geekhack Community > Ergonomics
What is the most optimized layout recently?
oneproduct:
--- Quote from: jacobolus on Mon, 07 March 2016, 14:44:00 ---
--- Quote from: knowsnokb on Mon, 07 March 2016, 08:07:29 ---[...] Have they been scientifically tested? or at least have a lot of supporters? [...] Just wondering what layout, for english writers and programmers have been shown, and studied to be the most optimal.
--- End quote ---
There has been no scientific testing, and not much informal study either, any time in the past ~30 years. It’s all just people’s personal preferences/biases, and their computer optimization programs built on ad-hoc untested heuristics.
--- End quote ---
Heuristics are indeed the name of the game here. There is no such thing as optimality in terms of keyboard layouts as it's impossible to say what the most important factors are. For example, Dvorak favors alternation, Colemak favors inward rolls and Workman disfavors lateral movements.
Certain people have different preferences as to what is comfortable, and some of it is based on their physiology, i.e. the size of their hands and the dexterity of their fingers. Rolling motions are also debated in terms of what is and what is not comfortable in terms of which particular fingers on the same hand perform them.
A lot of people (myself included https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=67604.0 ), have tried making their own layouts based on what heuristics they personally deem to be important, but it's very difficult to prove that a layout is better or worse, and what works for one person doesn't work for others.
Personally speaking, I started with QWERTY, tried Dvorak and then ended with Colemak (not even really trying my own proposed layout seriously). For me Dvorak just didn't click. I find that too much alternation is a bad thing as it requires stricter organization between the left and right hand, resulting in transposition errors (two letters in a word swapped). Colemak's rolls are quite comfortable to me. And even if it turns out that Colemak is slightly less optimal in terms of what I could achieve in terms of typing speed, there's a human comfort factor which may be more or less valuable than sheer typing speed.
If you just want to look at numbers, I could argue (but I wouldn't do so overly seriously) that the layout I came up with in the thread I linked is "the best" because it has a higher alternation % than MTGAP and Dvorak as well as a higher inward roll % and low outward roll %. It's also almost exactly 50/50 in terms of left/right balance. And I have that one other reference which rates MTGAP and my own layout as close contenders for the top spot. MTGAP probably has lower travel distance than my layout, which gave it a tiny edge. However, PieterGen runs my layout through another layout analyzer which looks at bigram and trigram optimization (trying to optimize for rolls of size 2/3) and rates my layout slightly lower than ADNW, a layout I'm not too familiar with.
There's also some funny things to consider which most people don't, such as the optimum placement of the backspace key, which is dependent on each person. My error % when typing is around 5-8%, which is more common than quite a few letters, so it would make sense to give the backspace key a prime position relative to a lot of letters.
And then there's human factors such as having number keys in ascending/descending order rather than by frequency (0 and 9 for example are likely unnaturally common relative to other numbers due to things such as 1000 or $19.99) and having all the letters be adjacent to each other rather than mixed in with modifier keys (shift, ctrl, alt). Most people have this as a requirement when generating their layouts.
The physical hardware you have available is also a deciding factor. Above someone has MTGAP on a Kinesis Advantage split keyboard which most people won't have, which grants two thumb clusters. The Workman layout also gets much of its charm due to the fact that on a standard keyboard there's a lot of lateral movement on the index fingers, but that could be solved with a different physical keyboard layout rather than a different key layout.
tuffff:
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.
jacobolus:
--- Quote from: oneproduct on Mon, 07 March 2016, 15:00:36 ---The physical hardware you have available is also a deciding factor.
--- End quote ---
Indeed. The QWERTY layout was designed for the original Remington No. 1 typewriter, on which neighboring type bars in the circular “basket” would jam when typed in quick succession, so the keys are distributed so that common English digraphs are separated on that physical machine. (The arrangement of type bars doesn’t directly/obviously correspond to key location on the keyboard.)
The Dvorak layout is designed for later typewriters from the 1930s, on which the type bars hit the front of the platen, and weren’t quite as prone to jamming, but still could jam if nearby type bars were activated at the same time. The design criterion for the Dvorak layout was to improve comfort by moving common letters to the “home row”, encourage alternation between hands, and put only uncommon letters on the bottom row, because the bottom row on a mechanical typewriter is really annoying to reach, compared to the home row or top row.
The Malt layout is designed for the Maltron keyboard, which has split halves, curved keywells, and extra thumb keys.
Some later keyboard layouts are optimized for flat laptop keyboards. (QWERTY, Dvorak, and Malt are all decidedly suboptimal in the context of a modern laptop board.)
bocahgundul:
--- Quote from: jacobolus on Tue, 08 March 2016, 18:54:56 ---
--- Quote from: oneproduct on Mon, 07 March 2016, 15:00:36 ---The physical hardware you have available is also a deciding factor.
--- End quote ---
Indeed. The QWERTY layout was designed for the original Remington No. 1 typewriter, on which neighboring type bars in the circular “basket” would jam when typed in quick succession, so the keys are distributed so that common English digraphs are separated on that physical machine. (The arrangement of type bars doesn’t directly/obviously correspond to key location on the keyboard.)
The Dvorak layout is designed for later typewriters from the 1930s, on which the type bars hit the front of the platen, and weren’t quite as prone to jamming, but still could jam if nearby type bars were activated at the same time. The design criterion for the Dvorak layout was to improve comfort by moving common letters to the “home row”, encourage alternation between hands, and put only uncommon letters on the bottom row, because the bottom row on a mechanical typewriter is really annoying to reach, compared to the home row or top row.
The Malt layout is designed for the Maltron keyboard, which has split halves, curved keywells, and extra thumb keys.
Some later keyboard layouts are optimized for flat laptop keyboards. (QWERTY, Dvorak, and Malt are all decidedly suboptimal in the context of a modern laptop board.)
--- End quote ---
Jacobolous may I ask what keyboard layout did you use?
PieterGen:
--- Quote from: davkol on Mon, 07 March 2016, 10:07:13 ---- That's simple: Dvorak Simplified Keyboard and Maltron layouts.
- Colemak isn't interesting, if you don't care about transition from QWERTY or shortcut compatibility; its typing properties are very similar to Maltron THOR, except for vowel separation (and usage of a thumb for a letter).
- The closest thing is MTGAP or carpalx, but that's still the same in principle, only with slightly different (arbitrary) design criteria and even less usage in practice.
--- End quote ---
- Dvorak is indeed very good (I admit, my subjective opinion).
- Maltron, I have no experiece with. The E on a thumb seems like a good idea. Looking at the letters per hand, I have doubts about the alternation, might be too low. But what do I know.
- Colemak seems to be quite good for English prose. I must say that the idea of maintaining one-hand key combos such as ctrl-x or ctrl-z is ergonomically not good, it is better to press ctrl with one hand and the letter (such as x, or z) with the other hand.
- I used MTGAP for some weeks, very nice layout, nice optimizer too for making your own layouts. MTGAP felt like a better Colemak to me. That is, if you like rolls but also some sane alternation, MTGAP might be the ticket for you.
- Carpalx: the analyses look nice (although a bit opaque), but in use it did not feel nice to my hands. Maybe because letters (R, I) are not on the home position, but on the querty (G, H) spots? Somehow the layout felt as though it was overly optimized on one criterium (location), at the expense of alternation, same finger use, row jumps etc. Try for yourself though, it might be me and perhaps I didn' t give it enough time.
--- Quote from: tuffff on Tue, 08 March 2016, 18:00:37 ---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.
--- End quote ---
- That's right, and some of you may know that I also use a home cooked AdNW version, made for my use case: typing Dutch (90%) and English (10%). AdNW can be seen as a modern version of Dvorak. The project's website is in German, but the layout can be adapted to any language or combination of languages. There is an article about it in the Deskthority wiki, written in English to make this layout better known to non-German speaking keyboard geeks.
Image: an AdNW layout, modified for this split, minimal, no-staggering keyboard. This is Suka's Red Tilt keyboard.
--- Quote from: jacobolus on Tue, 08 March 2016, 18:54:56 ---
--- Quote from: oneproduct on Mon, 07 March 2016, 15:00:36 ---The physical hardware you have available is also a deciding factor.
--- End quote ---
(QWERTY, Dvorak, and Malt are all decidedly suboptimal in the context of a modern laptop board.)
--- End quote ---
- I suppose you mean that on a flat kayboard the bottom row is easy to reach but the top rows are harder? At least, that is what I feel on a laptop. Qwerty Y for instance, is killing on a flat keyboard, whereas Qwerty B is very easy to hit.
--- Quote from: oneproduct on Mon, 07 March 2016, 15:00:36 ---Certain people have different preferences as to what is comfortable, and some of it is based on their physiology, i.e. the size of their hands and the dexterity of their fingers. Rolling motions are also debated in terms of what is and what is not comfortable in terms of which particular fingers on the same hand perform them.
--- End quote ---
+1 For instance, I prefer typing with the ring finger over typing with the index finger.
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