Author Topic: Keyboard Layout Analysis  (Read 15221 times)

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Offline Gonadium

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  • Posts: 4
Keyboard Layout Analysis
« on: Thu, 21 April 2016, 12:21:40 »
Summary:

Created my own keyboard layout and compared it to a variety of other layouts. It performed very well. Please check the attachment

So I tried to copy and past from word and it did not work. So here is a word file that has it in there nicely formatted... * Forum Blog.doc

Offline PieterGen

  • Posts: 135
Re: Keyboard Layout Analysis
« Reply #1 on: Tue, 26 April 2016, 09:20:43 »
OK, I'll bite. The layout is a maxtrix layout. The main 30 keys are like this: 
QFHLW  BPDYZ
MSNTR  IEOAU
JXKVC  G.,-'


Modifiers and special keys are in the middle columns and on the 'space bar row' - see the .doc file for details.

@Gonadium (=OP): you can copy text from your . doc file in heren but the pictures you will have to host somewhere before. For instance on imgur. Then, in a forum post you can link to those pictures on imgur and they will show up.

My take on this layout and the thinking behind it - see file ?
  • nice systematic approach and scientific style writing !
    lots of good things
    a weakness is  "I turned to the best tool available to analyse the keyboard layout...... the [patorjk.com] Keyboard Layout Analyzer. The problem with this (nice) analyser is that its optimization program is unknown. So I don't exactly know how it calculates and what it calculates. The adnw, carpalx and mtgap analyzers are all three open source so you can see what it optimizes for. 

The layout looks a bit like Dvorak (on the right, in yellow):
',.PY FGCRL
AOEUI DHTNS
;QJKX BMWVZ
 
QFHLW BPDYZ  ',.PY FGCRL
MSNTR IEOAU  AOEUI DHTNS
JXKVC G.,-'  ;QJKX BMWVZ


Interesting take on Dvorak. Let us know how you like it in real life typing !

Offline Gonadium

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  • Posts: 4
Re: Keyboard Layout Analysis
« Reply #2 on: Tue, 26 April 2016, 23:57:30 »
Hi Peter,

Thanks for looking and the review. I had great difficulty getting everything to copy and paste nicely. The text was no problem, but the tables just turned into a jumbled mess. And yes, the pictures... well I was just lazy with that.

Yes, after I posted this I saw links on this forum (another thread) for some of the other analysers.

There is the ADNW project (adnw.de), which was created for german but may still be interesting for you. They have a few alternative layouts (http://adnw.de/index.php?n=Main.Varianten), but most importantly two pieces of software:

- A very nice and configurable optimizer (http://509.ch/opt.7z). You can configure your own hardware, set preference parameters for each finger, hand alterations, rolls and much more and insert your own corpus. You could even change the letter list. Let it run for a few hours and you got a personal optimized layout.
- An impressive AHK script (http://wiki.neo-layout.org/export/2475/windows/neo-vars/out/neo20.exe) that includes 6 layers. You can personalise layers 1 and 2 (shift), layer 3 is basically made for programmers (“\/{}*?()-:” on the homerow!), layer 4 puts all navigation symbols in the 60% area and layer 5 and 6 include greek letters and some lesser used symbols. You can see the layers at http://neo-layout.org, just hover over the “Ebene x”-buttons.

Tuffff's post did a good job of that. My problem is that I am too noob to get these up and running. I had a crack at it, but gave up lost in a sea of confusion and doubt. That and I don't have the time and inclination.


I have made an update to the layout which I am not yet convinced is better (at least for me). Here is a comparison with standard keyboard layouts:  - http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/load/dxHx2DgX  (This is using the 30pg journal as corpus. )

and Ergodox/QWERTY layouts http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/load/QbMf7nD7 . (This is using the 14pg journal as corpus. ) These journal references can be found in my doc file


What I don't know is how it performs with inward/outward rolls and bigrams/trigrams.

Still initial results look good

Offline jacobolus

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  • Location: San Francisco, CA
Re: Keyboard Layout Analysis
« Reply #3 on: Wed, 27 April 2016, 03:58:42 »
PieterGen: when you need colored text, can you use orange instead of yellow? Yellow is completely illegible on a light background.

Gonadium: You’ll get much better readership if you copy the contents of your document into the thread here. Some people don’t even have a tool to open MS Word documents, and a good proportion of the rest are too lazy to download a file and open it.
« Last Edit: Wed, 27 April 2016, 04:00:28 by jacobolus »

Offline iandoug

  • Posts: 95
Re: Keyboard Layout Analysis
« Reply #4 on: Mon, 24 July 2017, 15:52:45 »
Hi

Know it's a bit late, but think you got wrong scores from KLA ... you have key combinations that require you to press more than one key with same finger, and KLA does not like that ...

Cheers, Ian

Offline Gonadium

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  • Posts: 4
Re: Keyboard Layout Analysis
« Reply #5 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 16:33:15 »
Hi Ian,

Thanks for your feedback. Yes others have noted that KLA is perhaps a second grade KB analyser. The problem is that I can't get the other ones up and running... Simply because I am a programming noob and it is all so overwhelming.

I have skimmed through the ADNW website. It looks like a great analyser.

Anyway. Regarding an update to this project. My Planck keyboard has been ordered and I am awaiting delivery from Massdrop. I am considering abandoning this keyboard layout as I have discovered the opensteno project (Plover). The whole purpose of my keyboard was to improve speed and ergonomics. Well I think Plover ****s all over my design.

So I have ordered some relegendable key caps and am going down this avenue for the time being.

If the Plover thing doesn't work out, I may revisit this

Offline iandoug

  • Posts: 95
Re: Keyboard Layout Analysis
« Reply #6 on: Wed, 29 November 2017, 11:39:39 »

Anyway. Regarding an update to this project. My Planck keyboard has been ordered and I am awaiting delivery from Massdrop. I am considering abandoning this keyboard layout as I have discovered the opensteno project (Plover). The whole purpose of my keyboard was to improve speed and ergonomics. Well I think Plover ****s all over my design.

Have read some research papers in recent times, they indicate that steno designs are good for taking down people talking but not good for other things. So will be interested to hear how you fare...