Why Neo 2 is retarded
August 1st, 2009This is a rant. Don’t take it too seriously. I’m sleep deprived and needed something to do, ok?
Neo 2 claims to be an ergonomic keyboard layout. I have been using it until about a month ago when I forked it and created my own layout. (I’ll upload it here once I get around fixing the last few bugs.) I don’t contend its claim as far as the letters are concerned. However, level 3 aka Mod3, containing the punctuation characters, is totally fucked up. How fucked up? Let me demonstrate.
First, let’s get some data. What’s a typical use for Mod3? Programming and normal texts. I decided on analyzing C (representing curly-bracket languages), Python (representing pseudo-code and list languages), my shell history and shell files (representing Unix usage) and Perl (representing line noise). Additionally, I included my local Usenet cache to represent normal texts. I took several thousand files each and in the end averaged them all together. (data: freq-c freq-pl freq-py freq-history freq-news average)
Second, we do a little experiment. Say, if Neo 2 is actually ergonomically optimized, we would expect the most frequent characters to be on the easiest to reach positions. Of course, it depends a little on personal taste, keyboard form and hand size how easy each position is, but let’s go with the arrangement the Neo devs chose for their letters. If the layout is optimized, the most frequent letters and the most frequent punctuation characters should be on the same physical keys.
Let’s see if this is true. Here is a little table, showing the letters sorted by (German) frequency and the corresponding Mod3 character. I’ve put the keys with “.” and “,” according to their left-hand equivalent. Green means 5% or more, yellow down to 1.5% and the rest is red (which is often around .01%). Have a look.
Great fucking job, guys. The 7 best keys get only 2 frequent characters. 6 frequent characters are in the middle of fucking nowhere. You decided to place an obsolete character, the long S, that no one in my fucking news cache even used at all, in a better position than ,, ., “, ‘[3] and #, which together make up a good 40% of all punctuation. [0] The one character that is more frequent in many cases than any letter except the friggin’ E, and more frequent than 2/3 of the letters in general, the underscore, isn’t even anywhere near a good position.[1]
Way to go, Neo, way to go.[2]
[0] Some of the reasoning behind this is that any Mod1 key is easier to reach than any Mod3 key. If you think that Mod3+N is harder to type than Ö, then I wouldn’t let you design a wooden stick because it seems your brain is barely able to use 2 fingers at the same time.
[1] “But I don’t program! I rarely need an underscore!” But you constantly use curly brackets, more often than any other bracket?!
[2] To be fair, it’s impossible to optimize for punctuation-heay curly-bracket languages and normal text at the same time. However, this half-assed mess makes it hard for both groups. That’s clearly not a good solution. I chose to optimize for the programming languages because a) I use them more and b) they tend to be so rich in punctuation that they simply overshadow normal text.
[3] Which are not even normal punctuation, if the Neo devs weren’t so inconsistent in their design. If you want to follow official guidelines[4], you should use the German quotation marks „ and “, and the proper accent ’. Which are even harder to reach. Which makes the whole thing even more retarded.
[4] Prescriptionist dipshits are the topic of another rant.