Stewart Stremler wrote:
begin quoting John H. Robinson, IV as of Fri, May 05, 2006 at 08:50:31AM -0700:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 03:11:38PM -0700, Stewart Stremler wrote:
begin quoting John H. Robinson, IV as of Thu, May 04, 2006 at 02:05:47PM -0700:
[snip]
Simpy, Dvorak is superior.
By how much? I've heard that it's as little as 2% improvement in speed..
That I don't know.
Extremely small improvements probably aren't worth the effort. It's a
geeky desire to optimize the hell out of everything, I know...
So what is the goal with our keyboard layouts?
Avoid RSI?
This sounds like the true goal.
So all the discussion about how much faster <layout> is just a
smokescreen. :)
Changing keyboard layouts doesn't address the actual cause of the
related RSI.
Wouldn't junking the mouse do more along those lines? Most of my
problems occur when I use the mouse a lot.
Not really. The problem which causes RSI is the same whether you are
using a mouse or a keyboard. It's a bit more with the mouse because the
motion is pretty much isolated to one finger.
Better posture, frequent short breaks, split keyboards, etc would also
probably do more than changing a keyboard layout.
Posture? I don't think so. Breaks? naturally - stop irritating, stop the
injury. Split keyboards? Placed correctly, yes.
When you look at the English language, and the distance travelled per
finger to type English prose, Dvorak comes out to have more on the home
row than Sholes. Total distance travelled per finger is less.
Except, the injury isn't distance related, and it doesn't occur in the
fingers.
Let motion = less damage.
Of course it follows: no motion = no damage. Duh! ;)
As a general principle, I'd disagree. At a minimum, it's not that
simple. It might be closer to say that using as many different muscles
as possible results in less damage, and so keyboards are designed to
be harmful, and we really do need a _Minority Report_ interface to
our computers...
It takes a very specific set of muscles to move your fingers. It's
really an all or nothing proposition. In any case, if your finger moves,
it really doesn't matter which muscle moved it, since the irritation is
not in the muscles.
I don't think keyboards are /designed/ to be injurious. In fact, they
don't do any harm in and of themselves anyway. _Using_ keyboards is what
precipitates the harm. But you can get the same type of injury without
using a computer keyboard.
Most things, you want to use the full range of motion. Failure to do so
ends up leaving you in a condition to get hurt. (The specific example
I have in mind is chopping wood...)
I'm not sure I buy this. Certainly, chopping wood can be dangerous to an
uncoordinated person using full range of motion. I don't see range of
motion having anything to do with degree of injury in the case of RSI of
the wrists. The injury arises out of tendon movement within a sheath, in
which case small movement can be just a injurious as long motion.
Repetition is the key factor, not range.
It, however, does show original research. The interesting thing that I
took out of it that using weighted costs per transition caused the
gentically evolved keyboard to share two traits with the Dvorak layout:
all vowels on one side, and most frequent letters on the home row.
Yup.
It still has no affect on RSI.
Personally, I think that the GA and the Dvorak are interesting in how
the break down the language, but what they don't take into account (and
neither does Querty/Sholes) is the pace and rhythm of the language.
I would think you'd want to stay mostly on the home row, but come off
the home row in a sort of cycle; perhaps trying to start a phrase on
the bottom row, then home row, then end up on the top row, and back to
the home row to start off the next phrase.
All this is very interesting. But has nearly nothing to do with RSI.
wrist RSI has pretty much now been discounted in all but very extreme
cases as a pathological condition. It ends up as one of those "It hurts
when I do this" "then stop doing that" conditions. Stop doing it, let
the injury heal, and it's all good. Long term damage is rare. That's not
to say that there aren't doctors still who would love to "fix" the
problem with surgery (by piling on even more trauma. I've never known
anyone who had the surgery who ever really got better because of it. In
fact, they just ended up with a different kind of injury).
As for typing-related RSI, typing speed, typing rhythm, key placement,
keyboard angle, etc. have little to no affect on RSI. The cause is
simply an irritation of one of the tendon sheaths caused by it being
trapped at the crossing point of the ulna and radius bones in the
forearm. Pianists suffer exactly the same problem. Saxophonists
generally don't.
One solution is a keyboard which is in a vertical orientation. Those
things have been around for a few years, but obviously, haven't found
much demand.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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