The uTron, still staggered but in a better way I suppose, but still it makes no sense to me to even have the keys staggered...
I disagree.
I have not tried the
µTron keyboard, but I believe it's staggering to be more natural than a flat matrix layout (like the
TypeMatrix has). It has to do with the different length of the fingers. The ring finger and pinky are shorter than the middle finger (in that order) but on the other hand (no pun intended) the index finger is more dexterous and therefore it can have get more reach than the longer middle finger.
The most natural orientation of your hand on the keyboard is angled slightly inwards. Then you can rest, and really relax, all four fingers on four keys in a row. With a mirrored uniform staggering - like the
µTron's, where both hand are equal, you can do this on all four rows of the keyboard and you can switch rows just by moving your fingers. With a matrix layout, you will have to either twist your wrist or move your hand to make the pinky reach the top row.
The
TrulyErgonomic is also staggered!
If we see only the alphanumeric keys, then the layout of the
µTron and
TrulyErgonomic are more similar to each other than any of them is to the traditional
QWERTY layout.
Imagine that each key on the
µTron is rotated slightly so that they are laid out in columns instead of rows. Then the largest difference between the two layouts that you can see are that the index finger columns are a little bit lower on the
TrulyErgonomic. The remaining differences are only very small shifts up and down.
The staggering on a classic
QWERTY keyboard works for the right hand, but is all fouled up for the left hand, especially if you (try to) touch-type. Most people have keyboards with cursor keys and numpad on the left, with the alphanumeric typing area shifted to the left from how they sit. For them, the angle of the left hand is smaller than for the right hand. With a smaller angle, it becomes more natural to rest the left pinky on the
Left Shift key than on
A .. and that is, I think, why people use predominantly the left
Shift key over the right. I think that people who don't touch-type, but have evolved their own typing style, they tend not to use the same fingers for the columns
Q-
Z,
W-
X,
E-
C,.. but for
W-
Z,
E-
X,
R-
C,.. with
either fingers for the the
home row.
