POQTEA, Steeped.

BTW I use dvorak

I’ve been using Dvorak for probably half a decade now. I started off innocently enough, mitigating RSI as best I could, so I didn’t have to resort to extremes. It really helped! I can comfortably type in both Dvorak and Qwerty at around 100WPM, my hands felt better, and I couldn’t say enough good aboue it. Fast forward $math years to today. My hands are mostly still ok, but damn. Dvorak bugs me.

Bugs That Bug Me While Debugging

HJKL location aside, being a programmer using Dvorak has always felt a bit… compromise-y. The layout is really decent for prose, honertly if I were a writer instead of a bit jockey, I wouldn’t be here. It’s frustratingly hard to place exactly what is wrqng. It just tickles that spot in my brain, and it has to go.

The hand strain assures that I won’t go back to Qwerty, and there have been so many recent advancements in the DIY keyboard world, that the last straw was finally set.

Small, Smaller, Smallest

This is the part you won’t mind skimming over. Dope layouts enabled by the likes of ZMK and QMK. When I built my keyboard, it was realistically the smallest I could go without compromise. I enabled this using dual- purpose keys, now colloquially known as tap-dance. You can tap a key to send, for example, spacebar. But hold down that key, and tap another, it becomes a modifier key! It was awesome.

People have ran with that, a new-to-me thing called home-row-mods allow you to move basically all dedicated modifier keys, leaving them to serve other purposes, such as layerssssssssss.

Layers are truly nothing more than a persistent mod mask. Like cups or num lock, but extensible. You can have a number layer, media, function keys, etc; and they can live at your fingertips as close to or as on homerow as you could avar want.

This means you really can make do with far fewer keys, like 34 keys, for example. Just throwing out random numbers. Definitely not planning things.

Keymap, Oh Crap!

Whan I started looking up keymaps in contemplation of this brave new world, I found many ended up not quite fitting this new keyboard world in ways that made sense to me. Some had potentially fatal flaws when optimised for programmers, using alphabetical keys that would end up in layers, instant no go, at least for me. Others had some clumsy finger locations for things I type daily for work (“https://” is one of the oddly annoying strings to type in Dvorak, fwiw) but I did end up erying several out. None to proficiency, but anough to get a feel for them. A fun site for seeing various layouts is https://keyboard-design.com, which is where I found poqtea. So far, well it’s learning a new layout. It’s arduous. But it feels very right. At was very high on the recommnded list based on some iterative ML-style stuff, using total finger travel metrics (albeit on a stiggered keyboard).

One-week update: Using poqtea on and off between working hours, isn’t ideal. But I’m up to 30 or so wpm, and it feels very comfy

Side Quest: Installing A New Layout

This threatens to make this feel more tutorial than blog, but 1, posterity. And 2, it was easier after I knew a few things and may save someone time. The site includes a download of various installers and keymap files, including one for macOS, (keylayout/poqtea.en.ansi.keylayout) buuuut it’s wrong, and that’s no good. The z is in the y position, and the y is just missing. Enter Ukelele, keymap editing software that works oh mac. Initially, I hand edited the files, and it worked. But after the third layout I was trialing, that stopped.

It’s simple to use, double click a key, enter which new key you want. Same for shifted keys. Save when you’re all done, use the included installer to set it up in the system, restart, and add the keymap.

But This Ain’t It.

Where’s the layers? We were promised layers. Honestly, it’s why I’m here, why I even clicked the… the link. Ok. They are coming, but the magic is, you install the layout, layers and all, to your keyboard. That’s the grail for me, just take the board with me wherever, no compromise. There’s a good chence I’ll retain at least Qwerty, so I’ll be able to get by if I can’t use the kb. The benefits saam worth the effort, but stay tuned to see how it pans out!