more speculation on what the perfect keyboard would be like

[paperclippy]

My OT says that the perfect keyboard would be one that drastically changed configurations every hour, so you wouldn't get stuck in a repetitive pattern too long. I have been saying for a long time that keyboards need to come in different sizes depending on the size of your hand.

So my OT and I joke that I have "enteritis" -- inflammation along the pinky side of my right wrist, caused by reaching for the enter key. It occurred to me that shift and control are also ones that require extension of your pinky. In many disciplines, you avoid using that finger heavily because it is the weakest finger -- for example, I might find a new fingering for a piece of violin music so I could use a different finger. So why is it that when I'm typing I am constantly pressing things with my little finger? I type with the "proper" alignment -- index fingers on F and J and the rest lined up next to them. If I then look at my left hand, there aren't too many characters to the left of my pinky. I primarily use it for control and shift, and I swapped my control and caps lock to make it even easier. I actually use my ring finger for Q and tab which I suppose is a little unusual. Then if I look at my right hand, there are a whole bunch of keys lined up to the right of my pinky! I use my pinky for enter, ', shift, |, control, and shift, and when I'm writing a lot of code my pinky will often be on the shift key while my ring finger is on { or }. Why should there be so many more keys that I use my pinky for on the right side? Why should pinkies be used for such frequent characters as enter, shift, and control?

I will admit I don't know where they should go instead, since obviously the letters are all used pretty frequently. I wouldn't mind replacing the row of number keys with them though . . . I always use the number pad for number entry anyway. OTOH that's a bit hard to reach.

Comments

[darienjax.livejournal.com]

Some fancy keyboards (read: expensive and very non-traditional) have Enter, Backspace and/or other keys on the thumbs, which helps reduce reach a lot. Using both thumbs just for spacebar is a real waste, since they're strong fingers.

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

That would be pretty handy. My split keyboard is different from many in that the space bar actually extends the entire way across, and yet I find myself pressing it with both thumbs at once, which is entirely unnecessary. My keyboard does have some special buttons inside the split section (an extra tab, backspace, and button to activate mousekeys), so I've been thinking about mapping enter to one of those.