#keyboard-layout
An attempt at finding the best keyboard layout
Through random mutation and fitness selection I can quicky find a local minimum
My algorithm is weighted a bit differently from a lot of the popular layouts today, I don't think that minimum-travel-distance and the the keys position need to be weighed so heavily.
To me avoiding the lower->upper row combos, same-finger-bigrams and redirects are much more important. When I pay attention to myself typing on Qwerty, the time-loss and
discomfort to hit keys like 'q' or 'p' is barely there. Especially relative to same-finger-bigrams and the other metrics I mentioned earlier. Of course I would rather
hit a key on the home-row with my pointer finger over some pinky-finger bottom row key, but if it increases the same-finger-bigram rate significantly, I'll choose the pinky.
Anyways that's the reason I barely debuff the corner pinky spots and other hard to reach locations.
1.1, 1.07, 1.05, 1.05, 1.07, 1.2, 1.05, 1.05, 1.07, 1.1,
1.05, 1.02, 1, 1, 1.1, 1.1, 1, 1, 1.02, 1.05,
1.1, 1.1, 1.07, 1.05, 1.3, 1.1, 1.05, 1.07, 1.1, 1.1
This isn't really a proper travel distance measurement, but I think it's fine for now. Maybe I'll implement a proper one in the future
Well it is hitting two-keys, but the capilization is very easy to recognize and the shift key is set, so I wouldn't value it as high as a normal two-key combo like "fj" (valued at 2.0)
Base : 1.5x
I use the left-pinky for shift so this debuff is based on that. zebra quesiton kddkdkA
I actually don't think this is that bad, not much worse than base and definitely not close to bigrams like "yn" yet... future combos like "Aw" will be though.
Upper : 1.7x
Home : 1.6x
Lower : 1.75x
- Evalutate both characters and add them up
- Add any modifiers from the two character perspective
If true, don't bother checking the other buffs
Same-Key : 1.4x
Up-Or-Down : 2.2x
Top-Bottom : 3x
Things like "Aw" that aren't normally counted as same-finger-bigrams should be added here.
That being said, I don't think it's as bad as a normal SFB.
Might re-work this to also consider same-hand maneuvers after typing a capital with pinky, definitely can mess up your hand-position.
Same-Row : 1.1x (1.3x -> 1.43x) // A Normal SFB gets this low of a debuff because it's just hitting the same key-twice, no movement. This gets a low value because generally my index finger would already be in the correct position for key two.
Up-Down : 1.15x (1.36x -> 1.58x) // I find this to not be too terrible for similar reasons to the first one, it's just a little more awkward.
Top-Bottom : 1.8x (1.41x -> 2.53x) // This one is pretty close to normal Top-Bottom bigrams
I initially thought the default key position weights aleady did this, but I've decided these should be added
Home-Upper : 1.1x (1.07x -> 1.17x)
Upper-Home : 1.05x (1.07x -> 1.12x)
Home : 1.0x (1x -> 1.0x)
Lower-Home : 1.05x (1.1x -> 1.15x)
Home-Lower : 1.1x (1.1x -> 1.21x)
Pointer:
Pointer is lower : Good 1x
Pointer-Higher-> pinky : Ok 1.25x
Pointer is higher : Trash 2x
Middle:
Middle is upper : Good 1x
Middle-Lower->Pinky : Ok 1.5x
Middle is lower : Trash 2x
Ring -> Pinky:
Lower Pinky : Ok 1.25x
Lower Ring : Trash 2x
At this stage it's really just alternation vs. same-hand, everything on the same hand is already a roll
It's all summed up pretty well in the single/double row jumps, no need to add any buff/debuffs
- Evaluate both bigrams and add them together
- Add any modifiers from the three character perspective
- Multiply by 3/4 as we had added up four characters worth of value instead of three
Bigram values shifted
Same-Key : 1x
Up-Or-Down : 1.4x
Top-Bottom : 2.2x
Things like "Aus"
I don't know why but this one almost feels worse than the bigram version,
like with the bigram version my brain is ready to hit the next key even though my hand it out of position.
With this, my brain switches back to normal, but before I can re-center myself I'm thrown back into this weird hand position game
Usually I end up using the pinky for both ends of the trigram, but I'm going to assume you could learn to use the other finger instead
Same-Row : 1x (1.3x)
Up-Down : 1x (1.36x)
Top-Bottom : 1.41x (1.41x -> 2x)
Does consider inward rolls with "trash" combos in them, but they will be severely debuffed from the bigram calculation anyways
Feels like Up-Or-Down same-finger is a similar debuff to a redirect.
I keep going back and forth on outward-rolls, very difficult to pin down. Sometimes I feel like I can do them very well, other times it messes with my brain
#Re-Evaluate Outward-Rollss
Inside-Redirect : 2x (1x to 2x) // Feels super awkward, messes with my brain
Pinky-Outward : 1.5x (1x to 1.5x) // Outward roll that used the pinky
Center-Outward : 1.3x (1x to 1.3x) // Outward roll with the pointer finger on the center column
Redirect : 1.2x (1x to 1.2x)
Roll-Alternate : 0.8x (1x to 0.8x)
Full-Outward : 0.8x (1x to 0.8x) // With neither of the mentioned above
Full-Inward : 0.65x (1x to 0.65x)
// Full-Alternating : 1.0x the two bigrams should calulate this correctly
- Evaluate both trigrams and add them together
- Add any modifiers from the four character perspective
- Multiply by 4/6 as we added up six characters instead of four
###Same-Finger (The beginning and end of Trigram)
Trigam values shifted
Same-Key : 1x
Up-Or-Down : 1x
Top-Bottom : 1.4x
Things like "Ques"
Still not able to re-center hands unless it's same-row. But overall not that bad.
Same-Key : 1x
Up-Or-Down : 1x
Top-Bottom : 1.1x (1.41x -> 1.551x)
// Inside-Redirect : 1.5x should already be calculated from trigrams
// Redirect : 1.2x should already be calculated from trigrams
Full-Alternating : 1.0x
Full-Outward : 0.8x (0.8x -> 0.64x)
Roll-Alternate : 0.85x (0.725x -> 0.616x inward, 0.8x -> 0.68x outward)
Full-Inward : 0.8x (0.65x -> 0.52x)
I think this is represented fairly well with the key weights, but I might as-well list some buffs
The values are really small cause I'll be multiplying the entire fitness
All values within 1%
Pinky 8% : 0.99x
Ring 11% : 0.99x
Middle 16% : 0.99x
Pointer 15% : 0.99x
Hand 50% each: 0.99x
Figured home-row usage being higher than the other rows was probably guarenteed, so I didn't include that
I've been reading a ton, taking in everyone's keyboard ideals and opinions from layouts like
Colemak, Halmak, Dvorak, Workman, Norman, Kaehi, Ornate, Asset, Capewell, ect ect
The layout I've found to agree most with so far is the MTGAP layouts, been reading some old
blogish/discussion posts that have been talking a lot about the ideas I've been thinking about myself.
Here's a link to some cool info https://mathematicalmulticore.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/typing-data-preliminary-analysis/#comments
A lot of the other layouts seem to highly focus on key-positions and distance traveled. Which is nice because it's a clean and easy to calculate statistic, but I just
don't think it's #that#important.
Probably the biggest thing though has just been me typing away in this document, trying different finger/key maneuvers and comparing there speed/comfort to others.
First result with the new weights. I did skip out on a few metrics because they were annoying to implement, for example capitals haven't been implemented yet.
3599605
d r t s c k n i e h
g l m f w , . a o y
x j v z q ; b u / p
This does actually look pretty good but I'm not sure why it put the period on the home row, especially under the pointer finger. Maybe it's because I'm using reddit data and the period key is often used in combination
like "...", that in combination of debuffing same-key combos might have caused the fitness for this combo to be REALLY bad. I will run it again but loosen the debuff on same-key combos.
3568801
s d t r m ; / o u f
g c p l w j y i e .
z v k x q b n a , h
I changed it so same-key hits don't give any debuff, but still the period is on the home-row. At least it's in a more feasable location. Even though periods are fairly common, there is just no way it should be on the home-row.
3567017
g s t h d ; x o e r
l c w m f , . a i y
q v p k z u n / j b
I thought for sure this would do it, I removed any characters that appear more than twice in a row in succession. But still it persists, like why not just swap the '.' and 'n'?
The letter 'n' appears like 4 times as much as the period,
3303743
h r s t g ; n i e y
l m c d w , . a o p
q x v k z j b u / f
Just added buffs for being close to an even finger/hand distribution amount.
3356659
. l s t c k h a e g
; r n w m , y i u p
/ v x z q b d o j f
Added debuff for capitals near the left-pinky... clearly weighed a bit too much. At least the period is off the home row lol
So far I've been using made-up values based on subjective ideals for the weights of the algorithm. Obviously it's hard to be confident that I have the best layout if the weights could be changed to whatever feels right.
So I created an in-terminal typing-test thing that collects your speed in bigrams and uses your average time per bigram as weights instead. There are like 900 different bi-grams and most of them you'll never type with qwerty, so I had to just randomly generate nonsense words. After an annoying amount of time typing, I ran the algorithm and got this...
q b o n h ; u a e c
i t d m v w j . l ,
k g y f p s r / z x
Yeah really not what I was hoping for. Unfortunately because I'm used to typing on qwerty, all the weights are biased on those movements. Qwerty is known to be heavy on the top row, and because I sub-consiously learned to be quick with those keys it placed a lot of common letters on the upper rows. Look at the j key for example, definitely shouldn't be in the exact same position as qwerty.
This probably isn't the way to find the optimal keyboard weights. It is just too biased to your layout and the layouts common moves. Even if I learned a layout like Colemak where the most common letters are closer to ideal positions, I would be biased to the manuevers on the Colemake Layout, probably missing a plethra of better layouts in the process. The only way I could see this method being valuable would be if the data was collected from a ton of different people and layouts, with partnership with monkeytype or something.