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[A] Bigram layout tweaks, and a virtual typing attempt

A project log for Tetent [gd0090]

An input device for quickly entering text and equations, gaming, drawing and cursor/6DoF movement.

kelvinakelvinA 04/07/2023 at 12:290 Comments
The first thing that's changed is swapping the location of H and L. The reason is because of this article of why the creator of Workman had issues with Colemak, talking about bigram frequency.

From the fingers I have, I get force feedback but not positional feedback. I also expect that less movement translates to less mental overhead. This is the reason I'm trying to keep similar characters under the same position, and why it's 6 zones 7 levels instead of the other way around. 

With this small change, something (that sounds like a common phrase) such as "they were" only require the fingers to be in zone 1 or 5. If not using Tetent TestCut, this would be 2 chords: "they we" and "re".

Other changes

I'm also thinking of splitting up the weights into blocks of 2, since when the finger is planning to go though multiple levels, it could be difficult to keep track of the haptic vibrations. Additionally, the top level is kind of light, so spacing things out could prevent mis-clicks into level 2.

Thus:
  1. 40g
  2. 52g
  3. 60g
  4. 72g
  5. 80g
  6. 92g
  7. 100g

This changes the haptic of, say, Ctrl, from BZBZBZBZBZBZ to BZ-BZBZ-BZBZ-BZ. I'm running the mental simulations now and it's a substantial improvement for knowing what level I'm on. 

I'm also swapping Windows and Enter. There's not a lot of keyboard shortcuts that use the Win key, but I can imagine pressing the enter key much more, especially in an order sensitive manner.

Thus, the updated Tetent TrueType layout:

Simulating typing on a keyboard that doesn't exist:

I should mention that this is my first ever 10words on monkeytype.

My goal was to cycle between fingers on every character, but sometimes I did get a chord in, such as "ll" and "e,". 

The errors are because I still somehow hit the wrong physical key when marking "I've pressed this key on the virtual Tetent". 

Most of the mental overhead was me verifying that I simulated all haptics. After that, it was "What row was this character?" and then "Oh yeah! I could've chorded a space along with that character!".

So far, I haven't felt any layout changes I'd want to make. Shift 1st was a major assist, as I just had to drag Finger5 back and boom I could get a capital G.

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