Your keyboard layout is broken
snprajwal.com
Your keyboard layout is broken
1–10 of 46 posts
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#2I find the concept of learning colemak very intriguing. The qwerty layout is just so strange in some aspects. But the problem is that for my career (hospital medicine) I'm going to need to use random computers all the time. There's just no way to reliably use colemak. I talked to my hospital IT about whether they could attach an alternative layout to my account but it just wasn't in the cards.
In my office I have a moonlander where I use Qwerty but with home row mods which I think are great. But it always takes me a second to readjust back. I don't think I would enjoy going between colemak and qwerty on top of that.
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#3I got myself an ortholinear split keyboard (moonlander). I used to get some wrist pain every now and then but the biggest game changers were switching escape with caps lock. The great thing about the moonlander is that I have backspace, enter , delete and space on my thumbs instead of my pinkies (not including space obviously) and I have to say that when I am in the zone, it is noticeably more comfortable.
When I first got it I was ready to return it after a week. I must have been typing around 10wpm at the beginning. I'm not back to around 80-90. Was it worth it? I think so, the macros and multiple layers are nice but I don't use them a ton. The ability to really relax my shoulders has certainly helped reduce some of the neck pain I experience but after tons of working out and strengthening at the recommendations of physio I imagine my personal issues with neck pain are more manifestations of minor anxiety than physical deficiencies with posture.
I recognise that's not the point of this article but I just thought to mention that it doesn't magically fix everything. But it does make long sessions more enjoyable and comfortable.
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#4This article would be a lot more interesting if it also mentioned any of the downsides of switching to a non-default keyboard layout. They just mention switching to Colemark as if it's the obviously superior option and you'd be a fool for not switching. Depending on what you're doing, I hope you enjoy a lifetime of fighting with keyboard shortcuts, or having to constantly remap keyboard shortcuts for every single new program. And hopefully you're not interacting with other people's devices or having other people interact with yours, because nobody else is going to be sharing your non-default keyboard layout.
It would be cool if web browsers provided better tools for handling diverse keyboard layouts. You can implement customizable shortcuts if your app merits that level of complexity, but if you just wanna implement a few default shortcuts they can end up in really awkward positions for non-default layouts. Unfortunately for most developers supporting multiple keyboard layouts is probably really low in their priority list.
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#5I switched from QWERTY to Colemak-DH and it barely made a difference, not for speed and not for type comfort. It was a fun brain rewiring exercise though.
For me the largest impact in getting rid of wrist and hand pains (besides good adjustment of chair and table and regular exercises) was switching to a Kinesis Advantage. Besides being split, tented, and having column stagger, the key wells put my hands at a much more natural position and makes keys easier to reach. The thumb keys also allowed me to unload the pinkies a lot.
At this point I can’t really go back to a flat keyboard for daily use. They just feel bad.
I also made a Dactyl (meh) and put in an order for the Glove80, which I am really looking forward to try.
But I wouldn’t really recommend a switch to Colemak, it’s not really worth the effort. Also, a subset of the Colemak community is quite obnoxious. You’d think they are interested in alternate layouts, but they have a tendency to attack anyone who proposes something that is not Colemak.
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#6The entire article is moot, because the story of qwerty keyboards being layed out that way is a myth. Nothing more. People can type in an astonishing speed on normal layouts.
https://wiredpen.com/2022/05/12/origin-myths-qwerty-and-dvor....
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#7This article would be a lot more interesting if it also mentioned any of the downsides of switching to a non-default keyboard layout. They just mention switching to Colemark as if it's the obviously superior option and you'd be a fool for not switching. Depending on what you're doing, I hope you enjoy a lifetime of fighting with keyboard shortcuts, or having to constantly remap keyboard shortcuts for every single new…
I use Colemak-DH (modified version of Colemak that has less lateral hand motion - found I was getting slight wrist strain with normal Colemak). I find it more comfortable than Qwerty. I have not had any issue with keyboard shortcuts - Ctrl-Z/X/C are in exactly the same spot and Ctrl-V is shifted over by one key. Most shortcuts are placed to be memorable (e.g. Ctrl-F for Find), not to be ergonomic, so the keyboard layout doesn't really matter. The only place I've really had to customise is Vim, where I've remapped the motion keys back to where they are in Qwerty (actually shifted over by one to j/k/l/;).
On Gnome, switching keyboard layout is very quick and easy - there's an icon in the top bar by default - so I can use that when other people want to use my computer. When I use others' computers, I have to look at the keyboard but it is not too much hassle for me as I don't do this very often.
The main issue I've actually had is remapping Caps Lock to Back Space - not trivial to do in Gnome (required creating my own layout in XDG).
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#8I find the concept of learning colemak very intriguing. The qwerty layout is just so strange in some aspects. But the problem is that for my career (hospital medicine) I'm going to need to use random computers all the time. There's just no way to reliably use colemak. I talked to my hospital IT about whether they could attach an alternative layout to my account but it just wasn't in the cards. In my office I have a m…
I use Colemak as my daily driver, and I find it incredibly difficult to switch back and forth with QWERTY. The muscle memory just no longer works. Others say it’s easy for them, so YMMV.
I had such severe wrist pain on QWERTY that the switch wasn’t an option.
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#9> The Colemak layout was designed with the capabilities of modern keyboards in mind
But it wasn't! Modern keyboard is precisely what the author describes in the following bullet points: split and ortho (though it shouldn't be linear, our fingers have different lengths). He also forgot to mention utilizing your strongest fingers with a thumb cluster instead of that dumb long spacebar
None of the popular QWERTY alternatives have been designed with a proper ergo keyboard in mind, not to mention all the other modern keyboard features like home row modifiers.
(I don't know of any layout development algo and its resulting layout that takes those things with an actually typed training corpus into accounts, but would be happily proven wrong)
Re: Your keyboard layout is broken
#10I switched from QWERTY to Colemak-DH and it barely made a difference, not for speed and not for type comfort. It was a fun brain rewiring exercise though. For me the largest impact in getting rid of wrist and hand pains (besides good adjustment of chair and table and regular exercises) was switching to a Kinesis Advantage. Besides being split, tented, and having column stagger, the key wells put my hands at a much mo…
The Kinesis Advantage solved my severe wrist pain as well. It was a huge QOL improvement, and I can’t imagine ever using a keyboard that doesn’t share its same shape.
But holy cow that learning curve was steep. I switched to Colemak at the same time and thought I was going to lose my mind relearning all the Vim shortcuts. Worth it. But my goodness.