We need more ortholinear keyboards.

Keys don't need to be staggered anymore, let's move on!

@arran The staggered layout makes more sense. And yes, I used to own an ortholinear keyboard, I have tried it. :) Ortholinear can work, but only if you use a split keyboard and tilt it rather radically to the center so the keys aligns somewhat with your hands, but then you'll have issues with reaching the keys further out instead.

@hund @arran How does it make more sense? I'm very curious about this since I am waiting for my first columnar keyboard. My fingers feel confused sometimes and I think it is because of the staggering.

@taamas @hund @arran Probably because our fingers aren't as good as moving ortholinear as they are at moving slightly sideways? I'm mostly only guessing here, and it may be just conjecture from having used staggered keyboard all of my life, but I find it harder to move directly up and down.

@sotolf @taamas @hund

I think staggered could make sense if it was symmetrical. The fact that both hands must go up+left and down+right to get to their assigned keys seems so strange to me.

@arran @sotolf @taamas @hund

I would tend to agree with that. My personal reason why ortholinear feels better is for touch typing.

One day I basically decided to go all-in and learn Dvorak and touch typing on my new Ergodox EZ (ortho split keyboard). Right now I'm typing this on a regular staggered keyboard and I can tell you my left hand is having a hard time finding the right (!) keys on the bottom row.

Ortho is much easier to place your fingers by feel.

@kzimmermann @robby @flockingbird

@arran @sotolf @taamas @hund

That and it maps better when designing games :P

https://thibaultlemaire.gitlab.io/zen-typing/