Hi all!
I am a relatively new Twiddler 3 user (you can find a writeup of my experience in this post). Before buying the Twiddler, I spent some time researching custom layouts, including the venerable TabSpace and all those posted on this forum. So naturally, after getting my Twiddler, I came up with my custom layout
It's reasonable efficient (no MCCs yet, though), but probably not the fastest one out there - I can type 40wpm after 40 hours of training and am already satisfied. Instead, the main "selling point" is that it's organized in a rational and easy-to-memorize way, and I hope this can be useful for other new Twiddler users.
Here's the config file: twiddler.cfg (316 Bytes)
The layout
There's also a PDF version: Twiddler layout - v3.3.pdf (110.1 KB)
Notes:
- Chord diagrams are shown from behind.
- In most of the diagrams for multi-key chords, the black dot indicates the key that is common to all the chords. The exception is the bottom middle diagram, where all the keys to press for a character are marked with that character (for example, OOMM produces
|
)
- The letters are colored different shades of green by their frequency in English text. Function keys are colored gray.
Letters
Letter chords are given the highest priority. These chords:
- Don’t use the pinky (in other words, always ends with O)
- Are either single-key chords or two-key chords involving the index finger
This is a deliberate deviation from the venerable TabSpace layout (which uses the pinky and has three-key chords for the least frequent letters) based on what I find easiest to type.
Letters are organized into the following tiers, which are mostly consistent with letter frequency in English text according to Wikipedia (which seems to be the same list TabSpace is based off), with some minor deviations to make the layout more mnemonic:
- The first 9 letters are all single-key chords. The rows are all pronounceable:
REN
, SHI
, OTA
. The middle column spells THE
from bottom to top.
- The next 6 letters are two-key chords starting with M, since pressing the index finger in its resting position is the easiest (other than not having to press it at all). The rows are
CDM(A)
and glu(e)
. The most frequent letters D
and L
are placed in the middle column.
- The next 5 letters are two-key chords starting with L - I find stretching the index finger slightly easier than curling it - except LROO, which I find harder to press as it requires moving the adjacent index and ring fingers in opposite directions. Of the two rows,
F
and P
look alike and are both labial consonants, while VWY
all have a V
and share the same historical origin (which is also shared with F
, but not P
).
- The next 6 letters are two-key chords starting with R (curling the index finger). This group isn’t mnemonic on its own, but the
K
and Q
share a key with C
and U
respectively, to optimize for the common bigrams CK
and QU
. The least frequent letter Z
is given the hardest chord RLOO.
Numbers
Numbers are really straightforward: they use the Num modifier and are laid out exactly like a telephone keypad. *
and #
are also placed here since they also show up in a telephone keypad.
Punctuation marks and symbols
Punctuation marks and symbols are not entirely systematic. Nonetheless, there are some principles:
- All the punctuation marks and symbols in the US QWERTY keyboard are assigned, including those that require Shift on the QWERTY keyboard.
- No modifier is required, except
*
and #
, which are placed alongside numbers.
- Symmetric symbols are given symmetric chords.
The first three groups are typed with the index finger and the pinky, and shown alongside letters in the chord diagrams:
- The MOOX group
,.-
are what tend to appear in “normal” English prose.
- The LOOX group
`"'
are all the quotes.
- The ROOX group
!?&
are the alternative sentencing terminators plus &
, whose chord looks like the backslash that's part of it.
As for the rest:
- The pairs
()
, []
, {}
and <>
all have symmetric chords.
- The chord for
=
is between <
and >
.
- The chords for
:|/\
mimic the characters they type.
- The chord for
%
is similar to /
.
- The OMOX group
;:_
correspond one-to-one to the MOOX group’s ,.-
.
- The remaining symbols
+@$~^
are arbitrary - their shapes don't lend to obvious chords and they don't have obvious relationships to other symbols. When I find a way to organize them mnemonically I may rearrange them.
Since I mainly use my Twiddler for prose, I haven’t actually had the chance to type a lot of the symbols. I may one day try using it to write code and will likely rearrange them as a result.
Function keys
There are just three groups of function keys:
- The three single-key pinky chords OOOX are what are necessary for normal typing: Backspace, Space and Enter. This is obviously influenced by TabSpace, but with Tab changed to Enter, and moved from the index finger to the pinky.
- I’ve reassigned the three mouse keys to function keys too. The inclusion of CapsLock there may seem a bit weird as one could use sticky Shift to achieve the same thing; what I actually use it for is for switching languages on the iPad, which is bound to CapsLock.
- The arrow keys and Home/End are input by holding down the chord for
D
(for D-pad).
Additional thoughts
Overall I think my layout achieves ease of learning really well. I’ve now learned all the letters and during the process, never had to look up the layout - I memorized it during the creation process. I can’t say so for some of the symbols though, as I haven’t had the chance to type all of them.
I haven’t added any multi-character chords. I am quite happy so far with the speed I can achieve without them and am trying to keep things simple. I might add them in the future after I am more proficient with the Twiddler, although it's probably hard to make them obvious and easy to memorize.
One thing that I realized later - and a factor for future creators of custom layout to consider - is that fingers can have muscle memory from QWERTY. For example, for a very long time I would press my middle finger for E
by mistake, because E
is typed with the left middle finger on a QWERTY keyboard. A layout that takes that into consideration and tries to preserve finger assignment as much as possible would be interesting and probably easier to learn, although it will have to make the assumption of which hand the user uses their Twiddler with.
Happy Twiddling!