Thank you for creating the containment thread.

I could never see the need to rebind Ctrl to Caps Lock (and I do use Emacs). Whenever it's time to press Ctrl, I curl my pinky and press that key with my pinky's distal joint. I did, however, swap Fn and the Global key on my Mac.

>no mention of Dvorak or Colemak? Let's have that eternal discussion again!

I prefer Workman. Used to use Dvorak. Did not see much point to Colemak or its Mod DH variant by the time I was open to switching again, Workman set out to solve those issues in its original design. To anyone coming from Qwerty these days (Workman only came out in 2010), I would just recommend skipping over Dvorak and Colemak. You can find even more esoteric layouts, but Workman is in a bit of a goldilocks zone where it's available in some OSes/keyboards by default and isn't impossible to find keycaps for (often the "colevrak" kits cover it).

>Swap Caps and Ctrl

I never liked binding caps to Ctrl or Esc, but I do bind it to Compose in my OS these days. What I'd instead recommend is getting an ergonomic keyboard with a thumb cluster, like the Pinky4 or Iris, and putting your modifiers there. My Ctrl, Alt, and Super keys are all thumb keys now and even the leftmost of them is offset a similar amount to where Alt is on a traditional keyboard, so all very comfortable to press. I also have backspace, space, and enter on thumb keys.

>use Emacs or vi keybindings,

Strongly agreed, this is huge. Vi especially as you can avoid most chords, a bit like Sticky Keys in Windows, except not awful and not something you activated by accident. I spent considerable time with Spacemacs as well as evil-mode in my own config at one point. Back to (neo)vim now, but all great choices, all better than using nano or a CUA binds editor.

If you swap caps for left control, do you swap return for right control? I've been taught not to type modifier + key with one hand.

Dvorak + Emacs user here, by the way. In my opinion mouse use is okay, but I think a drawing tablet is better than a mouse.

I use Colemak DH for many years and Dvorak before that and I am of an opinion that alternative layouts are way overrated. I even somewhat regret inventing so much time in learning them. QWERTY is just fine!

The matter I want to preach about tho are split ortolinear keyboards. I believe absolutely every typist should use them. Conventional keyboards are just bad from ergonomics perspective and eventually it’d have a toll on your wrists health. And many of these keyboards stores key mappings directly on the chip so no need to mess with weird mapping software.

Having said that, my split keyboard is one of the best investments I did in my life.

I've personally replaced keymacros by things like Alfred's workflows (or Raycast's): aka a universal command palette.

It's usually very fast to type "cmd-space", and then type 3-4 letters to find the macro I want.

> Does anyone here use a numpad?

Yes.

> What for?

Inputting numbers.

The number row is too wide and too offset on a staggered keyboard to really work for me. I'd be interested in trying a full-width ortholinear keyboard, but can't find any.

I don't use a numpad, but a friend of mine swears by them for playing roguelikes. It makes it much easier to move diagonally in a single turn.

If you play any games with keyboard and mouse, you could bind some letters/numbers from the right half of the keyboard and then place the macropad on the left so you don't have to take your hand off the mouse to hit anything.

For another idea, you could bind pgup/pgdn or scroll wheel up and down for scrolling webpages, IRC backlog, etc.

As a 90s phone user where you text on one it feel like a fast way to type a credit card number or similar. Pretty rare use case with modern keychains and password managers though.

I do when I'm using a keyboard that has one, for numeric input, but I don't do this often enough to prefer it to the smaller form factor of a tenkeyless keyboard.

My usual layout, left to right, is Magic Trackpad, tenkeyless keyboard, mouse on mousepad cut down to roughly the size of a Magic Trackpad (with a larger mousepad on hand for gaming and other precision applications).

I did similar as a kid, weird random typing, mostly left hand, thumb used for some of the letters, etc. If you're willing to dedicate 2-4 weeks of fully immersed proper typing, you can definitely undo the old habits. Takes a bit longer to regain your old speeds, but it's mainly the very beginning that is frustrating. Whether that's worth it is hard to say. I use both shift keys now, and a split ergonomic keyboard. The numrow is easier to hit accurately as I have internalized the placement as well as the rows of letters after a lot more typing practice (columnar stagger rather than row stagger also helps, I think, I slide my fingers straight up and know which numbers are there).

This sounds like me. I've been described as "high speed hunt and peck". I have slowed down a bit in the last decade or so, but I can still type fast enough for everything I want to do. I've had no reason to pursue anything different because it's not an impediment to my work.

I'd like to how the incidence of repetitive strain injury from typing compares between populations who follow a rigorous technique versus personalized. I've never had the slightest discomfort typing, albeit I'm sure I'm not in the upper echelons of typing quantity per unit of time either.

120 wpm using mostly thumb and index fingers sounds insane to me. I type using standard touch typing and can only get to about 60 wpm. I've always been a bit of a slow typist. Can I ask how you measured the 120 wpm?

The whole premise of "correct" typing on a traditional keyboard is absurd. It's trying to force good ergonomics into a system that is simply incompatible with it. You're better off either making yourself compatible with the system, or vice versa.

I type "incorrectly" on traditional qwerty keyboards, too. I also type "correctly" on my split ergonomic keyboard, using the workman layout. As far as I can tell, I'm not any faster with either; but I definitely enjoy using the ergonomic keyboard more.

Hey, me too! I do touch typing with home row and tried using mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches, but eventually switched to scissor switches. I like them for the same reasons as you.

I guess, having just tried it, I use my pinky for []. But, it is not so bad, realistically the actions are

    Hit [type whatever goes in here, hit ]

So it isn’t really a repetitive action or limited by the rate at which I can hit brackets I think even for programmers who use weird punctuation, a file should still mostly not be punctuation.

I have "Shift space" remapped to underscore as that was my biggest annoyance. The rest I've made peace with (though not ergonomic).