On Using X w/o the Rodent

Jacobian asks "I'm really sick of my hands acking from typing and using my mouse all day. I would like recommendations on a cool ergonomic keyboard, and a way that I can realistically say goodbye to my mouse once and for all in X. Every WM that I've used extensively has been very unfriendly if you don't use a mouse. Some (fvwm) you can avoid using the mouse most of the time, but eventually there is some focusing problems that make you reach for the rodent once again. Is there a WM in which I would never have to use my mouse?" I've never thought about it before, but having a keyboard friendly WM couldn't hurt. How do the different WMs rate on the various functions that can be accessed from both the mouse and the keyboard? (More)

Which actions cause the most long-term damage to your wrists: Repetitive keyboard use? Or repetitive mouse use? Would a keyboard friendly WM really help those suffering from wrist pain?

On a more personal note, I've found this submission to be rather ironic considering that for the past week, I've had to wear a splint on my wrist, due to an old injury (and not carpal tunnel, thank god!) commited in my reckless youth. So it's interesting that this one came along when it did.

Comments

KDE

[whig]

Not to start a GNOME/KDE flamewar, but KDE is quite reasonable for most things without using a mouse. Alt-F2 can execute an arbitrary command, such as bring up an xterm (or kterminal) and Alt-Tab semantics work similarly to M$ Windows. You may have a little trouble negotiating with Netscape, however. Unfortunately, I think that no window manager can make all applications mouse-independent.

Very odd coincidence...

[pipeb0mb]

This is just too weird.
I suffered a strain of an old hand injury on Thanksgiving, and, like the author, I too did the splint thing.
I was researching around, and found that KDE has several predefined shortcuts, and even allows the user to bind the Windows© keys to certain things. Here is the link:

http://www.kde.org/documentation/faq/kdefaq-7.ht ml

This helped me enough to get started, but, it made me seriously thnk about the way X ignores the kb, which, with its console roots, is quite ironic.

Good luck to you.

gnome + e, and another mouse peeve

[Barbarian]

I know with gnome + enlightenment, you can alt+tab between windows (or any other key combination you choose). However I don't know about things like selecting menu items.

--Not quite on topic, but related...well it's on topic since it's leading to discomfort and wrist strain in X:
One thing I've noticed with the mouse in X is that for some mice, the multiplier is just too small. No, I don't mean acceleration. I mean the factor where it takes mouse movement * some factor to calculate each more. See, I have a Logitech Ps/2 firstmouse+, and the base speed is very slow (because to improve resolution it transmits physical movements as smaller steps).

In Windows, with Mouseware, I have these options:
- Speed (a slider bar sets this)
- Acceleration (slow, medium fast) (controls speed + threshold, or threshold is fixed perhaps)

However when I boot into LINUX, in gnome I have these options:
- Acceleration
- Threshold.

See there is no way to set the base speed in gnome. I end up kludging it by setting acceration to max and threshold as low as the slider allows.

This mouse movement problem is an X issue, not gnome. There is no way to specify a mouse movement multiplier independant of acceleration and threshold (I dug up the gnome control-center source to see the calls being made and looked those up).

So if you look at it this way, there should be three parameters that affect mouse movement:

accel
threshold
base multiplier (in X is always 1)

and movement would go like this:

movement threshold:
accel * (base multiplier * movement)

However in X it's always, base multiplier = 1 always.

I hope I'm not the only person in the world bothered by this.

Mouseless pointer movement

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is not really what the question is asking, but it's somewhat related and a lot of people don't know it...

XFree lets you hit ctrl-shift-numlock, after which the numeric keypad will move your mouse pointer. You can use + to click, ins to drag...

Just an interesting tidbit of info. :-)

Re:Mouseless pointer movement

[Tom Christiansen]

Several problems with this idea.

With mouseless movement via keyboard mouse emulation you don't have fine-grained pointer control. It's extremely awkward to move around. It's like using arrow keys instead of a mouse to play a fast-action game like xbill.

A more fundamental flaw that cannot be fixed through physical reconfiguration is that non-drawing programs that make overly heavy mouse use usually misdesiged. Sure, if you have a bitmap, you want a high precision pointer device. But for most other things, you don't. Nonetheless, somebody got this insanely fucked up idea that if it's got a mouse interface, it's easy to use for a novice. This just isn't true at all. And even if it were so, optimizing for a novice instead of a long-time user is nutty. You're only a novice once, and then for a very short time. You have to spend the rest of your life as a non-novice suffering with the design decisions made for people who don't know what they're doing. It doesn't have to be this way, because you could design a program to help both sorts. But nobody does. They forget that the experienced user is more important than the novice, because his annoyance will be compounded across the time interval. If you have to design for only one, choose the real user, not the novice. If you can design for both, better yet.

The proper solution is for a program to be designed to allow the user to describe what he wants to do using a richer command set. There's a reason it's called a "point-and-drool" interface: it's been expert-proofed. Witness Motif text widgets.

You can't retrofit a keyboard-simulated mouse on an overly mousey program and ever manage Extreme Keyboarding. This takes careful design in the program so that you hit the right abstraction levels, not mere pointer emulation. We don't see much of that these days.

not practical for most people, but....

[kroy]

I learned how to use the mouse with my right foot. It was rather frustrating, and its a bit difficult right-clicking, but the effort has paid off. I no longer need to move my hands off the keyboard when using any window manager.

Mousekeys in Linux

[Tim Macinta]

Here's a trick I plicked up awhile back here on slashdot: in X you can simulate a mouse using your keypad in a very similar way that the Windows "Mousekeys" program works. The functionality is built into XFree86 and all you need to do to activate it is hit Shift-NumLock. After activating the feature, use the number keys to move around and '5' to click. '/', '*', and '-' switch the mousebutton that '5' represents. '0' is a click and hold (for dragging) and '.' releases the click and hold. The other keys may do something as well, but I'm not sure what. Also, to speed up the movement, tap '5' while you're moving the arrow with one of the other number keys.

I was really excited when I found this feature. IMO, there are a few improvements that could be made, though (or maybe I just don't know how to do what I want):

• Using '5' to speed things up is often inadvertanly interpretted as a click. This can get annoying.
• The feature times out. So if you don't use it for awhile, you'll need to hit NumLock-Shift again. I'd prefer to have it permanently enabled.
• I'd also like a way to know whether or not the feature is active without actually trying the number keys (to avoid inadvertant numbers being typed). Ideally there would be an indicator on my Gnome panel that would tell me whether it's on or off, just like there's a Mousekeys indicator on Windows to indicate whether it's on or off.

Windowmaker

[Robin Hood]

I use Windowmaker (current version 0.61.1). The "root" menu, as well as the window-switching menu, can be accessed through keyboard shortcuts (defaults to F12 and F11 respectively). I use multiple workspaces and switch back and forth by pressing Alt-# where # is the number of the workspace I want. Using Windowmaker's "Rename workspace" feature, I label each one: "Main", "Games", "Netscape", "Programming" and then switch to whichever one is appropriate before I launch a program. It works well for me and I usually don't need the mouse. You can set focus mode to be "Click to focus" and then switch the focus among the windows on your current workspace by using Alt-Tab, a key combo that's probably been drilled into your fingers by constant Windows use. The fact that Alt-Tab stays on the current workspace is very nice, as is the fact that the window list (F11) shows all the windows as well as which workspace they're on, so you can use that menu to switch workspaces or just remind you of which Alt-# key you want to press.

Checking out the keyboard-configuration program under WindowMaker, here are the things you can do with the keyboard:

• Open applications menu
• Open window list menu
• Open window commands menu
• Hide active application
• Miniaturize active window
• Close active window
• Maximize active window
• Maximize active window vertically
• Raise active window
• Lower active window
• Raise/lower window under mouse pointer
• Shade active window
• Move/Resize active window
• Select active window
• Focus next window
• Focus previous window
• Switch to next workspace
• Switch to previous workspace
• Switch to next ten workspaces
• Switch to previous ten workspaces
• Switch to workspace 1
• Switch to workspace 2
  .
  .
  .
• Switch to workspace 10
• Shortcut for window 1
• Shortcut for window 2
  .
  .
  .
• Shortcut for window 10
• Raise Clip
• Lower Clip
• Raise/Lower Clip

As you can see, there's quite a lot of keyboard control built-in. Try it out!
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:

beware of wrist splints!!!

[trance9]

One more thing.... beware of wrist splints! They give you short term relief by taking the load off the muscles that are bothering you, but they are long term doom.

The danger is that your muscles will atrophy in the splint. Then when you remove it you will re-injure almost immediately--you will probably think you're just not recovered yet, but in fact it is the weakening of your own muscles because of the splint that is causing your trouble!

You have to learn to type properly using all of the muscles in your shoulders arms, forarms, wrists, and fingers, balancing the load so that nothing is overworked. You cannot solve the problem with gimmicks like splints--you actually have to solve the problem with the way you type, and with how much you type.

Instead of using a wrist splint type without one. Type as much as you can WITHOUT symptoms, taking frequent breaks. Try to find out how much you can do before you experience symptons and do just under that much typing. Make sure you keep typing every day--don't lose your endurance. On the other hand, it's a mistake to do exercises to "strengthen" your hand--typing all day long is enough exercise.

If you're having trouble you really should see a doctor who knows something about typing injuries. Many doctors will tell you to use splints--these are the ones who know nothing about typing injuries, go and see someone else--ask to see a specialist.

building strong, healthy fingers

[TheDullBlade]

it's a mistake to do exercises to "strengthen" your hand--typing all day long is enough exercise

This is as wrong as the idea that doing lots of jogging will build up strong legs (BTW, if you want strong legs, do squats or leg press). Typing is what got you into this mess, it won't get you out.

If you want to strengthen some part of your body, you need brief, intense, and infrequent exercise. Constant light (like typing or jogging) use tells your body to conserve energy by paring down to bare essentials. That's why many geeks have scrawny wrists and finger problems and most long-time joggers have scrawny legs and knee problems.

To strengthen the fingers I strongly recommend this exercise: lay a sheet of newspaper (just one, as you get stronger you'll want to stack up two or three pages) flat on a table in front of you, grab it with the fingertips of one hand and crumple it into a ball without using your other hand or squashing it against anything (including the table). Repeat with fresh sheets until you try and fail to finish crumpling the last sheet. If you feel pain in your joints, stop and try again tomorrow. Do this every day for a week or two, then every second day or so indefinitely.

Another good exercise is wetting a towel and wringing it dry over and over, or squeezing a soft foam ball. Remember, exhaust as rapidly as possible then rest as long as it takes to recover.

Oddly, strength increases spill over between near muscle groups, so if you work out your arms you'll help strengthen your fingers too (you don't have to get fancy, just grabbing a sack of potatos and curling and pressing it overhead ten or twenty times with each arm will make a huge difference if you aren't getting much exercise). And of course, if you work out your back and legs you'll get stronger all over; deadlifts in particular can transform your entire body, and have a dramatic effect on your grip.

If at all possible, avoid all typing until your fingers are strong and healthy again: remember, it is like jogging after you've had problems with your knees. Switch to the hunt-and-peck method if you must use computers, and do odd things like hitting the keys with your thumbs if your fingers get at all tired or sore. Rest frequently.

The basic principle of strength increase is anabolic stress (which should be intense for maximum positive effect and brief for minimum negative effect) followed by adequate rest. Your body heals, grows, and strengthens only when you rest. If you overload your body when it should be resting, you cause cumulative damage, not strength gain. This is why no sustained strength training program should be done more than once every second day.