Please welcome... The S.I.K.

[mathieubolla]

Hi everybody,

I just released the S.I.K., a mechanical, ergonomic, compact keyboard. It is handmade, with love. It is on GitHub, for you to build (I built one, it works like a charm...)

https://github.com/mathieubolla/sik_keyboard



I may have made monstrous mistakes (in the physical layout? in software? typos? bad jokes? wrong licence?), but I'll welcome any comment, or suggestion for improvement. It's my first step in the mechanical keyboard community (albeit a big one, I know that), my first mechanical keyboard, even my first ergonomic keyboard... both as a user and as a builder.

And no, I have no need for a different mapping layout (it evolves daily, but will stay mac-fr based, I need my keyboard to work on my own and my colleagues Mac Book Pros without any config) personally. But yes, I will add en-us or whatever you may come up with, if you open a pull request and keys look like they are at the right place, for everybody else to use...

I still have to decide on a licence (and I need help on that side... oh please...), so that anybody can make it at home, improve on it, share it back ; that is respectful of the licence T.M.K. and Technomancy (Atreus) put on their software (I got inspiration from Atreus for matrix reading, and used T.M.K. as firmware foundation). I may have to go for the GPL v2, but I'm still unsure... Do the hardware have to use the same licence? Not even sure...

Thank you for your help, knowledge, and forgiveness, and hope to hear from you soon.

Mathieu, developper, from Paris, France.

[obfuscated]

I guess I lack a lot of imagination, but I cannot work out how one is supposed to type on this board.
Can you show a picture with your hands placed on the board?

[mathieubolla]

I got the very same question somewhere else, and been asked to do a video. Here it is:

You can see the hands barely move. The pinkies only get 3 easily accessible keys, the 4th one being kind of "protected", for rarely used or destructive keys (escape? §?)

The thumbs are used for what they do better: Hold. They hold function keys, modifiers, and hit escape very well. The other 3 fingers per hand only have to move back and forth, never using rotation to never use fragile tendons.

Hope its clearer now. Do not hesitate to ask for more (I didn't type anything really, the cable wasn't even in place...)

Mathieu

[mathieubolla]

Hoh, and I forgot to mention: You can get the layout at github, print it full size (it fits a single A4 page, not sure about letter size, but should be fine) and give it a try. Its funny to do, and not that expensive...

[kbdfr]

[video]

You can see the hands barely move.
[…]
(I didn't type anything really, the cable wasn't even in place...)

You are not even trying to simulate typing. Just moving your thumbs and pinkies a little bit,
with the other 3 fingers of both hands doing nothing else than a few horizontal rolls,
even leaving that middle matrix part fully untouched.

No wonder "the hands barely move"

[mathieubolla]

Hoh well, I'll try to update it as soon as possible. I'll type something more useful. But please trust me: as my layout is statistically placed, most key presses occur on home row, and my hands move less than in this demo, because I use far more the home row than multi modifiers combos (maybe not while doing code refactoring, but I still have to learn more my layout to be efficient at coding...)

I think the easiest way to figure it out is printing it, and giving it a try. But as it's mac-fr, you may have to change some key position. Anyway, it gives the idea.

The central matrix part is mostly a numpad, full with arrows, page-up, page-down, and with functions on overlay (F1 is over 1, and so on. I rarely use it... it is mostly there to separate hands)

[Halvar]

Layout from github:



So you used 4 four rows for the letters instead of three, and placed the 4th row below, in the row where the space bar is on a standard layout. Interesting, really hard to tell if I would find that an improvement, I would have to try it.

[mathieubolla]

I'm not 100% sure moving letters one row below is really an improvement. It is mostly neutral I think. But I see a real difference in not having lateral motion, and having (tho its only 19mm...) more separation : My shoulders are more open (I even breath better), and top back less constrained.

[kbdfr]

[…] as my layout is statistically placed, most key presses occur on home row […]

You are making a mistake here. Even if most key presses will occur on the home row, this doesn't mean you will hardly move your hands. At a matter of fact, you will have to as soon as you have to type a less current character, which in the sum is a lot more: you will only seldom have to type words consisting only of letters from the home row.

Do you invoke the characters on the right side of the key by pressing the cmd or the option key, and is it a sequence or a combo?

[mathieubolla]

It is used on function layer, while holding fn-1, under left thumb. After few hours usage, I can say my hands do nearly not move, only slightly on top and bottom row. I can type with wrists at rest on the desk. However, I have some special combos that require motion, mostly with F keys, but this is expected given their position at the center.

One thing I'm still unsure is how my fingers will react to vertical motion only. I hope it is ok, but will definitely keep an eye on it, and listen carefully to anybody with medical research or experience with that.

[mathieubolla]

(I have updated the layout on github to match recent changes, mostly due to the lag I found difficult to work with on fn-1 "tap action" : you want no lag at all on frequently used keys like parentheses)

[kbdfr]

It is used on function layer, while holding fn-1, under left thumb. […]

So in order to type an apostrophe, you press and hold fn-1 with your left thumb, hit L and release, right?
And typing é is done by pressing and holding fn-1 with the left thumb, hitting P and releasing?
If so, typing pé (like in e.g. pédagogie, spécialiste, impératif or frappé) means you have to hit P with your left ring finger, then press fn-1 with your left thumb, hold it and again hit P with your left ring finger and then release.
Then pray you won't have to write words like épée or pépite too often

Putting L and the apostrophe on the same key is even worse, because when writing French texts you continually have to type words starting with e and preceded by an elided definite article, i.e. L' at the beginning of a sentence or l' in the middle of a sentence.
That would mean hitting L with your left index (or, for an uppercase L, pressing and holding shift with your right thumb, hitting L with your left index and releasing) and then pressing and holding fn-1 with your left thumb and hitting L again with your left index and then releasing.
I think you will enjoy typing something like l'élément

[…] I can type with wrists at rest on the desk. […]

That's probably one of the worst things to do when typing. It means all the energy needed to type (which for a given keyboard input is a constant) is imposed only on your finger joints instead of distributed to your whole arm. Plus it doesn't make typing faster, but slower, because any change of row is normally anticipated by your arm up to your shoulder. And if you don't move your hand upwards and downwards, you will hit the keys of the different rows with different parts of your fingers: the fleshy part for the upper row, the fingernail for the lower row.

[mathieubolla]

You're right : some french words are a bit tricky to type, i'll have to adapt the fn-1 row using stats on digrams instead of single chars. It is still work in progress... had to start somewhere. Still, I didn't find much of these typing a rather long article on that keyboard's genesis (in french, yet to be published)

About not moving hands, just because I can doesn't imply i'm doing it at all time. I think I'll move more as I learn the layout. But as minimal motion is required, I think it will be ok. Plus, most of the energy is supplied by the thumbs which are far better at holding power, rather than by moving the whole hand far on the side. Time will tell... But at slow rate, it feels good...

[mathieubolla]

Apart logical layout, which I can always adapt (nearly daily), what do you think of physical layout? Is it flawed, or do my mistakes lie only in software?

[kbdfr]

I would say in any case make those French diacritics which are present on the AZERTY keyboard (except ù, of course, which exists in only one French word ) directly accessible without modifiers - they are plain letters after all.

The same applies to the aphostrophe, which is a very frequent sign in French.
And I think it would be a good idea to have the period (le point) available without having to press shift - in my opinion that’s one of the major flaws in the AZERTY keyboard (even if normally a period would be followed by a capital).
By the way, there is a good reason why usual keyboards have two shift keys: it allows using both hands for whichever capital is typed instead of twisting one’s hand for those where the character happens to be on the same side of the keyboard as the shift key.

Apart logical layout, which I can always adapt (nearly daily), what do you think of physical layout? Is it flawed, or do my mistakes lie only in software?

As some DT members know, I’m not a friend of reducing the number of keys, but rather the opposite

[mathieubolla]

Could make the diacritics available on center matrix left and right columns, with numbers on "NumLock" (not a big fan of "modal layers" or "locking layers", much prefer "semi modal") Will give it a try, possibly.

Sorry about the number of keys: I didn't want it to cost twice what it cost me to build that one (but I also love 105 keys things...) Given that, I tried to optimize motion...

About shift keys: As a (bad, but long term...) pianist, I think we, typists (programmers, writers, journalists... you name it) would greatly benefit from using foot pedals for shift/alt. But that's another project... And may cause its own class of problems (are we as synchronized on legs as we are on fingers? not sure...)

[kbdfr]

[…] For some time I used a foot switch as well, especially using it as "Shift" to increase my typing speed when typing in German (where not only the first word of a sentence and proper nouns, but also all common nouns, have capitals: "Nimm deine Finger von meiner Tastatur, du Idiot!").
It was a failure because, as webwit notes, it forces you into a completely static sitting posture. Which in turn means that when just occasionally using a foot pedal, you will have to reach for it with your foot from a then random position. Any (even combo) keypress is easier and quicker.

[mathieubolla]

That would imply the foot pedal is inside the shoes, not the ground... Which would be strange... But we are drifting...

[mathieubolla]

The layout has now evolved to account for your insights. I think it's more useable. I'm still learning typing French (at keybr.com, they look good...), still no pain in the hands. Started moving hands, but more "hovering" than "back and forth" (don't know how to say it better... I move more on the vertical axis than on horizontal, still nothing on lateral...), like on the piano to hit black keys.

I'm working on an us-en layout, still trying to figure out how to swap shift behavior (I want a &, not a 7, on fn-w, and a 7, not an & on fn-shift-w) It's not ready yet, but the branch on github is there, showing current status. Open for comments, as usual...

Thank you.