deskthority

Try out soft layouts like Colemak, Dvorak, Arensito, etc.

http://mikekuehn.ca/posts/keyboard-layouts/

I have 28 layouts up there now. Please report any bugs or layout / feature requests.

I posted this on geekhack and colemak forums just now, so sorry to those who frequent those forums - not sure how much overlap there is!

I think the drop down menus should be sorted alphabetically. Or the more common layouts should be on top with a little separator.
Other than that I really like it (tried workman )

Thanks Daniel. I designed the dropdowns when there were only 3 layouts: QWERTY, Colemak, and Dvorak. Perhaps a more robust selection mechanism is in order now, ie.

Optimization Level: Full, Partial
Qwerty ZXCV: Bounded, unbounded
Qwerty Punctuation: Bounded, unbounded
Based on: Dvorak, Qwerty, Colemak, None
Primary design goal: Alternation, (Di,tri)graphs, Finger travel

Of course that would be way too many dropdowns. Haha. Just thinking 'aloud'...

The currently released version of Capewell (0.91) is different from the one on your website. The version you have is (if memory serves) 0.93

On his website, the first listing of capewell layout is 0.93, he has two more further down, which are the ones included in the installer.

Source: his website/installing it two days ago

Hmm.. derpydash, do you think I should provide both versions, or simply switch to 0.91?

Do you take layout requests? neo2 and adnw would be nice.

According to http://www.michaelcapewell.com/projects ... /index.htm Capewell 0.93 is 'current', if you can say that about an unfinished project from 9 years ago!

I can certainly add those layouts, Icarium.

Ah, sorry, somehow ended up on a vintage webpage 0.o

Lord knows how, I don't even know how I found his layout at all

Icarium wrote:Do you take layout requests? neo2 and adnw would be nice.

And QWERTZ ... as neo and adnw user might have german keyboards.

Nice initiative !
To sort layouts, you can add a language selection box for German requests (and others to come).
Instead of making a lot of categories, you can just add a few lines about the layout selected. It should avoid an infinite list.

I see that tool very useful for the promotion of all ergonomic layouts, it should be a multilingual tool. It's far away your first intention but if you need some translation you are in the right place to ask for

In bépo community, we are translating our informations and tools to share beyond French-spoken people, starting with the simple leaflet we distribute during events. Inspirited by the DVZine, A Comic Book idea is merging step by step too and will be available to be fitted to other ergonomic layouts. It's interesting to think all ergo layout designers helping each other by sharing their methods to strike against early-typewriter's layouts witch are obsolete since more than a century

Needs some Blick:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHIATENSOR#Layouts

DHIATENSOR: the first and best "scientific key board" layout! If you're from the 1890s…

Hm...am I reading this wrong or does the article imply that the bottom row is supposed to be the home row on the Blickensderfer?

Muirium: Haha, why not. Home row on the bottom, wow. I wonder how bad it would be if you rearranged the rows though - zxkg on the bottom, pwfu on the top, dhia in the middle.

Vierax: Thanks for the push towards a multilingual tool. Probably I should create a new site (and github repository) specific to this project, so others can more easily contribute.

The main obstacle to adding non-English layouts right now is that I don't have support for more than 2 layers. I will need to add AltGr as well as AltGr+Shift layers. Then, I will need a way to display those characters. On the keycaps to the right? Only when AltGr or AltGr+Shift is pressed? I should also add a ISO hard layout since most European users will have that. For version 2...

Back in those days, home row was indeed the bottom row on a Blick! Perhaps they were thinking about mechanical leverage, as this was the hardware in question:

Muirium wrote:Back in those days, home row was indeed the bottom row on a Blick! Perhaps they were thinking about mechanical leverage, as this was the hardware in question:

Spoiler:

This made me wonder if there were keyboards with foot pedals. Sure enough.... http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/typing- ... -keyboard/
The foot pedal operated the carriage return. However, I do not know the keyboard layout of this one.

mikekuehn wrote:Vierax: Thanks for the push towards a multilingual tool. Probably I should create a new site (and github repository) specific to this project, so others can more easily contribute.

The main obstacle to adding non-English layouts right now is that I don't have support for more than 2 layers. I will need to add AltGr as well as AltGr+Shift layers. Then, I will need a way to display those characters. On the keycaps to the right? Only when AltGr or AltGr+Shift is pressed? I should also add a ISO hard layout since most European users will have that. For version 2...

Oh, I didn't realise there are so much internal changes to operate To me, you're right to progress one step at a time. After all, your engine is only online since a couple of days and will certainly need some improvement before making big changes into its heart
BTW, if you create a github repository there is a young dev who is already playing with your tool (only few hours after I spread the news into the bépo mailing list ) I Think he already emails you, that's what he said, and you certainly answered him the same thing than you did here.

Muirium wrote:Back in those days, home row was indeed the bottom row on a Blick! Perhaps they were thinking about mechanical leverage, as this was the hardware in question:

During a discussion on bepo forum about the evolution of typewriters, we asked us the same thing : why is the home row of this device at the bottom? We jumped to the same conclusion : the force required is the lowest on pressing this row since the lever is longer (Archimedes FTW) Some decades after that, all typewriting devices were electromechanical so the force required becam lower and the unpopular DHIATENSOR finally died.

We noticed that the asymmetric staggering comes from IBM 50's typewriters. Before that, manufacturers made 0.5u staggering like some Tipro and there was already symmetric keyboards without any staggering at all !
But we still don't know why and when some crazy people created the French azerty layout.

Perhaps the sheer height of early typewriters influenced this, too. The Blick was pretty revolutionary when it came out, so I understand, in being so small. But typewriter keys really are high off the desk compared to anything but a beam spring.

By the way, fully mechanical (no mains electricity and no batteries) typewriters were still definitely a thing in the 1960s. I learned to type on one (when it was already old, in the 1980s) and I proxied another compact travel mechanical typewriter (a fancy cursive model, no less) just recently which remained me of the typing experience. Very different to computers, or electric typewriters. But people still pushed them twice as fast as I ever go on anything!

But the origin of Azerty, like Qwertz, was a story of pure malevolence! The first mistake they both made was starting with Qwerty of course.

What about some integration with the layout creator?

CarpalX layouts fixed, French layouts added (azerty,bepo)

Project moved to its own github repository: https://github.com/mikekuehn/keyboard-layouts/

Davkol: Good idea; I'll look into the source of the keyboard-layout-creator and see...

Robin_m spread the news into bépo mailing list, some errors remains but it seems to be hard to fix quickly :/

Yeah, there are some limitations to doing this in browser. I have elaborated on the issues at the project website.