From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Jul 18 08:22:03 1996 Return-Path: owner-chat Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA26579 for chat-outgoing; Thu, 18 Jul 1996 08:22:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from diablo.ppp.de (diablo.ppp.de [193.141.101.34]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id IAA26569 for ; Thu, 18 Jul 1996 08:21:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from allegro.lemis.de by diablo.ppp.de with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0uguth-000QgQC; Thu, 18 Jul 96 17:21 MET DST From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey) Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany Phone: +49-6637-919123 Fax: +49-6637-919122 Received: (grog@localhost) by allegro.lemis.de (8.6.9/8.6.9) id RAA25499; Thu, 18 Jul 1996 17:01:56 +0200 Message-Id: <199607181501.RAA25499@allegro.lemis.de> Subject: Re: FreeBSD keyboard To: jfieber@indiana.edu (John Fieber) Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 17:01:56 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Chat) In-Reply-To: from "John Fieber" at Jul 18, 96 09:53:39 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk John Fieber writes: > > On Thu, 18 Jul 1996, Greg Lehey wrote: > >>> It takes more than a day to settle into it. >> >> I could believe that :-( My real question is, why bother? > > If after a long day of typing, your hands, wrists and/or arms are > sore in any way, you could be causing permanent dammage to > yourself, even if the pain is quite subtle. After many years, > you may completely loose your ability to type. I'm not making > this up, it really happens to people. I don't have a problem with that. > For me, switching from a regular keyboard to the MS keyboard was > awkward for awhile, but not painful. Going back to a regular > keyboard now is awkward, *and* painful. I doubt it is any more > painful than using it was before, but now that I've typed on > something else that doesn't hurt, I really notice it. Its the > old notion of not noticing the air until there isn't any of it. > Alternate analogy: bad habbits are hard to break, even if you > know they are bad. Don't get me wrong, I've done a *lot* of thinking about ergonomics. I don't suffer from RSI (yet), but my wife does, and seeing the conditions under which she worked, I'm not surprised. My question, which still hasn't been answered to my satisfaction, is: "Is the new, funny-looking Microsoft keyboard ergonomic?". You say yes, and for you it's obviously an improvement. My mileage may vary. > Given the huge losses that companies swallow in RSI treatment and > lost work time caused by poor keyboard design, I find it hard to > believe that there are so *few* alternative keyboards on the > market. The MS one is the first affordable one, but since people > differ in their geometry, its fixed geometry is less than ideal. > Also, people who like the noisy IBM key action won't like it that > much. I didn't have much of a problem with the keys themselves. >>> I guess you have a different geometry. :-) >> >> It's more like my chair. In fact, looking at the way I sit, I *do* >> have my arms inclined at about 15°, > > Of course, you have to have them inclined because your shoulders > are wider than where your hands have to be. Thats not the big > problem with regular keyboards. The problem is you have to bend > your wrists outward in a less than natural position to align your > fingers on the home row of a regular keyboard: > > | | / \ > / \ / \ > / \ / \ > > regular microsoft Sure. But that's not quite the truth: there's a large gap between the two halves of the Microsoft keyboard, and that's what I'm complaining about. It's more like: | | / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ regular microsoft That leaves your elbows further apart if you maintain the same angle. > For more information on typing injuries and alternate keyboards, > look at: > > http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dwallach/tifaq/ Reading the Web costs me an arm and a leg. Is this the FAQ that goes through news.answers? I've read it some time ago. I agree with most of it, but it didn't mention the Microsoft keyboard at the time. One problem I have with the Microsoft keyboard is that it still has straight rows of keys. I've done some experimentation, and I find that curved rows would make more sense. Certainly, any keyboard that has the keys I use frequently in difficult-to-access places is subjectively not an ergonomic keyboard. Greg