Key placement

I'm not terribly satisfied with the location of the vowel keys on the Sidewinder. I really like the Sidewinder in general, and of course on Day Nine it's difficult really to estimate how well I'm going to end up liking the keyboard layout - but getting my thumbs onto the lower row of letter keys feels very cramped and uncomfortable.

So here's my idea: add some very flat keys or buttons below the spacebar, right where my thumbs want to land. Those four could even simply mirror the CVNM keys currently mapped by Plover to AOEU. At most you'd need an Arduino and USB port to get the keystrokes into the computer, and if the keys were flat enough they could simply be glued onto the nice little ergonomic shelf under the Sidewinder.

It's a thought.

The Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard

Since stenography consists of mashing a large number of keys at once (up to 20, actually, although that's not actually too common), normal keyboards can't actually support it. You need a keyboard specifically designed not to get confused when multiple keys are pressed at once. A gaming keyboard. The Microsoft Sidewinder X4 is the cheapest such keyboard.

Mine came today.

It's got a nice feel, although it's louder than the cheap HP keyboard I've been using - audible clicks for each keystroke. I'm hoping it will be a bit sturdier than most keyboards; I wear them out in about a year (a million words typed will do that).

One very interesting feature is the bank of six macro keys at the far left of the keyboard. These can be programmed to do anything - like start programs. I'm going to use them to switch modes between vanilla, AHK mode, and steno mode.

That's the plan.

A note on stenographs

They are freaking expensive. Even "cheap" ones that are just a keyboard and nothing else (the discontinued Gemini writer) start at $750 used. New normal ones that include a bunch of stuff you don't need are $4000 or so.

This is a market greatly in need of disruption.

Here's a forum post from September of last year by a guy thinking along these lines. I've dropped him a note. Let's see if we can't get that ball rolling a little faster.