Any Kinesis keyboard users?

[photex]

Hi folks,

So after a month or so I'm finally back up to speed with my kinesis keyboard and my wrists feel so much better. Only problem is that my extensive keybinding changes to slickedit don't really translate so well to the kinsesis layout. I was hoping that any of you out there who also use a kinsesis wouldn't mind sharing any tips or keybindings that you find useful/comfortable.

Cheers!

[ScottW, VP of Dev]

I looked at getting one of those. A coworker at a previous company had one and it looked like it might be the solution to some arm pain I was developing. I didn't like the placement of the Enter key, though. If I remember, the Ctrl key is also in an odd place and there's only one of them. If that's the case, that will limit the number of combinations you can do with the Ctrl key.

I would recommend that you first figure out what Ctrl, Alt, Shift combinations work with that keyboard and write a list in order of ease of typing. On a standard keybard, I find Ctrl to be easiest followed by Alt, Ctrl-Shift, and Ctrl-Alt. I define all of my main key sequences to be Ctrl-something.

If the keyboard limits the chording possibilities, then you can just go to longer sequences: Ctrl-A, Ctrl-B (press Ctrl and A simultaneously followed by Ctrl and B simultaneously).

In case you're curious, I went with the Comfort Keyboard. It takes a standard layout and breaks it into three pieces. Each piece can be individually position. You can change the order of the three pieces, and each piece can be individually configured for height, rotation, and angle. Here's a link: http://www.comfortkeyboard.com/keyboards_comfort.html.

[photex]

The thumb portions of the keyboard definitely take the most getting used to. It's certainly worth it to try it out, and remapping keys is so  easy that most of my co-workers who use one of these tend to move some of the keys around to make the enter and space keys a bit closer to a standard layout.
My biggest complaint is their choice of placement for the []/{} keys. You use those so much when coding that it feels a bit out of the way still. Which also ties back to what I'm trying to figure out about my shortcuts.
All of my window and buffer related keys are based on the idea that I hold Alt-Shift-*, for instance buffer tab cycling was Alt-Shift-} was next bufftab and Alt-Shift-{ was prev bufftab, + and - would split and close windows, ; and ' would cycle through windows. This was great with a standard qwerty, but the Kinesis puts alt and shift pretty far apart and plus is now where the tilde key would be.. etc etc, the whole scheme just broke down. Ctrl and Alt on the Kinesis are actually kinda nice, I liked the way I'm using my thumbs and each thumb has a ctrl and alt so it's easy to work that into a new setup. Ctrl-h is now split window, and Ctrl-j is close, buff tab switching is n and m.
Selective display, and general navigation though I'm still not feeling up to speed and need to explore those a bit more with this keyboard. This is the layout: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/images/layout_contour-pc-usb.gif .
The comfort keyboard looks nice but one of the things I was hoping to find was a keyboard like that with the standard layout, but still vertically aligns the keys. The type matrix is close: http://typematrix.com

Thanks for the suggestions.

[ScottW, VP of Dev]

Interesting. I never noticed that the keys were arranged in columns like that. I do think that would work on the Kinesis, since it spreads the positions of your hands, but on a regular keyboard I would think it would decrease typing accuracy. Few people position their hands so that their finders are aligned along the vertical axis of the keyboard. So, it's more natural for your finger to drift a little to the right or left as you reach for a different row.

The key benefit for using the Comfort keyboard is that my arms maintain a natural position. I have angled the individual keyboard pieces to match the angle that is formed by my arms as they reach from my shoulders to the keyboard. I have also rotated each segment so that my hands are at about a 45 degree angle when typing. This reduces pain from rotating your wrists to position your hands flat on a keyboard.

[photex]

That's a good point. The columnar key layout probably works so well because of the contour.
I really like the idea of the split and angled keyboard (even better a split, angled, contoured keyboard hehe). I just wish there was a keyboard store someplace where we could take these things for test drives.

[dmw]

I've been using a Kinesis Contoured keyboard for nearly 15 years.  One of the first changes I made was to map the Alt key to where the Delete key is.  I've also mapped Control to the Caps Lock position, but I do that with every keyboard I use.  I put the Windows key where the left-hand Control key is.  Since I mainly use a Mac now, the Alt (Option) and Windows (Command) keys are reversed.

I mainly use the standard Brief keymap, but with the Control key in Caps lock position, I find emacs style cursor movement bindings to be comfortable, as well as the standard CUA bindings for cut, copy, and paste.

Slightly OT: I'm in the beginning stages of replacing the keyboard controller in my Kinesis to improve its programmability (add multiple layers, etc.)  And I've also built a more compact keyboard whose design is partially influenced by the Kinesis.

[hs2]

Wow... I'm quite impressed dmw ! +1 HS2

[photex]

Wow dmw! Ive never tried the brief keymap. I started with cua and began customizing. Maybe I should check some alternatives out.