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Comment by throwaway_moo | Hacker News Reader

This is not excellent advice regarding the keyboard used. Instead:

- learn about the risk factors: https://kinesis-ergo.com/solutions/keyboard-risk-factors/ Keep in mind that there are hundreds of tendons in our hands, so the pattern of inflammation is very personal. Anecdotes are not your friend.

- use split keyboards (or any ergo keyboard with enough space between hands) with inclination to limit pronation

- use ortholinear (aka matrix) key layout

- use the Dvorak layout

- avoid hard/mechanical keys

- exercise and stretch every 30 mins

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While I agree with your points I'll add that Dvorak is far from the ultimate layout. For instance just try to type 'ls', which as a command-line user you'll do a lot.

People are different and will prefer different layouts. Colemak DH is a very popular and very good one, if you dislike using your pinkies the BEAKL style layouts are very good and if you have a split keyboard you might want E on one of the thumbs so RSTHD might be good. There are many, many more and you can also tweak them or create a completely new one.

Oh I'll add tenting as a good thing explore.

  alias h=ls
  alias hh='ls -l'

Job done.

I strongly disagree that Dvorak is "far from the ultimate layout". Compared to Qwerty, the differences between most of these ergonomic layouts is minor, so there's no reason to discourage someone from using Dvorak.

My immediate minor criticism of Colemak-DH is typing "the", or specifically "he".

It's a "backwards roll" of the fingers: typing ASDF on Qwerty is easier than typing FDSA, but "HE" on Colemak-DH is a common digraph in the wrong direction.

(On Dvorak, "THE" is equivalent to typing "KJD" on Qwerty, i.e. the "TH"/"KJ" is in the correct direction.)

Yes, compared to Qwerty Dvorak is much better and the difference between "the good" layouts is often minor.

I wasn't trying to discourage anyone from trying out Dvorak, or that Colemak is necessarily better, but to say that there are many alternatives and some might be a better fit for your own particular preferences.

Your argument about Dvorak is far from the ultimate layout because of "ls" utility is strange. I think it is really best layout and in regular typing "ls" is rare. If "ls" case bothers you, you can just add an alias. What you can not get in any other layout is alteration of right and left hands, that is what makes Dvorak ultimate.

"ls" was just an example. L being a common letter in an awkward position is another, imbalance between the hands a third and other layouts get a lower score on same finger usage (pressing two keys with the same finger right after each other). See this writeup for a bunch of ways you can analyze a layout: https://sites.google.com/alanreiser.com/handsdown#h.u8i88ask...

There are many layouts that give you right/left alternation. The BEAKL layouts for example.

Interesting layout, but my opinion is that pinky keypresses is not so hard as a Beacl's effort grid says. Especially I disagree with placing rare letters on a home row in pinky positions, it is just wrong. I really want to explore the metriks which make Dvorak worse than Workman or Colemak, my experience with those three layouts tells me that something is wrong with those data on the link you have published. For me typing on a keyboard is like a piano playing, if your pinkies move hardly, then you will have hard time playing literally any chord and it is not a piano's problem. But who knows, maybe people with hard moving pinkies want to have their own layout and Beacle is comfortable for them.

Oh I agree with your comments about the pinky. I tried BEAKL-15 for a while but I switched to a modified RSTHD to get more pinky usage (I also use a 5-column layout so I don't press shift or similar with the pinkies either.)

RSTHD is another good layout that has this left/right alternation, especially if you move E to the vowel side which I've done. But it does require a keyboard with at least two thumb keys as it has Space on one and E on the other.

The article does address both split keyboards and ortho-linear layouts. I disagree with both, personally.

Interestingly the Kinesis article you link supports the arguments I make in the article, but their solution is obviously a split keyboard because that's what they sell, rather than offering an alternative typing style. My typing style avoids all the risks they identify.

> My typing style avoids all the risks they identify.

From the article: "This is the Way"

Also: "The hands should move freely over the keyboard"

These are good examples of why we should not listen to advice based on a single example of RSI and contradicts the conclusion "no universal solution for everybody"

A lot of people experience contraction and sometimes pains in the shoulders, trapezium, arms due to moving the hands over the keyboard instead of not doing so.

It's a well documented problem.

Ah perhaps it’s not clear enough that those 3 items are my own ideals and I wouldn’t claim them to be correct for everybody. The article exists precisely because I was seeing comments arguing entirely to the contrary, such as “movement is bad”, which I know to be wrong for me.

There is a lot of cognitive bias towards the one way of solving RSI (buy an ergonomic keyboard) which then frustrates those for whom it doesn’t work. I’m hoping to offer a different experience which worked for me.

Typing on ortholinear is quite uncomfortable for me. I find column staggered to be far better. Also why would someone learning a new layout pick Dvorak when there are better alternatives like Colemak, Workman, or Colemak mod-DH? Theres softer mechanical keys too like silenced linears.

Dvorak is still the only one that's available on Windows, by default.

If you really find this to be a limiting factor for whatever reason, you can get a programmable keyboard and have it perform the translation between your desired layout and QWERTY or the default layout on your systems.

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