Am I the only one who just keeps their hands/wrists straight on a regular unsplit keyboard? I've always naturally done this and never had any problems with strain.
The best way to describe it is that the home keys aren't ASDF, but more like WEFV with my forearm angled so it's straight from elbow to fingertip. This exaggerates the effect but demonstrates it clearly; the real home positions are more like intermediate points between keys.
Yeah, same. I find keeping my fingers on the home keys makes me twist my wrists outwards, which gets uncomfortable pretty fast. I mostly try to minimise wrist action in general.
I've actually had a Planck EZ for a few weeks now and I agree it's probably not very ergonomic for the classic qwerty touch typist, or at least not much better than a normal keyboard barring the programmability.
But since I don't do that anyway I find the keyboard to be pretty nice in terms of customisability and avoiding stretching.
In general I feel my hands are used most naturally in close proximity to each other (at roughly abdomen height) so I'm drawn to small keyboards with lots of modifier keys. A spherical keyboard would be pretty interesting to try out.
On my keyboard - which is.. I don't want to say 'full size', because maybe it's '80%' or whatever, but it's a regular external keyboard with numpad - f & j are centre to centre 60mm apart.
If I outstretch my arms, straight, my index fingers are pretty much in line with my shoulders.
So no, when I use my regular unsplit keyboard my hands/wrists are not straight, because my shoulders are not 60mm apart..? Am I missing something?
I believe GP was talking about elbow-hand being completely straight. That would make sense if their elbows are on arm rests or some such thing.
It does sound interesting. I did type this comment trying it, and it was pretty comfortable, with the exception of my right wrist. That being said, I've got kind of weird seating set up.
Oh.. then I'm not sure what we're doing differently, or what the difference is in hardware, but my arms/hands are straight from elbow to fingertip when I rest on 'home row' 'adsf'/'jkl;' - if I change to 'wefv' it's a significant contortion, if that's what it looks/feels like for some people using 'asdf' then I understand the problem and am not surprised they don't put up with it!
If I stick my elbow way out I can make 'wefv' as natural to me as 'asdf'. So I suppose either my elbows are more tucked in, or my keyboard's wider ('dfgh' for example contorts the other way, and analgously to 'wefv', 'rthn', or better but less analogously 'erth', is more comfortable there).
Yes, your last paragraph is my natural position, with the elbows farther out. 'wefv' exaggerates the effect to demonstrate; the real position is about halfway between 'wefv' and 'sdfv'.
The best way to describe it is that the home keys aren't ASDF, but more like WEFV with my forearm angled so it's straight from elbow to fingertip. This exaggerates the effect but demonstrates it clearly; the real home positions are more like intermediate points between keys.