rapid trigger keyboard technology to the rescue ?
Discussion
I have an Idobao ID75 ortholinear keyboard with cherry silver. They trigger at half the normal pressure. Most "experts" say that this leads to a lot of typos but actually, no, though probably the average person is so dull and insensitive it would. For me it means I'm using a lot less energy and straining myself a lot less per volume of text.
In case you wonder how I type so much without injury.
my typing keyboard is Niz Plum TKL ( electrocapacitive rubber dome )
my gaming keyboard is Asus ROG Scope RX TKL Wireless Deluxe. ( optical scissor switches )
Always good to meet a fellow touch typist and mech keyboard fan...
The only thing I would like more than this keyboard I have now is if it had another 15 keys so it can comfortably have a dedicated numeric key section. As it is I already placed the arrows in the centre of the layout.
When I've got some time to spare I'm going to learn how to hand code these things because currently I have cyrillic, dvorak and qwerty, and the cyrillic I'm probably not going to use much anymore за съжаление but it's annoying because keyboards are programmed by the key location, so to do other languages you have to fuck around with layout switching or, what I haven't done yet - using the compose keys to make them press whatever I want. I want to be able to type portuguese symbols on this so at some point I have to spend a day or two learning how to do that. Compose keys are a pain as well because the systems are different on every platform, so I'd literally have to make one program for linux and another for windows.
I doubt you have this issue, most people just stick with the trad jagged layout and are not forced to make choices like this because nobody seems to understand that ortholinears with pissy little layouts like 40 and 60 are seriously messed up for real work.
my 1st language is Russian but i never use Russian keyboards. i just use https://translit.ru/ which converts phonetic spelling into Russian text.
my mother learned to type using a Russian layout keyboard so she has Russian stickers on all her keyboards and types faster in Russian than English.
i can't type in Russian directly, but i am fairly proficient with Translit so it's a complete non-issue for me.
I made a special layout that follows dvorak and puts J = ж, x = ю, w = ш, c = ц and these characters go in logical places along the number keys: ы№эчёщъь I did all this to type bulgarian cyrillic, and discovered that the bulgarian layout is missing only one key that is present in the russian, but all bulgarian symbols are on the russian, so I just use the russian layout, and that lets me also type the "yo" Ё
I want to change to programming it using the compose key combos because then I don't have to change the layout as well.
Did you know that web browsers always leak your keyboard layout? I was typing since 2004 on Dvorak, leaving a more than distinctive fingerprint on web browsers. Even with all the antifingerprinting turned on, nope, they still confess your damn keyboard layout. So it's nice to now not be leaving that mark everywhere.
And yeah, I'm gonna have to reprogram my keyboard again so I can make all that easier.
I could never go back to qwerty, and with a pair of idobao 75s laying around I never have to go back to staggered either.
i would switch to something more efficient than qwerty if everybody else did. but i don't want to get used to a layout that is different from what every keyboard and laptop outside of my residence uses.
i don't even want to use 75% because it moves some of the keys slightly. i stick with TKL because even though it is missing the numpad what is more important to me is that all the remaining keys are in standard locations.
Well, I totally understand your thinking there but I just don't have to think about it any more. I can plug this thing into a phone even if I want to, and as I say I have two of them and they aren't that big.
to be honest 15 years ago i thought typing was on the way out with technologies like video and voice recognition on the rise at the time.
but somehow typing survived.
if i had faith in typing when i was younger maybe i would have done things differently but as it is i was unwilling to invest the effort into transitioning away from qwerty.
Niz Plum is super light. You can't rest your fingers on it because it will start registering keypresses. But you can type faster and with less fatigue. The downside is if you spend too much time on it you can't use a regular keyboard anymore because it feels like you're going to break your fingers LOL. Every once in a while you have to whip out a 20 year old IBM keyboard to exercise your fingers !
Or you could do like me and type at least 5000-10000 words a day, compensating for the lower cost per keypress :D
it's not the same. completely different technique. walking 10 hours a day doesn't prepare you for running even 10 minutes.
with a stiff keyboard i have to lift my fingers up then deliberately hit the key using momentum, while with Niz i slide my fingers across the keys then gently apply slight pressure.
it all started with typewriters and then membrane keyboards imitated that feeling and mechanical keyboards imitated membrane keyboards and now low profile keyboards imitate laptop keyboards and so on.
so a lot of it is what people are used to and expect not what is biomechanically optimal.
yeah, I love my chery silvers. I have seen these other types, the mechanical/optical and membrane suspended but I specifically want to get away from rubber altogether, I type so much that the switches stop working after about a year on a regular membrane keyboard, and even sooner if I also game on it at the same time. I think optical would be a good thing so long as the switching mechanism doesn't change the spring/lever mechanic.
Also, fuck what people are used to. People used to think that all women should wear 3"+ heels too, even though we haven't been riding horses for a century. Heels in general have not gone away. Also very biomechanically unsound.
Fuck their unergonomic shit. some things are worth suffering a bit of inconvenience for. I'm sure you also have an RSI/carpal tunnel story associated with the heavy and nasty stiff membrane keyboards.
I agree in principle, the power factor is needed. Walking 10 hours on flat is not gonna help you run, but walking up 20' slopes for 10 hours a day will, because you need so much power in each step compared to on the flat.
As regards to typing, I do only have to press more lightly but my velocity is overall higher because I can now type close to 100wpm where on stiff membrane normie keyboards I topped out at 65 or so.
So the speed in this case does compensate because velocity increasing increases power.
I basically can't type on the old layout anymore tho. When I have to deal with qwerty I'm two fingers and annoyed as hell.