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Dragonfruit by protieusz - my first trackball build
(lemmy.world)
Been daily driving low-profile Gateron switches for a while but wanted to give MX another shot. Mostly so I can use my nice keycaps again. I didn't buy this filament specifically for this build but I think it works really nicely.
Switches are Ergo Clears, lubed and filmed with (IIRC) 45g springs. They were previously on an Ergodox and barely got any use as I switched to smaller boards shortly after modding them and wasn't comfortable with desoldering yet, so I'm happy to have finally found a new home for them.
Caps are MT3 Godspeed, case is Overture Matte PLA (light blue and white), printed on the Sovol SV06 Plus.
There's less finger movement needed (for any alternative layout) compared to QWERTY so in theory it could be faster. In reality it seems to not make that much difference - typing speed records are still mostly set with QWERTY, and personally I think I'm about the same speed as I was with QWERTY, or a bit slower.
It's noticeably more comfortable though. I'm not sure there's any actual ergonomic benefit, but it just feels really nice to type on. I don't regret learning it but I don't exactly recommend it either - it was a lot of effort for a small benefit.
If you're deep enough into the ergo keyboard hobby that learning an alternate layout sounds fun to you though, then I say go for it, it's an interesting challenge.
I'm visiting from all and spend most of my time on my phone. Ideally someday I'll get a proper desktop I'll want to use and can explore keyboards more. It does make me wonder if there alternatw layouts designed with swipe typing in mind. Could be interesting.
Not sure about swipe typing specifically, but there's been some pretty interesting and weird attempts to invent better touchscreen input methods since at least the Palm Pilot era, probably on the Newton too even before that. There's also some crazy stuff from the world of wearable computing that's even more niche.
One of the Lemmy devs even made one but I haven't dedicated enough time to it.