The art of typing

Surprisingly the main interface from a human to a computer for interaction - the keyboard - is highly underrated. Beside of geeks dedicated to building their own mechanical keyboards most people don't care about their keyboard. I've seen most expensive gaming-rigs, with sophisticated gfx-cards setup, CPUs being overclocked and tuned, strangest water cooling systems, etc - but connected to a really, really, bad keyboard.

But - as soon as a heavy typist encounters a "typing injury", RSIs you'll have to start to think about your typing habits, your keyboard, your keyboard layout, etc.

About 20 years ago I unfortunately developed RSI in my hands. I was rather afraid, as typing is the foundation of my job, communication and even most of my hobbies.

Fortunately I got rid of any symptoms, following the path I took.

Honestly - have you ever used the CAPSLOCK key? This is one of the most useless keys on your keyboard. Remapping f.e. CTRL to CAPSLOCK is one of the first advice that you get, asking about RSI, especially if you are using emacs.

For VIM users, probably remapping CAPSLOCK to ESC is also an option.

There are various ways to do the mapping:

• some operating systems offer out of the box an option for that in their system settings (f.e. MacOS)
• gnome and kde offer also a choice in their specific settings
• otherwise on X-window you can utilize xmodmap

• most layouts selectable by setxkbmap have an option like "ctrl:nocaps", so, to get german dvorak with CAPSLOCK as CTRL:

  setxkbmap -layout de -variant dvorak -option ctrl:nocaps 
  

Next step - hitting the CTRL key without pressing another button - should do ESC. That way (at least for me as a heavy emacs user) I have my most importan modifier keys cerntered on one physical key!

As ESC makes (nearly) also the ALT key obsolete (at least in emacs-world, as META key is either hitting first ESC or holding ALT down) I mapped additionally my ALT keys to CTRL.

So, on most keyboards this gives me at least 3-4 alternatives to push CTRL, or rather ESC, helping to spread the burden on the finger to hit these modifier keys:

• actual CTRL-keys
• ALT-key (near to the space bar)
• CAPSLOCK

For that in X11-world you can use xcape, f.e. if you put into your .xsession:

xcape -e "Control_L=Escape;Control_R=Escape" & 

A remnant of the typewriter is the qwerty layout of current keyboards. Have you ever asked yourself what is the reason for the specific layout of qwerty?

According to Wikipedia, one of the reasons was to avoid clashing of the type bars by placing commonly used combinations of of letters farther from each other. Not really an ideal idea from ergonomics's point of view of modern computer keyboards?

There have been various attempts to come up with better ideas, f.e.

• Dvorak
• Colemak
• Norman
• Workman

Actually I can't remember, why I specifically settled with the German Dvorak layout about 20 years ago. Probably I liked the idea of having all vowels in one row on my left fingertips.

from wikipedia

Unfortunately the german dvorak variant is not out of the box included in every operating system.

Linux

• console: must distributions should have dvorak-de.map.gz, just have a look into /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/.
• X11: german dvorak variant is available for many years, just use the system settings of your desktop environment (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, …), or put above mentioned setxkbmap into your .xsession / .xinitrc.

MacOS

• get german dvorak type ii.dmg.bz2 from http://www.halibrand.de/dvorak/ and follow the instructions.

Windows

• as I try to avoid Windows, just from hearing: https://www.conitzer.de/index.html?/dvorak/layouts.html should provide what you need.

I have only talked about technical solutions to mitigate RSI. But - most important take care of your self!

• Make breaks! Don't sit more than 1-2 hours in front of your computer. Make a break. Do some steps, play an instrument, or whatever gives you relief.
• Enjoy nature! Some steps in the woods, fresh air, even some rain drops on your head do wonders.
• Eat healthy! Eating habits have a big influence on our life. Not only quality of food is important, also the way we consume it. Take your time for your food. Try at least once per day to prepare / cook your food on your own. Don't eat in front of your computer, again doing some work.
• Who hasn't encountered the situation: late in the evening, either a great game or serious work forces you to stay up late into the night in front of your computer. Even if you seem to enjoy it - if you do it too often, it is really bad for your health!

Take care!