<aside> 💡 This is a book outline for the book I’m planning on Mechanical Keyboards

</aside>

• Concepts
• Influencers

Outline

1. Introduction
   1. Me, why I’m interested in keyboards [1 page, maybe at the end?]
2. Overview
   1. One of our most used, least considered daily items
      1. The gateway to our digital lives / productivity
   2. Rapidly growing trend
   3. Ergonomics
3. Hobbiests & their boards
   1. People, their boards, and their stories
      1. Board stats, sourcing
      2. Typing speed?
4. Options

   1. Overview of the options

      1. [Show a range of different keyboards]
      2. [Maybe a ”Phylogenetic” tree?🤷]

   2. Key layout

      1. QWERTY is king 👑, but very inefficient

         1. Basically the worst layout, QWERTY was adapted directly from the old typewriter layout, which was optimised to limit neighbouring keys from being pressed in sequence to avoid jamming the keys

            

      2. Dvorak

         1. The second most popular layout, Dvorak throws out all QWERTY convention by changing the position of all keys except for a and m.

         2. Dvorak is designed with vowels on the left hand, most common consonants on the right. This causes alternation between the two hands. Designed in 1936 by August Dvorak.

         3. Criticisms

            • Very different from QWERTY, so hotkeys are hard, difficult to learn
            • Not as optimised for ergonomics and effort

         4. https://dvorak-keyboard.com/

            

      3. Colemak

         1. Third most popular layout, after QWERTY and Dvorak. Maintains many QWERTY features (x c v and a positions for functions, symbol positions) which having much higher letter position scores.
         2. Colemak is also nice for having “key rolls”, where typing sequences tend to run beside each other (Examples: ie, io, en, st, rs, ar)
         3. There are three main versions:
            • Colemak
            • Colemak DH (less inner column)
            • Colemak DHm
         4. Colemak was created in 2006

          ![Untitled](<https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/2cd86488-499c-46d4-b2b4-a7199f343d8b/Untitled.png>)
         

      4. Workman

         1. Developed to reduce the inner column usage compared with Colemak vanilla.

         2. Biggest issue is same-finger bigrams, where a finger commonly has to type two different letters in a row

         3. https://workmanlayout.org/

            

      5. Halmak

         1. Designed by algorithm, Halmak...

      6. Others [in a list...?]

      7. Comparison metrics

         1. There are a ton of ways to compare keyboard layouts, and each keyboard is optimised to be best for certain metrics
         2. One think is clear though: QWERTY is the worst in all respects
         3. Common layout comparison metrics

            • Distance (fingers travel from home positions)

            • Same finger utilization (SFU)

              • Caused by common bigrams

            • Same hand utilization (SHU)

            • Finger percentages

            • Hand percentages

            • Usage of middle columns

              

              

            • Don Quixote (English):

              

            • Top 50,000 English words:

              

   3. Design

      1. Most common layouts

         

      2. Key positioning: stagger

         1. What is stagger?

            1. This describes the position of keys relative to each other. Normal keyboards have row stagger

               

         2. Row stagger

         3. Column stagger

      3. How many keys: 100%, Tenkeyless/80%, 75%, 65%, 60%, 40%, 30%

      4. Split or joined

   4. Switches

   5. Keycaps

   6. Accessories

   7. Highest level

      1. Flat, standard
      2. Chord keyboards
      3. Neural link
      4. [Lea’s finger tap thing]
5. History [1-3 pages]
6. Suppliers and major players
7. More hobbiests

Keyboard hobiests