Hello,
I just recieved a brand new Twiddler 3, I can't even hold it comfortably yet, and I'm already deep in exploring how I would configure it. So I would welcome any advice to feel less overwhelmed.
What made me order it is the untethered mode, even if I might tether it eventually. I want to catch up with stuff I want to write, and use time when I can't stare at a screen and when I have to keep my attention available (mainly, walking in the city, and being a car passenger with motion sickness when not looking outside).
However, now that I have the device, I will probably end up trying to use it in all manners of situations, so I'd like to keep the options open, and consider my regular-keybaord use too.
So I mostly want to write raw text in French or English (untethered), use UNIX shell and code with vim (tethered), and russian text if it works. Also I own an android phone, though I'm not sure yet what to do with a keyboard and it.
What makes me not jump directly into an existing configuration is that my set of priorities seem very different: I don't care at all about WPM (before the google search that led me twiddler, I was helf-expected to have to resort to a basic button on a rpi zero or something like that, and rolling my own event-to-letter Morse decoder) or about ease of learning (I'm a vim user), I'm rather interested in comfort, flexibility and durability (I have low hopes of using twiddler on a computer except for training, because PBT-capped Topre switches place the bar so high).
It feels a bit arrogant to already imagine crafting my own configuration, but I know I will need non-ASCII letters, and I'm afraid adding diacritics after the fact would take too much time compared to what can be saved by untethered input (and having to postprocess it anway). And already for this point I don't see much discussion.
One could chord the most common modified letters, but it's likely to lack some. One could try to map a Compose key like I use on my unices, but it might prevent from using it with android. One could chord dead diacritics, but is it even possible? While I think I have a decent understanding of the situation when the twiddler is a USB HID on a BSD I know, I don't really know how a bluetooth twiddler works with Android, and how to make the same twiddler output diacritics in both situations.
Then I'm trying to decide a general layout, but it's tricky to estimate how comfortable one is when I can't yet use thumb buttons without help from the other hand.
- Thumbless is interesting if I can't get thumb buttons to work, but if I can I'd rather have easier chords, however I do like the idea of operational groups.
- Cool Hand has interesting ideas, but the pinky space makes me hesitant.
- Typemax introduces the concepts of stride and stutter, which I like for comfort even though they were intended for speed, but I'm not ready to give up the possibility of mouse, and worry about the pinky space.
- BackSpice seems to lack in-depth rationale, but being backed by so much experience is a strong argument, but reading its author regretting conceptual grouping makes me think I can benefit from being a blank slate
- TabSpace seems nice, but I'm a prejudiced against it by assuming so much was based on it, something better should have emerged at this point
- The default layout doesn't seem really thought about, but being only one special chord away on every twiddler might make it useful to know (I'm still using qwerty rather than dovrak for that reason, though I'm much more likely to encounter a borrowed or unconfigurable keyboard than such a twiddler).
So now that I have laid out my noobish views, would you please correct me where I'm wrong? What starting chordmap would you recommend for my situation?