geekhack Community > Ergonomics

Ergonomics and modifiers?

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joesventek:
Sure. The problem is I can either make the modifiers or the alphas work reliably. Not both at the same time. After tweaking the available settings the best I can, I can make both work maybe 90% of the time. As soon as I type or hit the modifiers any other way than I usually do (faster, slower, ...), I get accidental letters when I want to have modifiers or the other way around.

I'm sure one can get used to this by being more disciplined when typing. Unfortunately I don't think I can though. Which makes me kinda sad because I really like the shift keys on the home row when they work. Unfortunately those are the least reliable dual role keys to me.

I'll keep experimenting with dual role keys on less frequently used letters though.

vvp:
Thansk for your response.
Sorry, I do not use QMK. Cannot you configure QMK so that dual role keys so that they do not depend on timeouts and speed of typing?

After our previous discussion I expected the firmware to buffer all the keystrokes in sequence (not sending anything to the OS just yet). Then a higher level layer would transform this sequence of keys presses and releases and emit them to the OS. The transformation would be done in such a way that if any key is both pressed after and released before a dual role key then the dual role key is interpreted as a modifier. In any other case the dual role keys would be interpreted as non-modifier.
This approach does not depend on speed. It depends only on the sequence of key presses and releases. Not good for gaming but it should work OK for typing.

joesventek:
I think that's exactly what PERMISSIVE_HOLD does and which seemed to work very realiable for me on the first tests. Turns out, I hit the keys in the correct order but sometimes release them in reverse when typing fast. Without buffering this works as intended by me. With PERMISSIVE_HOLD set this would then lead to accidental (to me) modifier invocations.

I'm sure this can work for a lot of people. But for me it does not at the moment. I'll make sure to give dual role keys another go with my split keyboard though.

vvp:

--- Quote from: joesventek on Mon, 04 June 2018, 01:56:56 ---I think that's exactly what PERMISSIVE_HOLD does and which seemed to work very realiable for me on the first tests. Turns out, I hit the keys in the correct order but sometimes release them in reverse when typing fast. Without buffering this works as intended by me. With PERMISSIVE_HOLD set this would then lead to accidental (to me) modifier invocations.

--- End quote ---
Yes, if you would release the keys in the wrong order while intending to use a dual role key as a modifier then it would not be recognized as a modifier. But modifiers are not used that often so it should be possible to train oneself to be more careful with them.
I do not use dual role keys myself mostly because I have 10 thumb+palm keys on each half so there is plenty of easily accessible modifier candidates for me. And I play games sometimes. But I planned to add their support to the firmware I use. Now I'm not sure it is worth the trouble.

The point is that just for typing they should work OK. They have only three drawbacks:
* they change the timing of events
* they need some other way to press the dual role key with its own modifier (e.g. if F is dual role key with Ctrl then there needs to be alternative way to pres Ctrl-F)
* the order of pressing/releasing of a dual role key relative to the other keys needs to be correct when used as a modifierLooks like the last point is hard.


--- Quote from: joesventek on Mon, 04 June 2018, 01:56:56 ---I'm sure this can work for a lot of people. But for me it does not at the moment. I'll make sure to give dual role keys another go with my split keyboard though.

--- End quote ---
Well, from what I read here you seemed like the most avid user trying to give dual role keys some heavy use. Most people seem to use them only as SpaceFn. That may be somewhat different since space is pressed by thumb. Please, report your experience with dual role keys if you ever return to them again.

T42:
I tried to program timing-independant dual-role modifiers without timing in Autohotkey, but gave up. When done right, they still sound like a great idea I might try again some day.

Now I am using a standard keyboard, but place my fingers one row higher than normal. The space bar is replaced with a small key so that it does not get in the way when the thumbs press C to comma (if it were QUERTY), their new main row. The thumbs reach seven keys easily and two more (LAlt, RAlt) half-decently.

In my first layout with that finger positioning, all six main thumb keys were in heavy use for [ layer2 | shift | layer1 || layer1 | shift | layer2 ]. Alt is placed on Tab and Enter (the ISO type, so it's upper part is symmetrical to Tab on what I use as home row). Ctrl is next to it on Q and ] (talking in UK QUERTY).
I used that layout for ~ 4 months. It was quite OK, but I did not like the amount of thumb movement needed.

Recently, I mapped the main thumb row to [ backspace | shift | layer2 || layer2 | shift | enter ]. But layer2 is no longer needed much, because "normal shift", "odd shift", and "double shift" are three seperate layers which already contain all important characters (but not navigation, that is still on space). Similarly, layer2 is actually three layers. With "normal", I mean combining the right shift key with keys on the left side and vice-versa. "Odd" is combining thumb and other finger of the same hand. "Double" is obviously pressing both modifiers. I've been using this for only a week now. Typing in caps by holding a single shift is no longer possible, and I still have to get used to using CapsLock instead. But otherwise, it's working well.

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