On: The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

[jstanley]

Even better, it should be performed using a recorded vim session, rather than a full file. The keystrokes you use while editing are not the same as those that end up in the finished file.

[citation_please → jstanley]

But this brings up that some Vim hotkeys are more positional than mnemonic (J-down, K-up), while others are more mnemonic than positional (I-insert, X-exterminate(?)).

Food for thought.

[tjoff → citation_please]

This is why I believe that qwerty is the best layout. All applications have designed all shortcuts to be sensible on it. Any other layout is just going to be a disaster and negate any benefits and more during actual use.

You can of course use whatever layout you like and then while ctrl/alt/meta is pressed it switches to qwerty, doesn't save vim users though (or other applications where shortcuts don't need to be prefixed).

I'm not convinced switching from qwerty is that beneficial, I believe (but have not yet tried it) an orthogonal keyboard will do more than any layout will. But I admit that I don't have experience to back that up.

[eru → tjoff]

I've been using dvorak for more than a decade now. Yes, shortcuts are sometimes a bit annoying, but qwerty is so bad, that dvorak is still worth it.

[nayuki → eru]

I've been using Dvorak for ~15 years now and the keyboard shortcuts don't bother me. For example, when Dvorak Ctrl+X/C/V is translated to QWERTY, they are in the positions Ctrl+B/I/(period). For shortcuts like Ctrl+C in Dvorak (Ctrl+I in QWERTY), I put my left thumb on Right Ctrl and my left pinky on the letter key.

Two minor problems, though: In Dvorak, V is immediately beside W. Ctrl+V means paste, but Ctrl+W means close window, so care is needed. And, any keyboard that lack Right Ctrl (e.g. the Microsoft Surface series) is an abomination.

[whatshisface → tjoff]

The idea would be to optimize the keyboard around English (which you can't remap,) and then to optimize your editor keybindings around the keyboard (which are easy to remap.)

[tjoff → whatshisface]

Many applications (vast majority?) don't support remapping keybindings and it is a ton of work.

Optimizing your layout for English is not necessarily ideal for anyone writing in more than one language.

edit: I guess the above can be manageable (with compromises), but in my opinion it does take away much of the appeal with a new layout.

[_lflx → tjoff]

Hjkl turn into something strange with colemak but they are still vaguely directional and I have not rebound any vim hotkeys.

[myhf → citation_please]

This is why I believe that Dvorak is the best layout. J/K and H/L retain their relative positions.

[firethief → citation_please]

Positional key layout only matters pedagogically. I type dvorak and use emacs + evil (vim keybindings). To maintain the positional correspondence I'd have to swap bindings around and make my setup even weirder, so I just learned j=down, k=up, etc. Muscle memory doesn't care about rhyme or reason.

[kjeetgill → citation_please]

I think x is for cut because it looks like a pair of scissors. vim :help does not clear this up.

[msla → jstanley]

I wonder how well it would do with Emacs and all of the key chording.

(QWERTY does well enough if you move a Control key back where it belongs by doing away with the useless Caps Lock key. Looking at Workman, you'd need to do away with a redundant Backspace (???) key to get the same effect, but all of the other meta keys and punctuation look sane.)

[fao_ → jstanley]

You can (and should) alter the layout for command mode so as not to destroy years of muscle-memory.