Hands Down Layout (2020)
Hands Down keyboard layouts, created in 2020 by R Alan Reiser.
Home page at https://www.sites.google.com/alanreiser.com/handsdown/home
The Hands Down layout is not just a layout, but a 5-heads and 3-wings chimera of a semi input system.
- It requires a keyboard with 2 to 4 thumb keys. [see Do-It-Yourself Keyboards]
- It requires advanced keyboard firmware, such as QMK. [see QMK Configurator Tutorial]
- For certain keys, such as z, you have to type it by pressing j and f at the same time.
- For modifier keys such as Ctrl, it assumes you have set them up using home row keys as dual-purpose keys. [see Dual-Function Keys (Home Row Mods)]
They have several versions.
The Hands Down layouts seem silly and unprofessional. First they put 5 variations on their site. That's like: “come join us, we have 5 ways to swim in arctic ocean for healthy life.”.
Then, you look at their layouts, putting letter in thumb, but none of the variation has the most frequently used e on thumb.
Then, the worst problem is that it require you to type 2 keys together to input some letters. For example:
- press j+f to enter z
- press p+v to enter q
Given the very exotic layouts and non-trivial way to type z, and requiring fancy batman thumb keyboards that requires advanced keyboard firmware such as QMK , you find that they don't talk about placement of Backspace ⌫ Delete ⌦. Nor the all important modifer keys such as shift, Ctrl, Alt. (they advocate that modifier keys be placed on homerow (not shown in their diagrams), so you have Dual-Purpose keys, which by itself introduces other problems. [see Dual-Function Keys (Home Row Mods)] )
The issues of key shortcuts is far more critical for hand health and software operation efficiency than letter layouts.
but also, when you press f+m fast, it becomes f+l. Because Hands Down has a system it calls Adoptive Keys, which they think makes typing certain 2 letter combination easier. Quote:
When you get into this level of complexity, you need to compare to not other keyboard layouts, but other input systems. For example, abbrev system (such as Microsoft Word auto correction, or emacs's various function templates and name completition [see Emacs: Abbrev Mode] ) , shorthand system (such as the statistics based word completion used in every smart cell phones), math input system [see Design of Math Symbols Input System] , or even comparable to Chinese Input Methods and Japanese Input Method . Also, if you require complex hardware that support Dual-Purpose keys on home row and chording, then, what stops you from comparing to chording systems such as Stenotype Machine or Using Piano to Type Text?
For example, let's say, you design a keyboard, such that, there are 4 extra dedicated keys under thumb. Each one, are used to insert 4 of the most frequently used words, such as “the”, “and”, “that”, “what”. Will this system, already be more efficient than the Hands Down system?