Thank you for reading the analysis! I appreciate it. I wasn't surprised either that language complexity is not a huge factor, but to see it is not a factor whatsoever on Ergodoxes, and arguably not a factor on ANSI either if we correct for the less frequent shifting, was shocking.
If I understand correctly, for the ANSI layouts you are using the "angle-cheat" method, i.e. not moving the physical keys, but using non-standard finger assignment. (...), but still, it isn't necessarily how the layouts have been designed or recommended to be typed. Shai recommends that C in Colemak should be typed with middle finger for example. It also means there will be bigram differences between the ANSI and Ergodox versions being tested.
Correct, all the ANSI layouts were used with the angle-cheat method. Surprisingly, the scores of layouts do not become significantly worse/better after applying the angle cheat; the increased SFBs are counterbalanced by the better type of movement I believe. It does cause inconsistency in SFBs between ANSI and Ergodox, but I believe this better highlights the improvement that column stagger provides! Also, making all the layouts use angle-cheat has virtually no impact on the final rankings anyway, as seen in the scores for Ergodoxes (only MTGAP and DH swap places, but the difference is not statistically significant still). The minor increase in SFB does not make up for the large benefit gained by not twisting the wrist; the ulnar deviation is much worse than occasionally stressing a tendon more. I would go as far as saying that using the traditional technique should be penalised by at minimum 10 points! It sounds extreme, but I strongly believe that it is that bad. We should not pander to nonsensical techniques.
This isn't strictly true, you can set up angle-mod, angle-cheat, or traditional in patorjk too - it's just it doesn't factor this in properly (IMO) in the calculation. (...). Perhaps that's what you meant but thought I'd clarify just in case. I'm not at all clear how CarpalX handles keyboard stagger, if at all.
I did mean to imply that it isn't factored properly in the calculation. I'll see if I can word it better as it might cause some confusion. CarpalX, from what I understand, seems to rank a lot of the positions equally, which I don't think is adequately accurate. It is consistent, but it is not accurate (not enough for my liking at least).
Often modifiers get overlooked but they can often be important contributors to the overall typing experience. I have a split-space keyboard and have Shift on one the spacebars as I think the standard Shift keys are strongly detrimental. Even putting Shift on AltGr/RightAlt would be a significant improvement, especially in conjunction with the Wide Mod. I suspect doing this would cancel out a big chunk of the Ergodox's advantages. Nonetheless, I think we can agree the having a split ergo board is bound to be more comfortable than one-piece row-staggered board, even with all the hacks employed to make it useable, so the fact the results reflect this is justified.
Modifiers and symbols are sadly overlooked. I tested the difference that's caused by using a thumb shift on the right AltGr ANSI on the side (the same thing I'm using right now), and while the difference is significant (+1 point), it's nowhere near enough to explain the remaining 6 points. The stagger is just much more efficient; the travel distance reductions are massive. I did test out DreymaR's symbol rotation mod as well. While the difference was tiny (+0.05 points), it's siginficant when you realise that it's for moving just a few relatively rare keys. I did not test the difference an AltGr symbol layer (for the infrequent number row symbols) would make, but I believe it would have results similar to DreymaR's symbol mod; small, albeit significant. However, I would not put frequent symbols in a layer (such as the semicolon, the apostrophe, or the hypen); I believe it would hurt typing flow.
Last edited by Viper (16-Jan-2021 21:21:30)
