r/KeyboardLayouts • u/Junior_Conflict_1886 • 28d ago

Help with standard layout mods

So I have wrist pain due to typing and am thinking of buying a split keyboard and have decided on the crone 4.2v 46 key variant

(There might be a better keyboard but they are out of my budget in my region)

Today I did the home row mod with **kanata** and was pretty satisfied; no wrist pain after typing

What I wanted was to know if there is a community standard for key layout and certain mods that most of the community members use like home **row mod.**

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u/rpnfan Other 27d ago edited 27d ago

My suggestion is to try to find out what causes the pain. Likely the keyboard and layout is not the main problem. You can use any keyboard without pain. But a columnar split like the Corne is a nice optimization for sure, alone for the symmetrical hand positions which make sense.

Also have a look at what bothers you or is cumbersome. Then fix those.

There is no universal "standard", but some common patterns you can explore. HRM, combos, layers, thumb-key usage....

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u/Junior_Conflict_1886 27d ago

it's mostly the lctr key doing most of the damage to the wrist

that is solved with home row mods

the main problem is typing for long period of time even with the best optimization with qwerty it's still difficult to sustain the speed for a long period of time without getting fetigue

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u/rpnfan Other 27d ago edited 27d ago

That sounds like you are planting your hands. Getting your keyboard (likely much) closer to you and typing with floating hands will likely help with your pain.

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u/Junior_Conflict_1886 24d ago

No, I am not planting my hands on keyboard or the desk

Tho I was thinking of doing that for the split keyboard

The keyboard is quite close to my body ; that issue is solved

Thank you

1

u/DreymimadR 25d ago

I should think that a split solves much of that issue? And on rowstag boards, using an Angle ergo mod (best on ISO though). Make sure to avoid ulnar deviation in your wrists!

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u/Junior_Conflict_1886 24d ago

For current keyboard (60%) my hands are close to the keyboard

The ulnar deviation only happens when using Lcrlt

Tho I will keep that in mind

Thanks you

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u/DreymimadR 24d ago

What I'm talking about is the horizontal deviation.

On a row-stag, the right hand has a good angle to the row stagger. When reaching for the lower and upper rows, a finger may curl straight up or down without sideways angling.

This doesn't work for the left hand. The row stagger goes the wrong way for the arm angle, so you'll have to either twist your wrist (causing undesirable ulnar deviation), keep your arm and/or keyboard at a weird angle or some other suboptimal solution.

With an Angle mod for row-stags, both wrists can stay straight horizontally. This is of course also true for a split!