Second follow up poll -
And _thank you_ to everyone who has responded so far, this is fascinating (and completely unscientific. It is only helping me to get an idea of why people might need keycaps!)
Also apologies, the Mastodon polling mechanisms are a bit... "they exist but aren't great."
Also, please boost this toot poll as well.
For people who _do_ touch type:
@Truck I am unaware of what tenkey touch typing is!
-F
@Felthry It _MAY_ be the wrong term.
Let's call it "traditional" for now -
You would use 10 fingers (Ok, 8 and 2 thumbs.) You place the fingers on certain keys: the "home row" and you begin typing. Your muscle memory knows where the keys that you want to type are, and the modifiers (shift, control, alt, alt-gr) so you can produce things like ä, A, and "wipe the line of input out (Unix)" (which is [ctrl-u])
Now, some folks have responded that yes, they DO touchtype, but they taught themselves or they have some other method that doesn't involve all fingers. An alternate keyboard like the Atreus would also use the thumbs for more than just "hit the space bar." That totally counts in my book, and most responders also have responded that way.
So if you type without looking at the keyboard, and use a "home row" - that's what I meant by "traditional" or "ten key touch typing."
"Touch typing" may be an outdated term also, it's what was used in school when it was taught.
@Truck We generally find it more comfortable to type numbers on the number row for general use in the middle of typing other things, but use the numpad when entering a lot of numbers into a spreadsheet
-F
@Felthry I didn't think I would have ANY use for a USB numpad, but... well, now that I have one... I was very wrong (:
I would like to have the ability to flip it upside down, however. (Because of so many years working with phones (: )
...paging @Anarkat for keyboard content.
@Felthry Yes, for non-60% keyboards. Or English speakers. I'm not sure it is considered a separate thing in France, where it was invented.
You need to SHIFT to type numbers with AZERTY.
Because... you have the numpad. So why would you need numbers? You have the numpad.
People be different, yo.
But yes my term was VERY LIKELY not helpful at all. Correspondence afterward has shown that there is MUCH confusion about terms surrounding typing; which depends on language, age, familiarity with English, and device used.
Language: fascinating, but difficult (: