ErgoMechKeyboards
Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards
Rules
Keep it ergo
Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)
i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²
¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid
No Spam
No excessive posting/"shilling" for commercial purposes. Vendors are permitted to promote their products/services but keep it to a minimum and use the [vendor] flair. Posts that appear to be marketing without being transparent about it will be removed.
No Buy/Sell/Trade
This subreddit is not a marketplace, please post on r/mechmarket or other relevant marketplace.
Some useful links
- EMK wiki
- Split keyboard compare tool
- Compare keycap profiles Looking for another set of keycaps - check this site to compare the different keycap profiles https://www.keycaps.info/
- Keymap database A database with all kinds of keymap layouts - some of them fits ergo keyboards - get inspired https://keymapdb.com/
view the rest of the comments
Nowadays I'm mostly using a layout that I made based on the original Maltron layout as designed by Lillian Malt (where you put 'e' on a thumb key, and 's' on the vowel hand index home position) and only fall back to dvorak as a last resort (travel on a laptop etc.) It's more about reducing the use of bottom row mid/ring/pinkies than speed or other related statistics (the theory is that by restricting them to the top two rows, they stay longer in their more natural curvature, thereby reducing tendon stress). With 'e' on a thumb, you avoid the double stacking of the vowel cluster of most modern layouts, but still have the vowel hand index finger freed up for consonants, which then makes it easier to only have infrequent letters on non-index bottom row.
Oh interesting. I've seen some layouts with keys on thumbs but I'm not really super into the idea for portability reasons, even though realistically it's not like I'll be able to use semimak on someone else's computer anyway.
Maybe it's something I'll give a shot later down the road, but I'll do semimak for now at least
Semimak is an excellent layout, have fun switching!
It's been a challenge so far. I'm on day 4 sitting at 30-35 wpm lol. Big downgrade in speed so far