Ergonomics (was Re: Question mark in variable and function names

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> The problem with this is that you're taking your hand too far away from
> the center of the keyboard.  You want something that you can reach
> easily, without significant stretching and without needing to watch
> carefully when you return your hand to the home row.  I'd personally be
> inclined towards option 2.
> 
> Heck, that would really only require a slight remapping on my current
> keyboard, at least to get parens accessible without shifting --
> currently [/{ and ]/} are just to the right of P; I can see an advantage
> to remapping those keys to be (/[ and )/], and putting { and } above 9
> and 0 where the parens are now...
> 
> Of course, for me it's not worth customizing my keymapping, because I
> end up working on a variety of machines often enough (frequently in the
> sense of "fixing", rather than just trying to get my own work done).
> Switching back and forth from a custom keymap to the standard one would
> be confusing enough to counteract any gains I'd make from a more
> ergonomic arrangement of keys.  (Now, if I could convince everyone
> worldwide to switch to (nationalized keyboards based off of) a
> Dvorak-style arrangement, that'd be a different matter....  :) )


I use the FingeWorks Touchstream Keyboard, dvorak layout - its USB and very
portable. And it has the exact feature you're talking about: The keyboard
is divided in two parts. When placing the left hand in a specail way, the
right becomes the "programmers pad" - which allows access to all common
syntactic symbols, and even has some special keys that produce ->, !=, //
with only one keystroke. Checkout the website: www.fingerworks.com
-- 
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch