[nxdmum]

I'll state my requirements - for anyone interested in meeting them:

I have an OLKB preonic. And I used QMK to significantly modify my layout. I started out with the modified Colemak - but the re-arranged the keys to move keys which require the index finger to move to the side - on the QWERTY that would for example be G and H . I moved B and K forexample where Z and X are on the Qwerty - and moved Z and X to the number row. The numbers itself appear as a layer when i need them.

Peter Norvig has an article called mayzner : https://norvig.com/mayzner.html - i wrote a program to analyse the frequency of bigrams/trigrams, 4-grams and then programmed them as shortcuts to the keys - using the lower / raise

This means i can type conversation as : con ver sa tion - where con is a trigram , ver is a trigram and tion is a 4-gram. s and a need to be typed out.

my needs : 1. MCU should have more ROM for writing the new preonic has 64KB. 2. Columnar layout - Split keyboard would be ideal.

Reasons for more ROM - you can program a lot more common words in it and Columnar layout would be easier on the fingers.

I've checked out a lot of keyboards - The Iris is good - but the ROM is only 32Kb. The Moonlander is too expensive for me - i cant justify the price to myself right now.

[thegeomaster]

What typing speed do you get with this approach?

[nxdmum]

I was consistently hitting 40-50 on MonkeyType - but while transporting the keyboard - i damaged it a bit. so now out of touch. I was practising about 20 mins every day for about 50 days - with misses on days when i had a lot of work. But i know that my speed would increase. Now when i see words - i can see the trigrams and I can visually break them down.

I am confident i would be able to reach 70 if i practice more. The main issue is that my speed (40-50) feels so slow that in my day to day - I used Qwerty and had not fully switched over.

[thegeomaster]

Interesting. To me, even 70 sounds quite low compared to the effort involved, and probably more mentally taxing. Out of curiosity, what is your motivation behind the experiment?

[nxdmum]

The initial mental effort is high. But the trigrams are hashed to the letters on the keyboard. so "con" is hashed to for example Lower + C. So that helps. Also - after sometime you start seeing the common 3/4-grams - tion , the, and etc. Then it starts to become like a game with a dopamine feedback loop. Every time you hit 2 keys and get 3 or 4 letters out - you start getting a high.

>Out of curiosity, what is your motivation behind the experiment? I watched a video of NoThisIsJohn typing at 200+ words per minute. I know i cant hit those speeds, but i was wondering what hacks i could do to the keyboard to get as fast as i can.

I just wanted to hack typing. I even thought of double pressing keys - for example bigrams. I came up with a new layout. When i read about the norman layout - it is criticised for same finger bigrams. But what i thought is, if I put the bigram keys near each other - then I would be able to press those with a single finger press - if the finger overlaps the 2 keys on the edge. but for that you need key wells - even at the edges of the keys - to give that tactile feeling. Similar to what the thinkpad has at the edge of the G, H and B keys . This would allow you to press 2 keys (and maybe more with a correctly designed keycap set) at the same time. But I would have to design new keycaps for something like this. And I thought of writing to Signature plastic - but I dont think i have that much money right now - but maybe a little later.

I also thought of 3 dimensional approach. Which is to insert vowel keys between 2 keys - exactly like the thinkpad Red trackball - but at a lower height as compared to the bigram consonants. This would require a special MCU and n-key rollover detection - to check if the 3rd key is pressed. If you want to press 3 keys - you would have to press deeper - so that the deeper sandwiched vowel key also gets depressed.

It would need a new PCB design and I started reading up and watching videos on PCB design and Keyboard design.

Anyways, If any Keyboard designer is reading this - reach out to me

[Cu3PO42]

I'm assuming we're referring to 70 words per minute here? In that case I'd have to agree that while 70 is plenty fast for most practical applications, it seems low for the amount of complexity involved.

For me, I don't type faster than I do because I can't consistently move my fingers faster while maintaining high accuracy. However, that is without any n-grams or other complexities.

OTOH, if you trade off required movement for mental complexity, you might bottleneck on your thinking speed instead of your finger speed. Maybe that's the reason the grandparent isn't/wasn't going faster.

[nxdmum]

Yes. I would switch over when i reached 70 words per minute.

[nxdmum]

NoThisIsJohn typing at 200+ words per minute:

https://youtu.be/oOdfefV2R1I