Synthesis Studios

About six years ago I made up a weird keyboard layout for myself. I’d developed a severe case of RSI in my wrists, and having gone through several types of ergonomic keyboards that didn’t cut it, I took the plunge and got a $350 Kinesis. Once it arrived it took me about five seconds to realize that the learning curve on that thing was so steep I might as well switch to the Dvorak layout since that had a reputation for being much faster and easier to type on than the usual QWERTY. But, after about three or four days of using Dvorak I discovered it still wasn’t particularly comfortable.

I was writing large amounts of Java and PERL code in Emacs, and found that I frequently had to bend my hand in weird ways or type two-letter combinations with the same finger which was slow and uncomfortable. I searched around (using a new search engine still in beta at that point called Google), and found a letter frequency chart so I could design my own mapping. I used that to modify Dvorak, making my first two (strongest) fingers responsible for the most common letters, and put all the vowels on the left to limit the “multiple letters with the same finger” problem, as well as some other tweaks. But it still didn’t feel quite right.

The problem was the letter frequency chart, so I made up my own based off of everything I’d written in the last two-three years (mostly Java, PERL and plain text), and took into account two-letter frequencies and common programming characters to make my very own, completely customized keyboard layout.

I’ve been using it ever since and my RSI is completely gone.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Synthesis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.