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Colemak keyboard layout

colemak.com

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Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#41

Post by jawngee »

I type about 125 wpm with QWERTY. I've been touch typing since I was 6 though (Dad was a writer and bought me my first typewriter when I was 5).

Interestingly, I get about a 5-10 wpm bump when I smoke marijuana.

I tried switching to DVORAK to see what the hub bub was about. Spent about two weeks with it but never attained the same speeds. I'd try Colemak but I'm not sure what I'd gain.

Keyboard makes a huge difference for me too. Apple's keyboards suck and can put a serious dent in my speed. I've been using the Moshi Luna and it's like playing a piano, though it's more cheaply made then it appears (I've been through two).

I'm fastest on an IBM Selectric typewriter though. When the fingers are blazing there is definitely a rhythm that you fall into that maintains that speed, so long as your brain doesn't jam up.

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#42

Post by leod »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #8

I've used Colemak for a year and a half now. The common shortcut keys are in the same place still (ctrl-c, ctrl-v, etc.). I use Vim and keep the default bindings and it works fine (though movement is odd.. up and down are inverted). I used to type at around 100 wpm with QWERTY and can reach that or higher now. I can still use QWERTY when I need to although I have to look down a bit. All in all I like it. It feels goo…

I'm a Vim user as well, and when I tried Colemak for a few months some years back, Vim was what made me go back to QWERTY. It was just too awkward as I would like to be able to work with both layouts.

Creating new bindings didn't work for me at all (especially since I didn't want to lose the ability to use someone else's Vim, or a vanilla Vim). I think the key might be to focus on what shortcut key you're actually pressing instead of where it is on the keyboard. This turned out to be pretty difficult for me with the hjkl keys, which are, as you say, fairly odd.

Interestingly enough though, today I can still write Colemak fluently whenever I accidentally switch to it, and it's a lot of fun! So I might give this whole thing with Colemak a new try, knowing that someone went the same route as I (keeping the default Vim shortcut bindings).

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#43

Post by rickdale »

jawngee wrote: post #41

I type about 125 wpm with QWERTY. I've been touch typing since I was 6 though (Dad was a writer and bought me my first typewriter when I was 5). Interestingly, I get about a 5-10 wpm bump when I smoke marijuana. I tried switching to DVORAK to see what the hub bub was about. Spent about two weeks with it but never attained the same speeds. I'd try Colemak but I'm not sure what I'd gain. Keyboard makes a huge differenc…

Great stat on the marijuana. Any other things you've quantified stoned vs not? There is so little research done on marijuana that usually people only think of it as Hollywood has showed it to us. It's like the muchies. I smoke all the time for the ailment my medical card was issued for, yet managed to lose 50 pounds last year. Ganja affects everyone differently and it has yet to be studied the way it needs to be. So good stuff on tracking those stats.

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#44

Post by fooyc »

What matters most when programming is all the non alpha numeric symbols.

You likely type symbols such as ', ", (, and ) more often than all numbers, and more often than half the letters.

If these symbols are accessible only by using the shift or alt gr keys, your keyboard layout sucks for programing.

Colemak sucks as a programing layout (just like virtually all keyboard layours actually).

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#45

Post by DennisP »

jawngee wrote: post #41

I type about 125 wpm with QWERTY. I've been touch typing since I was 6 though (Dad was a writer and bought me my first typewriter when I was 5). Interestingly, I get about a 5-10 wpm bump when I smoke marijuana. I tried switching to DVORAK to see what the hub bub was about. Spent about two weeks with it but never attained the same speeds. I'd try Colemak but I'm not sure what I'd gain. Keyboard makes a huge differenc…

You might like a nice mechanical keyboard. This is a good source: http://www.elitekeyboards.com/

A good starter keyboard is the Leopold with Cherry brown switches. There's a slight feedback bump partway down, and that's as far as you have to press to register the stroke. Your fingers can just float across the keys, very comfortable and, after a little practice, very fast.

I recently bought that one, and another with Cherry red switches, which lack the feedback bump. Now I'm completely hooked. And as a bonus, it costs about the same as your Luna, is rated for 50 million keystrokes, and if you spill something on it you can just soak it in water and let it dry out a couple days.

Lots of good discussion at geekhack.org.

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#46

Post by portmanteaufu »

codered wrote: post #36

I'm not sure why every new layout decides to remove the CAPS LOCK KEY. I imagine coders aren't the inventors of these layouts.

May I infer from your post that you use Caps Lock at least semi-regularly?

Myself, I abhor it. I've always just held Shift, even for long runs of capital letters. As far as my usage patterns go, Caps Lock serves only to foil my attempts to type my password. :/

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#47

Post by brendyn »

I observed something quite strange that readers might find interesting. When I first tried to learn Dvorak two years ago I found that it completely destroy ability to type qwerty. I simply couldn't type either layouts! I ended up giving up early and regaining my qwerty powers. But then just last year I tried to learn it again and found that it had genuinely no effect on my qwerty ability. I could switch between them like a fluent multi-linguist. Naturally I gave up again :P until last week when I decided on giving Colemak a proper go. I have been on Colemak for 3 days without changing back until right now when I wrote the second half of this with switching back to qwerty, and observe no difficulty in typing, except for backspace where I keep occidentally hitting the CAPS key which is what I use as backspace for Colemak. Not sure why my brain seems to treat backspace differently such that that happens... I also have no idea how my strange experience happened, but for those concerned about forgetting their qwerty ability, know that you don't need to even if at first your mind turns to spaghetti and you can't even type with any layout

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#48

Post by reeses »

zobzu wrote: post #24
reeses wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating about the phone. iOS only supports colemak on an external keyboard (or in a custom app) so I've not tried it there. You make perfect sense. I made a move fairly similar to yours. I went for the Truly Ergonomic keyboard because laterally staggered keys seem stupid if you're giving up Sholes anyway. I typed about 5-10 wpm for the first month. No matter what I tried, it was far too slow. Part of this was los…

Its not "fascinating" about the phone. It's 100% normal. You could say it's a pretty interesting turn of events in the history of keyboards however. Qwerty was designed for typing machines (typewriters) where you needed enough space between keys so that the machine wouldn't jam. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter ) That's exactly why qwerty is better on the phone as well as fingers, like the metal tyepbar,…

That's precisely why I found it fascinating. :)

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#49

Post by thatswrong0 »

leod wrote: post #42
thatswrong0 wrote: post #8

I've used Colemak for a year and a half now. The common shortcut keys are in the same place still (ctrl-c, ctrl-v, etc.). I use Vim and keep the default bindings and it works fine (though movement is odd.. up and down are inverted). I used to type at around 100 wpm with QWERTY and can reach that or higher now. I can still use QWERTY when I need to although I have to look down a bit. All in all I like it. It feels goo…

I'm a Vim user as well, and when I tried Colemak for a few months some years back, Vim was what made me go back to QWERTY. It was just too awkward as I would like to be able to work with both layouts. Creating new bindings didn't work for me at all (especially since I didn't want to lose the ability to use someone else's Vim, or a vanilla Vim). I think the key might be to focus on what shortcut key you're actually pr…

It also helps that I wasn't too proficient with Vim, if at all, when I started using Colemak, so I didn't have to deal with any burned in habits with Vim either.

Re: Colemak keyboard layout

#50

Post by sirsar »

fooyc wrote: post #44

What matters most when programming is all the non alpha numeric symbols. You likely type symbols such as ', ", (, and ) more often than all numbers, and more often than half the letters. If these symbols are accessible only by using the shift or alt gr keys, your keyboard layout sucks for programing. Colemak sucks as a programing layout (just like virtually all keyboard layours actually).

Remapping my AltGr layout has done me wonders. I can press AltGr with my right thumb, and then I get {}[]()_= as the no-motion home row. Colemak has nothing to say about AltGr.
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