Ortholinear Keyboards? keyboards with opposite slant on left side?

[Morituri]

I realize this question is likely to attract a bunch of partisans but I guess I want to ask.

I've seen a bunch of people building ortholinear (grid-style) keyboards instead of the conventional offset where the columns are slanted slightly diagonally. I have never used such a keyboard, and don't really know what it would be like.

Now, I understand the idea of giving the columns on the left side of the board a reversed slant (although it puts the left shift way out there unless you relocate the z key). But for some reason I have the impression that typing on a square grid would probably be miserable, unless the hands are widely separated, or unless the two halves of the board are angled away from each other so the wrists are straight.

I really have no idea why I think so. If the left-slant-for-left-side seems reasonable, then ortholinear ought to seem reasonable. But somehow it doesn't. Also the right-slant-for-left-side, on reflection, seems like a poor choice - but I type with it a lot and it doesn't seem uncomfortable. In fact I use it to some extent to orient my fingers; different rows have offset-by-half and offset-by-quarter and that helps the tactile feedback tell me what row my fingers are on.

So, would anybody like to share comparisons? What was it like starting to use an ortholinear board? Problems? Anticipated problems that turned out not to be issues? Evidence w/r/t RSI, aches, etc, of ergonomic successes and failures? Should I be considering it?

[Chyros]

I have a particularly vile one that also happens to have a split layout AND rubber dome to boot. To me it's the worst thing in the world, but because I can't touch type I don't really feel qualified to pass judgment on it, because it was so obviously not made for people like me xD .

[pietergen]

wiki/Staggering#The_staggers



I have no personal experience, but other people say that a matrix keyboard only works if the hands are separated OR if there is enough space between the hands.

[Chyros]

I think it probably only works if you have mutant hands :p .

[eekee]

For my delicate, graceful hands (ahem ), equal stagger is much nicer than normal, but I only had one keyboard with equal stagger and it had dreadful rubber domes, so I didn't keep using it. Even so, I don't really like the stagger between the q and a rows, as small as it is. Seeing columnar stagger for the first time there, I think it might be good for me, especially if the space bar was moved down a row, to a new row below where it normally is.

I don't think I'll have an opportunity to try columnar stagger any time soon, but I do intend to try a matrix. I know I'll be happier using WASD on a matrix, and I hope I'll be happy using a laptop number pad (a Fn or num-lock layer on the alnum block). In normal staggered layout, I find laptop number pads so awful I gave up on them a long time ago.

Symmetrical stagger is new to me. I suppose if I had such a keyboard, I would feel less need for an ergonomic keyboard. In fact, now I consider it, the normal stagger of my adjustable 'board impacts its ergonomics quite badly. No matter how I adjust it, one of my hands is less comfortable than the other. Usually I settle for the left hand being uncomfortable, as the right has to locate keys instantly when returning from the mouse.

I'm actually planning on getting a couple of matrix 'boards to try out different layouts on them. I have a couple of layouts in mind: two separate small matrixes, one for each hand; and a single board with the alpha keys pushed out as far as they'll go and a number pad in the middle.

[Morituri]

I have no personal experience, but other people say that a matrix keyboard only works if the hands are separated OR if there is enough space between the hands.

Like the ergo boards that put the arrow pad (all the keys usually between numpad and typing area) inbetween left and right hand typing areas?

I was thinking of extending the typing area with a pair of additional columns of keys between the left and right hands anyway; I could put the keys from various euro layouts that are normally missing in ANSI boards on them.

Alternatively I could take the notion of spacebar being more useful if it were a row lower as a hint that maybe an extra row of keys could/should be added between typing area and spacebar.

Uh, yeah, I'm "that guy" who thinks the drive for smaller and smaller keyboards is silly, especially in the era of typing in Unicode rather than ASCII. It's an unpopular opinion but that's okay.

[kbdfr]

[…] Uh, yeah, I'm "that guy" who thinks the drive for smaller and smaller keyboards is silly […]. It's an unpopular opinion but that's okay.

"that guy" ?

[…] my daily driver […]
That's a 80 cm keyboard with more than 300 keys. I'll never understand why people want space savers

[Morituri]

Yep. I know you share my opinion on space-savers. But you can't deny that it's an unpopular opinion.