I think about piano players, who obviously need to move their hands and arms a lot to hit the keys (and with more force). Definitely takes a lot more energy than typing on a computer keyboard, but is there evidence that it's any more or less likely to cause injury?
I also started learning piano at 4 and played daily until 25 or so. I still play other instruments but with different movements.
I am 35 and still have no hint of RSI or carpal tunnel (touch wood). I had a scare for a bit but turned out my mouse was just in a dumb position.
YMMV but the above informs my crank belief of 'move heaps, varied as much as possible, get strong fingers and forearms' being a viable approach.
N.B. A note on the bottoming out stuff: this was again inspired by my piano teacher who taught a technique of imagining pressing the piano keys 'through' the base, further than they move in reality. This was combined with the weight coming from your entire arm, fore, bicep, and shoulder, not from your fingers.
N.B.B. If anyone knows input methods that take this to extremes I'd love to know. I.E. something that involves moving your entire arm around. I've occasionally looked at jumbo-sized keyboard for those with learning and dexterity difficulties for example.
I bet there are people who would consider ’westerners’, however they define them, weak and scrawny. Pacific Islanders? Eastern Europeans?
Either way, our piano teachers must have come from the same school of thought and no RSIs here either. For fifteen years now I’ve typed on a macbook keyboard (tethered to a big display 90% of the time) which I’ve never bothered to upgrade from. No vim. A constant mix of the trackpad, Apple magic mouse (!) and Wacom tablet for input. Haven’t experienced any ergonomics issues whatsoever.
From a quick search, it seems piano players do suffer from a high incidence of RSI (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12611474/, which also correlates it with smaller hands, i.e. more stretching).
I learned Dvorak on a Kinesis keyboard. Years later, I realized that switching to the high-quality, consistent, mechanical Kinesis was 99% of the payoff.
If I were doing it over again, I'd have just jumped to something like a QWERTY Realforce with Topre switches.
For the record, the absolute worst keyboard was an early Microsoft 'Ergonomic'. The inconstant resistance absolutely tore my tendons up. Also for the record, the best thing to stave off injuries after healing was taking up rock climbing as a hobby.
the same happened to me when I used the Elecom Huge trackball... I'd want someone to check something and they wouldn't even know how to left click :) (it's done with the thumb)
I have a non-standard layout and keep a second (small wireless) keyboard around for exactly this reason but to date it hasn;t been needed.
It's like buying a mattress for you that you don't like, just because "you may have guests a few days a year".
I prefer to be the only person using my computer.
As a plus, split keyboard with a custom layout and a minimal window manager kinda act as a lock screen.
By the way, the layout might better use physical direction mnemonics, so backspace could be a finger move to the left, and delete - move to the right (either by the same finger or maybe by its mirrored counterpart on another hand). Similar thing for <> and -+-+
> north keys are much harder to hit than its south keys, > find the inward lateral keys much easier to hit than the north keys
So, basically, "grabbing" movements are more natural?
I'm currently designing one that is a crossover between the characorder and a Logitech vertical mouse (but not actually a mouse), and I hope to make it cheap. It has been going poorly, to say the least. The biggest problem so far is smaller hands, multiple designs scrapped when put in front of such a person. Maybe I should take inspiration from Svalboard instead? Furthermore, Average Joe is not going to tolerate the massive dependency on layers that these keyboards often have, so I'm still fighting in my head with an approach for that.
I'd encourage you to look at the Svalboard, I think it solves many of the issues you are running into. In the end, moving a large mouse is not good for someone with shoulder issues, the "Svalmouse" has been tried and solidly rejected. (Using a Svalboard hand as a mouse.)
If you want to discuss things, I'm sure you can find me on the Svalboard discord. :)
I don't think anyone would mistake it for a mouse.
https://www.keymouse.com/ https://alphagrip.com/
I don't think the layering needs to be as big a deal as one might assume. I mentioned in the post, but in many ways I think layering is easier to deal with than larger keyboards, and not only that but also culturally small-keyboard users are increasingly okay with using layers, e.g. the tiny-keyboard gamer crowd, or even most laptops now have a dedicated Fn layer in addition to the traditional shift, ctrl, and alt. So long as you don't go overboard with it I think it shouldn't be that intimidating.
Too uncomfortable to use full time, to awkward to hunt and peck for an occasional couch/TV navigation keyboard - It went back in the ewaste bin.
I've been on a kinesis advantage 360 for a few years, after an ergodox and the older fixed size Advantages. Been eyeing the Svalboard, thanks for sharing your experiences!
I love the Advantages and I really missed the bowling when I moved to the Ergodox — it remains my only real complaint with that keyboard family.
Glad I could be of help!
The only halfway decent player in this category was Microsoft, with its line of Natural Keyboards. I've used four or five of them, decent enough. I doubt Microsoft was making a lot of money.
The line was discontinued in 2023 and sold to Incase:
https://www.incase.com/pages/incase-designed-by-microsoft-co...
It feels a bit less solid than the MS 4000, but it's nicer to type on.
(The MS 4000 was always a huge pain to repair (endless screws to get inside, many annoyingly inaccessible; never anything obviously wrong once in there; time-consuming cleaning/drying-out process; endless screws to put it back together again), but this looks like it might be a bit better. Not many screws on the bottom. It isn't thick enough for there to be any hiding inside. The keyswitches will probably be individually replaceable. Ask me again in 10 years though!)
I really wanted to make myself a steno theory for the CharaChorder, but now I don't have time. There's definitely something to be done with keyboards like this and I do reckon you could do better than with the mechanical constraints of the stenotype, but it's not trivial: the extra inputs are hard to make use of if you want to avoid awkward ‘scissoring’ strokes, though there are definitely some comfortable strokes in there to mine.
The physical direction thing is a neat idea but a bit hindered by the fact that the two sides have very different accessibility: typically the inward keypress is much easier than the outward keypress. There might be some pairs that's good for, though, e.g. the backspace/delete pair you mention (if put on the right hand: delete is much less common, in my experience, than backspace).
> So, basically, "grabbing" movements are more natural?
Right, for me at least that seems to be the case. Other Svalboard users seem to pretty unanimously agree that outward movements are worse than inward movements, especially on e.g. the ring finger, but people differ on how the inward/upward/downward movements compare.
That's why my default suggested mode is to mirror, for example:
- right index finger moving left to backspace and
- left index finger moving right to delete
For most people the south keys and center are easier to press and more importantly hold. I don't care much about directions anymore, except for holding down keys.
Layout is a personal thing, we use Vial, so different people have different layouts, mine has a ton of mnemonics in it. It's really up to the user what they want, I'd be surprised if there are 2 Svalboards with the same layout. (Maybe stock when they are starting out, but people develop their own opinions pretty quickly.)
I finally made it into a Micro Center yesterday. There isn't one anywhere near my home state, so I jumped at the opportunity. What did I buy? Two ortholinear keyboards. There is a huge market for these things, and even the geekiest big-box store in the nation only bothers to sell 2. Why? Because nobody wants to spend more than $30 on something they haven't ever tried.
I used the Microsoft Natural for a while because I was poor and couldn't afford $600 USD for a DH. If they priced it at $150-250 then, they probably would still be in business today.
Haven't tried the Svalboard yet but it's the only obvious way forward that I know of so happy to see any new information about it. I'd be especially interested in the opinion of other Datahand users regarding the Svalboard, specifically the hardware, the switches and overall feel.
The designer was 100% dependent on his Datahand, now he uses a Svalboard.
When I got sent my first Svalboard, it was so close feel wise that my old muscle memory came back instantly and I started complaining that the layout wasn't the same as the old Datahand Dvorak layout. I ended up doing a faithful port of that layout, then ever time evolved it to the layout I use today.
If you doubt, order a test cluster. You'll see how close it comes.
On the discord some users are willing to meet-up with people to let them try a board in real life.
I also have a kinesis advantage 2 with some insanely nice switches, but never use it just because of the learning curve.
> Do I need to stretch more?
No. In fact, I'd say almost certainly not, and you'll see why below.
> Strengthen?
Probably not. That would require more repetitive stress.
> Change my diet?
Don't see how that would help, unless you could use losing weight or improving your blood pressure, in which case yes, definitely.
Here's what's worked for me:
1) have my keyboard at my lap height or slightly above (think keyboard tray, or just put the keyboard on the lap),
2) monitor / laptop up high, so I don't have to look down (my neck also thanks me, not just my hands),
3) enable the accessibility feature known as "sticky keys", which I learned to use long ago,
4) never EVER rest my wrists while typing -- not ever, nor my forearms either.
The thing you have to understand is that the tendons that drive your fingers are anchored at your elbows and are quite long, and they move in tiny sheathes full of lubricant. If you press on the tendons moving through those sheathes, then that's going to cause serious harm. A related thing is that the nerves needed to drive your fingers also move, and some motions place great stress on them. For example, that motion you do to reach a key with your pinky, where you bend your wrist outward is called "ulnar deviation", and it can easily screw up the ulnar nerve that drives the pinky.
(4) helps me deal with all those deviations that hurt the nerves. Instead of turning/twisting my wrist to reach a key I let my hand float over the keyboard, moving the hand to enable the fingers to reach the desired keys with minimal tugging and pressure on the nerves. You don't need sticky keys for this if you learned to type correctly, which means pressing modifier keys with one hand and modified keys with the other, but I didn't learn that way back when, so I had to re-teach myself to type, and sticky keys helped with that.
Oh, and:
5) don't use emacs or anything that requires lots of modifier keys at once. Once again sticky keys helps with this, and to be honest I've never been an emacs user, so this is just me dunking on emacs. The point though is that emacs can really hurt you if you don't know how to type correctly.
Back to stretching: if stretching means putting your nerves through even more stretching and pressure, then it can only hurt you. Your problems aren't muscular, so stretching the muscles won't help. Your problems are with your nerves or your tendons, or both.
Oh, also, if you have anything like neuropathy you need to find a way to not have it. Idk how -- I'm not a medical doctor of any kind, and IIUC neuropathy is not a solved problem anyways.
And remember, IANAD, so take everything I say with salt. I had to figure out what to do about my hands mostly on my own, and I was inspired by a talk I saw where the speaker did pretty much that. The speaker's solutions did not work for me, but the speaker gave me the clues I needed, like the bit about ulnar deviation, and he gave me the impetus I needed: here was proof that one person could fix his hand pain problems, so maybe so could I. The above are roughly my solutions, but above all being conscious of these issues, these motions, and what they do to me -- that was the real solution. Same with posture problems and many other problems: being conscious of your problems, your bad habits, and so on, in real time is 90% of the battle, because then you can learn to correct the problems in real time, and soon it's all muscle memory and you no longer have to be constantly conscious of these details but you still become conscious of them as needed.
Best of luck to you.
I’d also add that having a more extreme tilt, beyond what “tenting” can provide (so, needing mounting), can also make a big difference in relieving nerve friction from twisting. Check for example how the Glove80 has a mounting kit.
And I personally found having anything actually on my lap required constant stress to balance it during use including from my hands themselves while typing and counterbalancing… mounting the keyboard halves to my chair arms or using sturdy tripods from the floor with a lounge chair etc helped me tremendously.
Your anatomy and the height of the chair that is comfortable for you may be conspiring against you being able to put a keyboard on your lap, yeah.
> mounting the keyboard halves to my chair arms or using sturdy tripods from the floor with a lounge chair etc helped me tremendously.
I no longer use a chair. I either use a kneeling chair or a big exercise ball. But when I used chairs I always removed the arm rests because invariably I would rest either my elbows or forearms on the arm rests, and in ways that pressed on the tendons.
Also start dictating more where you can. Try WisprFlow or other cutting edge alternatives
Use LLMs for dictated work even if closely instructed. It can be easier to verbally describe changes to make than to type them out precisely. Even if you are very specific about the changes needed, in terms of code not just functional requirements
And stop typing much on smartphones
BTW, I've played about 15K matches of my favorite MOBA on the Datahand, works surprisingly well for that, I imagine the Svalboard would too.
I don't avoid using an ultrawide monitor at home, because sometimes I have to use a phone that fits in my pocket.
I use a laptop keyboard every so often. It isn't my 1st choice, but for light work it's fine.
My Ferris Sweep fits into an 2.5" SSD travel case.
Why deny yourself the pleasure of a nice typing experience the majority of the time?
I tried the ergodox, but eventually resold it (came from a typematrix). But I like most my Kinesis Advantage 360.
Strangely, I find myself using dictation more and more while working. With a headset on, people don’t notice much since it looks and sound like being in a virtual meeting.
Coding is still best with a keyboard.
