantange not split

[jeffgran]

I use emacs all day every day too. Here is what I've discovered:

- First and foremost, you should ABSOLUTELY remap your caps-lock key to be control, if you haven't already. I hold down control half the time I'm working and the lower-left location on most keyboards makes you twist your left wrist at a weird angle. Generally, you want your wrists to be in as neutral a position as possible and the left control key is one of the worst offenders against that notion. The caps-lock key is much easier for your left pinky to hold down.

- That being said, after long work sessions even holding down the caps-lock(as control) key with my left pinky starts to aggravate it. Thus I recently switched to a Kinesis advantage, and mapped one of the big buttons on the right thumb to be control (and one of the big buttons on the left thumb to be "meta"). I really like it a lot better, and it does not cause me any pain. The thumb is a much stronger finger than the pinky so it makes good sense that the thumb can handle more.

Along that same idea I have a different smaller thumb button on the right as meta, and a smaller thumb button on the right as control, so I can hit control or meta with either thumb. The backspace with the left thumb is really nice once you get used to it, and you can backward-kill-word with right thumb on meta and left thumb on backspace. Much better than on a standard keyboard, twisting both wrists to hit a modifier with the left pinky and the backspace key way way up in the right corner with the right pinky.

- I would also recommend taking some time to consider the commands you use most often and map them to easier-to-reach keys. I use backward/forward-char, backward/forward-word, next/previous-line, etc all the time to navigate, so I re-mapped them from the stock keys to be all under my right hand, similar to (but not the same as) the vim navigation keys. Sometimes the best keyboard shortcut is not the one with the best mnemonic, but the one with the best feeling.

As general advice for which keyboard to get, I can't say other than I really like my Kinesis a lot better than any standard keyboard. I don't think I'll ever go back to a keyboard without lots of thumb buttons and a matrix layout (as opposed to the standard staggered layout). The Truly Ergonomic looks pretty nice and maybe a bit easier to adjust to than the Advantage, and my ErgoDox is on order and I can't wait to put it together and try it. I like a lot of things about the Advantage but don't love the curved keywells.

Good luck.

[nomaded]

First, if possible, either raise your seating position or lower the surface that your keyboard is on. You really shouldn't rest your elbows, wrists or fore arms while typing. You should keep your arms hovering over the keyboard and the desk. Also take breaks often where you do rest your arms and wrists. Personally, I hover while typing out of habit from piano lessons while growing up.

As @jeffgran said, definitely remap the capslock key as control, if you have not done so already (for Windows, I would use KeyTweak to do that).

I would also 2nd (3rd?) getting a different style keyboard, like a Kinesis Advantage or a Truly Ergonomic Computer Keyboard. I haven't gotten around to trying out a Kinesis Advantage yet (maybe when the refreshed model is released), but I'm currently typing on a TECK. I am no longer a heavy Emacs user (switched to vi/vim), so I'm not as heavily dependent on the control key, but if I still was, I would definitely move the control key to towards the middle of the keyboard, either one of the space bars or one of the keys in the middle. The Typematrix  might be a possibility, but due to its size and physical layout, it might be worse for you because of wrist angle.

Lastly, I would suggest learning a different keyboard layout than Sholes/qwerty. I type Dvorak most of the time,  but Colemak may work better with Emacs. For me, I find the alternating of hands while typing to be much more comfortable.

[nesiax]

An emacs user ? nice to meet you ! I use emacs for almost everything, having the control key at the home row is the best thing you can do, you can doit by software or by hardware, for the last case I develop the key64 keyboard, think of the key64 as an ergonomic happy hacking keyboard.
Emacs remap the meta key to Alt key in a standard pc keyboard, which in the case of the key64 is available at the left or right hand the same as with the control key, anyway you can remap it via software or via firmware  and have the meta key located at the thumb where I located the Alt-gr key, see they64 design page for more information.
I remaped Alt-Gr to that place since I need to type non english characters, but having the alt key above the control key do not represent a big effort at all however not as comfortable as the home row.

[listokei]

I still have never used an ergonomic keyboard.
If I want to use the opportunity to try.

[daerid]

Definitely remap caps -> control.

And just because somebody's gotta say it: switch to vim.

*runs*

[wiredPANDA]

Definitely remap caps -> control.

This has easily been my favorite key remapping - ever.

And just because somebody's gotta say it: switch to vim.

To add fuel to the fire you started --- I remember seeing a vim keycap, though, I can't say I've seen a custom keycap for emacs.

[czarek]

Definitely remap caps -> control.

And just because somebody's gotta say it: switch to vim.

*runs*

+1

[daerid]

Definitely remap caps -> control.

This has easily been my favorite key remapping - ever.

And just because somebody's gotta say it: switch to vim.

To add fuel to the fire you started --- I remember seeing a vim keycap, though, I can't say I've seen a custom keycap for emacs.

Yup. I've got 4 of 'em