well not as fancy or elaborate as you.. when I find something I tend to
stick with it. I found the original MS ergo keyboard without all the
fancy extra buttons with a pretty good feel to it and have pretty much
used it exclusively (with Dvorak and Linux) ever since, have hit the shows
and have yet to find one in the $5 keyboard pile.... but I'll keep
looking, would love to have one to plug into my laptop like the computer
(System 76 Pangolin) but hate the keyboard on it. and I detest touchpads
of any and all strips. don't like mice either, still keep my trackballs
working...

Bob
blame typist not keyboard for errors

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Giles Orr wrote:

> Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:57:23 -0400
> From: Giles Orr <gilesorr <at> gmail.com>
> Reply-To: altkeyboards <at> yahoogroups.com
> To: altkeyboards <at> yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [altkeyboards] Keyboard news
>
> I'm still very interested in keyboards - so I've been sad to see
> altkeyboards become moribund. Is it because everybody's got their
> perfect keyboard? That seems a little unlikely. I've never wanted
> this to be a high traffic list, but it's always interested me so it'd
> be nice to see some traffic.
>
> In an effort to get some discussion going, I'm going to toss out
> various keyboard news I have.
>
> As a reminder, I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, I own two Kinesis
> Advantage keyboards (which I highly recommend), and two or three IBM
> model Ms (the Kinesis physical layout is better, but buckling springs
> are the best keyswitches EVER). I bought a friend an IBM keyboard for
> Christmas - the one that imitates a Thinkpad keyboard, complete with
> pointing device in the centre of the keyboard. It feels better than
> the actual Thinkpad keyboards - I think it may have a millimeter more
> throw. It's a nice board if you like that kind of thing.
>
> My most recent purchase was two days ago, a CoolerMaster Quick Fire
> keyboard. I bought it because Canada Computers had it on sale for $64
> and it has Cherry blue keyswitches and feels fantastic (not quite
> buckling spring, but still very good). It's small and quite heavy,
> kind of mimicking the model M - except for the complete lack of a
> numerical keypad.
>
> This has only increased my desire to convert one of my Kinesis
> Advantage keyboards from the original Cherry browns to Cherry blues.
> With assistance from a friend who's an electronics tech, I've
> de-soldered all the switches in the hand wells but haven't done the
> central Space-Enter-Delete-Backspace pods - I think I'm going to leave
> them alone, although I've purchased enough keyswitches to do them if I
> decide to. The switches should arrive later in the week. One of the
> tricky bits about this process is that the Cherry blues aren't readily
> available with diodes in them, while the removed Cherry browns have
> diodes in to construct the keyboard matrix circuit. So we're going to
> have to solder a diode across two of the connectors on each switch.
>
> And moving into the Android world ... The physical keyboard for my
> Asus Transformer is among the worst mechanical keyboards I've ever
> encountered - it feels bad, it bounces or doesn't respond, and it's
> almost impossible to avoid hitting the touchpad. And yet if you have
> a Transformer, I would still recommend getting it for the battery, the
> extra ports, and the ability to type on a physical keyboard, no matter
> how bad.
>
> Virtual keyboards: if you're in the Android world, I highly recommend
> getting the totally free (no advertising, no nothing) "Hacker's
> Keyboard" from the Market. It has arrow keys (think about that).
> That allows Shift-arrow to select text. It has a Control key - which
> allows Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-X for copy, paste, and cut. And it
> has a number row. Not sure how well this would work on a phone, but
> it's fantastic on a tablet. I've also been reasonably pleased with
> the SlideIT virtual keyboard, which costs money (not sure how much) -
> you slide your finger from one key to another to construct words. For
> most people, this will increase their text input speed considerably.
> I toggle back and forth between it and the Hacker's keyboard depending
> on what I'm working on: if it's scripting, Hacker's keyboard. If it's
> an email, SlideIT.
>
> Has anyone got Android to do Dvorak on a physical keyboard (without
> rooting or Cyanogen Mod)? Cyanogen Mod will likely be my final
> answer, but it's not considered stable on the Transformer yet. And I
> don't want to try to root it at the moment.
>
> Have a great day, and I hope to hear from some of you soon.
>
> --
> Giles
> http://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr <at> gmail.com
>

I do appreciate the sentiment and thank you for initiating the conversation.

The unlikely event that you have described did happen to me. I have found a
good set up that allow me to survive most of my daily routines.

I have discovered portable keyboard layout (http://pkl.sourceforge.net/)
that I carry around in my USB key on my keychain, so that I can launch it
on new computers. For my designated machines, I have bought typematrix (
http://typematrix.com/) for my main machine. I also have a Mac, which
support Dvorak out of the box.

For touch screens, I actually have not been bothered by the QWERTY keyboard
somehow. I guess Dvorak only makes for me on touch typing instead of thumb
typing.

-- Shane

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Giles Orr <gilesorr <at> gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm still very interested in keyboards - so I've been sad to see
> altkeyboards become moribund. Is it because everybody's got their
> perfect keyboard? That seems a little unlikely. I've never wanted
> this to be a high traffic list, but it's always interested me so it'd
> be nice to see some traffic.
>
> In an effort to get some discussion going, I'm going to toss out
> various keyboard news I have.
>
> As a reminder, I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, I own two Kinesis
> Advantage keyboards (which I highly recommend), and two or three IBM
> model Ms (the Kinesis physical layout is better, but buckling springs
> are the best keyswitches EVER). I bought a friend an IBM keyboard for
> Christmas - the one that imitates a Thinkpad keyboard, complete with
> pointing device in the centre of the keyboard. It feels better than
> the actual Thinkpad keyboards - I think it may have a millimeter more
> throw. It's a nice board if you like that kind of thing.
>
> My most recent purchase was two days ago, a CoolerMaster Quick Fire
> keyboard. I bought it because Canada Computers had it on sale for $64
> and it has Cherry blue keyswitches and feels fantastic (not quite
> buckling spring, but still very good). It's small and quite heavy,
> kind of mimicking the model M - except for the complete lack of a
> numerical keypad.
>
> This has only increased my desire to convert one of my Kinesis
> Advantage keyboards from the original Cherry browns to Cherry blues.
> With assistance from a friend who's an electronics tech, I've
> de-soldered all the switches in the hand wells but haven't done the
> central Space-Enter-Delete-Backspace pods - I think I'm going to leave
> them alone, although I've purchased enough keyswitches to do them if I
> decide to. The switches should arrive later in the week. One of the
> tricky bits about this process is that the Cherry blues aren't readily
> available with diodes in them, while the removed Cherry browns have
> diodes in to construct the keyboard matrix circuit. So we're going to
> have to solder a diode across two of the connectors on each switch.
>
> And moving into the Android world ... The physical keyboard for my
> Asus Transformer is among the worst mechanical keyboards I've ever
> encountered - it feels bad, it bounces or doesn't respond, and it's
> almost impossible to avoid hitting the touchpad. And yet if you have
> a Transformer, I would still recommend getting it for the battery, the
> extra ports, and the ability to type on a physical keyboard, no matter
> how bad.
>
> Virtual keyboards: if you're in the Android world, I highly recommend
> getting the totally free (no advertising, no nothing) "Hacker's
> Keyboard" from the Market. It has arrow keys (think about that).
> That allows Shift-arrow to select text. It has a Control key - which
> allows Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-X for copy, paste, and cut. And it
> has a number row. Not sure how well this would work on a phone, but
> it's fantastic on a tablet. I've also been reasonably pleased with
> the SlideIT virtual keyboard, which costs money (not sure how much) -
> you slide your finger from one key to another to construct words. For
> most people, this will increase their text input speed considerably.
> I toggle back and forth between it and the Hacker's keyboard depending
> on what I'm working on: if it's scripting, Hacker's keyboard. If it's
> an email, SlideIT.
>
> Has anyone got Android to do Dvorak on a physical keyboard (without
> rooting or Cyanogen Mod)? Cyanogen Mod will likely be my final
> answer, but it's not considered stable on the Transformer yet. And I
> don't want to try to root it at the moment.
>
> Have a great day, and I hope to hear from some of you soon.
>
> --
> Giles
> http://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr <at> gmail.com
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> To Post a message, send it to: altkeyboards <at> eGroups.com
> To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to:
> altkeyboards-unsubscribe <at> eGroups.comYahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi, Giles. Glad to see that there's still interest in the group.

I have most of what I like in a keyboard. For both home and office, I use a MS Natural Elite keyboard with a Wow-Pen Joy mouse. I am a big fan of the contoured keyboard; to me it was a much bigger improvement than the Dvorak layout. When I sit at a flat keyboard or use a regular mouse it feels wrong, or twisted.

I tried Dvorak (for a few months in the last millenium) but I had lots of trouble switching back and forth (was working short-term assignments where I couldn't switch). Also annoying was the Ctrl-X / C / V assignments. For that reason, I would consider Colemak, maybe, one day.

I think my ideal keyboard would be ergonomic, in the style of the Natural Elite, with a cursor device such as a J-mouse (no touch pad) in the middle of the keys, or something like a Rollermouse below the space bar. I like the buckling spring action, but not the noise. And I wish somebody would make an ergo keyboard without the leftward slant. The right hand's fairly comfortable, actually, it's just the left side.

Thinking farther out, I would like to try something like a data glove -- where my fingers would twitch but not have to touch a physical keyboard. But I have been waiting for that for about 15 years, and it ain't happening yet.

Cheers,

Steven Marzuola
www.techlanguage.com

--- In altkeyboards <at> yahoogroups.com, Giles Orr <gilesorr <at> ...> wrote:
>
> I'm still very interested in keyboards - so I've been sad to see
> altkeyboards become moribund. Is it because everybody's got their
> perfect keyboard? That seems a little unlikely. I've never wanted
> this to be a high traffic list, but it's always interested me so it'd
> be nice to see some traffic.
>
> In an effort to get some discussion going, I'm going to toss out
> various keyboard news I have.
>
> As a reminder, I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, I own two Kinesis
> Advantage keyboards (which I highly recommend), and two or three IBM
> model Ms (the Kinesis physical layout is better, but buckling springs
> are the best keyswitches EVER). I bought a friend an IBM keyboard for
> Christmas - the one that imitates a Thinkpad keyboard, complete with
> pointing device in the centre of the keyboard. It feels better than
> the actual Thinkpad keyboards - I think it may have a millimeter more
> throw. It's a nice board if you like that kind of thing.
>
> My most recent purchase was two days ago, a CoolerMaster Quick Fire
> keyboard. I bought it because Canada Computers had it on sale for $64
> and it has Cherry blue keyswitches and feels fantastic (not quite
> buckling spring, but still very good). It's small and quite heavy,
> kind of mimicking the model M - except for the complete lack of a
> numerical keypad.
>
> This has only increased my desire to convert one of my Kinesis
> Advantage keyboards from the original Cherry browns to Cherry blues.
> With assistance from a friend who's an electronics tech, I've
> de-soldered all the switches in the hand wells but haven't done the
> central Space-Enter-Delete-Backspace pods - I think I'm going to leave
> them alone, although I've purchased enough keyswitches to do them if I
> decide to. The switches should arrive later in the week. One of the
> tricky bits about this process is that the Cherry blues aren't readily
> available with diodes in them, while the removed Cherry browns have
> diodes in to construct the keyboard matrix circuit. So we're going to
> have to solder a diode across two of the connectors on each switch.
>
> And moving into the Android world ... The physical keyboard for my
> Asus Transformer is among the worst mechanical keyboards I've ever
> encountered - it feels bad, it bounces or doesn't respond, and it's
> almost impossible to avoid hitting the touchpad. And yet if you have
> a Transformer, I would still recommend getting it for the battery, the
> extra ports, and the ability to type on a physical keyboard, no matter
> how bad.
>
> Virtual keyboards: if you're in the Android world, I highly recommend
> getting the totally free (no advertising, no nothing) "Hacker's
> Keyboard" from the Market. It has arrow keys (think about that).
> That allows Shift-arrow to select text. It has a Control key - which
> allows Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-X for copy, paste, and cut. And it
> has a number row. Not sure how well this would work on a phone, but
> it's fantastic on a tablet. I've also been reasonably pleased with
> the SlideIT virtual keyboard, which costs money (not sure how much) -
> you slide your finger from one key to another to construct words. For
> most people, this will increase their text input speed considerably.
> I toggle back and forth between it and the Hacker's keyboard depending
> on what I'm working on: if it's scripting, Hacker's keyboard. If it's
> an email, SlideIT.
>
> Has anyone got Android to do Dvorak on a physical keyboard (without
> rooting or Cyanogen Mod)? Cyanogen Mod will likely be my final
> answer, but it's not considered stable on the Transformer yet. And I
> don't want to try to root it at the moment.
>
> Have a great day, and I hope to hear from some of you soon.
>
> --
> Giles
> http://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr <at> ...
>