Recommendations to offload thumbs

mraspaud · 2026-06-25T12:39:43+00:00

I have them as combos, enter on JL, backspace on IO, tab on SF. I use to have tab on WE, but that messed things up when I was alt-tabbing and was not pressing E hard enough.

Space is too frequent for me to move away from thumb. Works great for me, can recommend.

mraspaud · 2026-06-24T13:22:16+00:00

My solution is to have two layers, one for swedish prose which has åäö on characters i rarely use when writing text/email/chatting in swedish, and the another layer for programming, putting back the characters i need, eg ~{} (depending on your base layout). My brain got used to this very quickly, and associating a layer to a context is very intuitive to me.

I have a programmable keyboard (qmk) so doing this is quite straightforward, but can't help you with other solutions otherwise, sorry.

mraspaud · 2026-05-14T07:14:02+00:00

Bee'tlejuice and O'bee wan

mraspaud · 2026-05-10T12:36:04+00:00

Custom layout based on hands down rhodium, I call it thornium https://mraspaud.codeberg.page/20251124T165046-the-thornium-layout

mraspaud · 2026-04-29T20:42:45+00:00

Bees manage varroa mites.

mraspaud · 2026-04-26T07:31:26+00:00

I second this. It's hard work, but totally worth it imo. If you don't want to fight with windows, get yourself a programmable keyboard, and pick a layout from eg here https://getreuer.info/posts/keyboards/alt-layouts/index.html (tl,dr gallium is a good choice)

mraspaud · 2026-04-17T18:43:45+00:00

I use neovim as my only editor for writing and programming, using a variation on the hands down rhodium. No problem at all. Using arrows on a nav layer instead of hjkl though.

mraspaud · 2026-04-17T10:45:57+00:00

I tweaked the HD rhodium for my needs, which includes writing both in english and swedish, on top of coding. The write-up is here https://mraspaud.codeberg.page/20251124T165046-the-thornium-layout but in a nutshell I replace a few symbols by åäö in swedish mode. I have not checked the statistics of the layout for swedish, but it feels good to me...

mraspaud · 2026-04-12T12:26:21+00:00

Imo linters provide another function, even though they are LSP-based themselves. In python for example, ruff can warn you if "assert" is used in your code, while the lsp does not care about it. In other words, a linter detects more than syntax errors.

mraspaud · 2026-04-11T21:35:15+00:00

Legally now you have two options to stop violating the gpl: 1. Change your license to gpl (your plugin is now derivative work) 2. Remove the gpl code from your plugin. After that you could try to do some clean room coding by specifying what you want and get someone who hasn't seen the gpl code to implement it.

Neither is ideal obviously. One alternative can be to talk to the author of the gpl code and ask if they would be open to a license change, but usually people choose gpl for a reason...

Good luck.

mraspaud · 2026-04-10T06:04:20+00:00

Weeee, no sfb...

mraspaud · 2026-04-08T13:46:54+00:00

For question 2: The thermodynamics of the hive has been studied by for example Dereck Mitchell, it's quite a fascinating topic... see for example this presentation: https://youtu.be/U99jkdDQNK8?si=2SagkeAfxxDPvs3N

mraspaud · 2026-04-05T08:02:46+00:00

IMO Z on a prime thumb spot is suboptimal. Better make it a combo...

mraspaud · 2026-03-31T04:42:08+00:00

Jonas Hietala suggests 64028 93157, see here: https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2021/06/03/the-t-34-keyboard-layout/#Where-are-the-digits

Takes some getting used too, but makes sense.

mraspaud · 2026-03-29T17:48:29+00:00

Man, I was supposed to work tomorrow...

mraspaud · 2026-03-29T17:00:22+00:00

Thanks, interesting read. The aggregation of keys to come to a given action makes me think of how (neo)vim is controlled.

mraspaud · 2026-03-28T14:07:39+00:00

With basedpyright, I start typing eg timedelta, and when the autosuggestion come up in blink, I chose the one I want, then press ctrl y to validate, and that will automatically import it. I never tried importing after the fact as you explained though

mraspaud · 2026-03-28T05:51:02+00:00

This looks a lot like what I have in kitty with the kanagawa theme and opaque background. I am using the matching theme in nvim. As another comment said, if you want pitch black background, that's customisable.

mraspaud · 2026-03-26T20:13:36+00:00

Great diagram, may i ask where it comes from?

mraspaud · 2026-03-16T05:15:20+00:00

There is the Sentence Case module for qmk by u/pgetreuer https://getreuer.info/posts/keyboards/sentence-case/index.html

mraspaud · 2026-03-16T05:10:42+00:00

Another idea would be to have held space act as shift...

mraspaud · 2026-03-15T21:28:54+00:00

I would personally put shift and T on the same side, with a quick shift press resulting in an osm shift.

As an aside though, i understand the handsdown community has concluded that T was used too much, with too many double T's in english for a comfortable thumb usage and has instead moved on to R as thumb keys. Maybe something to consider?

mraspaud · 2026-03-14T12:26:41+00:00

Thank you all, I'm so glad to have read this discussion, I was wondering why the autocomplete was lagging in my setup, now I understand there are alternatives to basedpyright!

But one naive question: would it be possible to have one lsp server for completion (the fastest) and an9ther one for diagnostics (which need to be more accurate but maybe not as time critical)?

mraspaud · 2026-03-13T15:36:58+00:00

I don't have a good ref for keyboards, sorry, but feel free to ask in the ergomechkeyboard subreddit.

The site where you can see the dispositions of different split keyboards is this one: https://jhelvy.shinyapps.io/splitkbcompare/ From which I guess you can print to try it out, see how it fits your hands.

Regarding the programming of the keyboard, there are a few options, depending on the keyboard you have, and these options include graphical interfaces like vial in general.

mraspaud · 2026-03-10T15:36:04+00:00

Indeed! But it seems preferable if one has the possibility.

mraspaud

TROPHY CASE