> I stumble upon the Ergodox EZ, a fully-featured workhorse. I quickly become frustrated at my reduced typing speed and seek out a better solution. Cue Plover and the OpenStenography project. Learning stenographic typing is my next life goal.
I've been using the Dvorak layout since 2009. First on a TypeMatrix 2030 USB for a long time and currently with an ErgoDox EZ Shine that I bought like a year ago or something (wow, time flies! I thought it was only a year ago that I bought it but I looked it up in my e-mail archive and it was in fact December 2017 that I bought it) and have been using since then. Right now I am typing on the QWERTY keyboard of my MacBook Air, just because of where and how I am sitting at the moment. But I love my ErgoDox and use it a lot.
Here is my custom Dvorak based layout for ErgoDox EZ that I created basically recreating the position of most of the keys that I was used to with the TypeMatrix 2030 USB that I had, and with a couple of minor but important modifications.
This layout has been working perfectly for me and I am very happy with it. It's mostly looking the same now as when I first created it (that link is for the most recent version, the one I am using now).
Some things to note about this configuration and about ErgoDox EZ in general (for the benefit of others ITT):
- In the typical position of caps lock I have Escape when I tap it, but Control when I hold it. Awesome!
- This whole layout resides on the keyboard itself. I have all my computers set to US standard layout and am able to have my layout work always on all of my computers across all operating systems with no configuration or anything. This alone is worth like a couple of hundred bucks at least, seriously!
- The previous keyboard that I had, you know, the TypeMatrix, had hardware Dvorak support too, but I always had to press a button on it each time I unplugged and replugged it, or woke my computer from sleep, or turned my computer back on after having shut it down. It's actually surprising how annoying pressing that button each time where I needed to, which wasn't always (because back them I was remapping the keys to Dvorak in software on most of my personal computers), but often enough that it got annoying. None of that B.S. with the ErgoDox! :D
Prior to purchasing the ErgoDox EZ those two years ago, I too had looked a bit at stenography tools and projects. My conclusion back then was that it seemed useful, and was interesting, but cost prohibitive and time consuming to learn, with the added factor of uncertainty that I have no idea if writing code with stenography methods would actually be faster or in other ways better than my current means of writing software.
Anyway, if you do end up learning stenography and use it to write code I would love to hear about it and I hope you post about it to HN then.
I took a look at your configuration and there are definitely some things that I'm going to steal. Where's your shift key, though?!
> This whole layout resides on the keyboard itself.
This was a game-changer for me. No toggling between DV and US, anymore.
Regarding stenography for coding, I will probably only use stenographic typing for software documentation (prose). The main use for stenographic typing will be blog posts, emails, HN comments, etc.
With the ability for the Ergodox EZ to emulate a serial port , I can use Plover+Ergodox EZ as layer 1, say, and Dvorak as layer 0, without needing to change anything at the OS or application level when I do this (Dvorak will be seen as a USB HID which Plover won't see and steno-mode will be seen as a serial connection, which gets processed by Plover and forwarded to the OS).
> I took a look at your configuration and there are definitely some things that I'm going to steal.
Glad to hear that :)
> Where's your shift key, though?!
The main shift key is on the left side, below the "Esc / Ctrl" button. Additionally I have a secondary shift key on the opposite side that is activated when holding it pressed, but I actually never use the secondary shift key, only the main shift key. Same with right hand side ctrl, I never use that one either, and layer 3 is empty so I don't use the activation key for layer 3 either. Other than that I use all of the buttons on layer 0.
The other layers have quite a few keys that I don't use however, so I should probably update my config to reflect that.
While I am at it I am going to rearrange the Fn keys a bit, because I always struggle to remember where I put F12 exactly so I end up counting from the known position of F1 up to key F12. And the situation where I need F12 of course is when I am going to do something in BIOS/UEFI settings on some computer and like you know you only have like 2 seconds to press the correct key :P So I should make it so that I have F12 at the natural position that is the very top right corner.
Actually, let me go ahead and do that now real quick.
This one now has the unused keys removed, and layers 1 and 2 merged, as well as the () and {} and [] quick-access keys repositioned because while I've been using the [] and the {} quick-access keys a lot I've been a little bugged by my choice of position for them. After making the modifications above I flashed that config to the ErgoDox, meaning that what you see there is matches exactly what I use which is now all that is on my ErgoDox and none of the keys that I thought might be nice to have but which I never use :)
> Regarding stenography for coding, I will probably only use stenographic typing for software documentation (prose). The main use for stenographic typing will be blog posts, emails, HN comments, etc.
I see, makes sense.
> With the ability for the Ergodox EZ to emulate a serial port , I can use Plover+Ergodox EZ as layer 1, say, and Dvorak as layer 0, without needing to change anything at the OS or application level when I do this (Dvorak will be seen as a USB HID which Plover won't see and steno-mode will be seen as a serial connection, which gets processed by Plover and forwarded to the OS).
You have me convinced. I do type quite a lot of prose text too, and I knew vaguely that someone was using the ErgoDox EZ for stenography, but I didn't know how and I didn't know that Ergodox EZ could emulate a serial port. Do you have any links about how to set this up for Plover with the ErgoDox EZ? Otherwise I am sure I will figure it out eventually :)
Edit: Actually, tab is missing from the layout in the web UI for some reason. Put it back in place and changed the link in this comment to point to the version that has tab put back in place.
Edit 2: Made some small adjustments to the positions of some of the keys and flashed the modified to my ErgoDox EZ. Updated link and some of the text in this comment surrounding that link.
Apologies for the delay. I rarely log in to HackerNews. Thanks so much for getting back to me.
> Where's your shift key, though?!
palmface I had meant <kbd>Tab</kbd>. But, you addressed this in spite of my mistake at the end of your response.
When I get Plover running with my keyboard and can toggle between modes successfully I'll send you a link to my explanation to get it started. From the looks of things I'll be cobbling together a few different sets of instructions.
I've been using the Dvorak layout since 2009. First on a TypeMatrix 2030 USB for a long time and currently with an ErgoDox EZ Shine that I bought like a year ago or something (wow, time flies! I thought it was only a year ago that I bought it but I looked it up in my e-mail archive and it was in fact December 2017 that I bought it) and have been using since then. Right now I am typing on the QWERTY keyboard of my MacBook Air, just because of where and how I am sitting at the moment. But I love my ErgoDox and use it a lot.
Here is my custom Dvorak based layout for ErgoDox EZ that I created basically recreating the position of most of the keys that I was used to with the TypeMatrix 2030 USB that I had, and with a couple of minor but important modifications.
https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/ergodox-ez/layouts/ENb6/lat...
This layout has been working perfectly for me and I am very happy with it. It's mostly looking the same now as when I first created it (that link is for the most recent version, the one I am using now).
Some things to note about this configuration and about ErgoDox EZ in general (for the benefit of others ITT):
- In the typical position of caps lock I have Escape when I tap it, but Control when I hold it. Awesome!
- This whole layout resides on the keyboard itself. I have all my computers set to US standard layout and am able to have my layout work always on all of my computers across all operating systems with no configuration or anything. This alone is worth like a couple of hundred bucks at least, seriously!
- The previous keyboard that I had, you know, the TypeMatrix, had hardware Dvorak support too, but I always had to press a button on it each time I unplugged and replugged it, or woke my computer from sleep, or turned my computer back on after having shut it down. It's actually surprising how annoying pressing that button each time where I needed to, which wasn't always (because back them I was remapping the keys to Dvorak in software on most of my personal computers), but often enough that it got annoying. None of that B.S. with the ErgoDox! :D
Prior to purchasing the ErgoDox EZ those two years ago, I too had looked a bit at stenography tools and projects. My conclusion back then was that it seemed useful, and was interesting, but cost prohibitive and time consuming to learn, with the added factor of uncertainty that I have no idea if writing code with stenography methods would actually be faster or in other ways better than my current means of writing software.
Anyway, if you do end up learning stenography and use it to write code I would love to hear about it and I hope you post about it to HN then.