-Ergo keyboards. Not nice at all, very awkward, not very ergonomic at all.
I think there are indeed too many keyboards that have been marketed as "ergonomic" but which are suboptimal ( ⇒ optimising one aspect), often at the expense of some other aspect that might be more important.
The most bullcrap thing I've heard people claim is that an orthonormal keyboard would be
ergonomic because it is orthonormal.
No, the ergonomic feature would be if it was split and had angling and/or tenting. For a non-split orthonormal keyboard in one flat piece to impose less ulnar deviation than even a regular row-staggered QWERTY, it would need to have as much hand-separation as on a Kinesis contoured or Maltron.
I believe that the
Truly Ergonomic and
TypeMatrix: both of which are flat and have insufficient angling/hand separation do more damage than good.
Column-staggered keyboards have an edge over orthonormal because they are more shaped after the hand, but otherwise the same applies to them.
If there is no tenting, a properly row-staggered keyboard half (that is staggered with higher rows closer to the middle, i.e. the right half on a "regular" keyboard) imposes less forearm pronation than a column-staggered keyboard.
Also, with row-stagger, the middle/ring/pinky columns are actually very similar to to the columns on a column-staggered keyboard — only with the keys rotated, which gives it that advantage over orthonormal.
These things above isn't "making up facts". This is applying common knowledge: common knowledge in both the research literature and in the community at large.
-Every keycap is a relegendable keycap if you don't fear god!
Indeed!
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