I wouldn't recommend learning Dvorak since it's a lot of work for the return. Colemak can be learnt gradually (Tarmak) if you wish, and is generally much faster to learn. I've done both, and I felt at a disadvantage when learning Colemak after Dvorak because of all the needless Dvorak remappings I had spent my time on.

Incidentially, this includes at least ZX and likely CVB too (using an Angle ergonomic mod to easily reach the B). So you don't need the shortcuts; there's still no need to move keys around from QWERTY just to move them!

I don't remove the CapsLock but enhance it (Extend mappings); to get the normal Caps operation I can press Caps+Esc but I hardly need that.

See my sig topic. OpenSUSE uses XKB so my files should be workable with it (maybe we'll have to figure out what XKB version to use).

Calling Colemak the bastard child of QWERTY and Dvorak makes little sense to me since Colemak has little in common with Dvorak overall. Did you mean conceptually?

Personally, if I wanted something even simpler than Colemak I think I'd use Tarmak#2 or #3 for a while. Then I could use what I had learnt to switch to full Colemak with ease.

Having used Dvorak for a few months I think it's too big stretch to say Colemak and Dvorak have anything in common. They look and feel completely different.

Not too late. A week is nothing, you'll use months and maybe years before a layout settles in – more so with the exotic Dvorak than with many of the more careful remappings available today. I don't see what a week has to do with anything. Of course, if you feel that way about it then you do.

Well Dvorak was my choice, I don't regret it, and I choose to stick with it.  Colemak and possibly a few others will eventually have their turn.  I don't intend on stopping here; Dvorak is simply more widely available, which as I said is one of the primary reasons for choosing it in the first place.  I'd like to start by learning the most portable layout.

I won't back down on a layout that I actually want to learn after making decent progress with it, especially if I still intend to give it a try in the future.  That would be just throwing time and effort away, which would be a waste.

Wanna drive with one foot in a Ford while other foot in a BMW? Surely you can go doubly faster.

When typing, you usually remember the combinations of keys which are language specific. It sounds pretty plausible to not have problems using two layouts for two languages – assuming they use the same alphabet, otherwise it's no problem whatsoever.

But I wouldn't be very qualified to talk on this, since English is the only Latin language I type often. I know that when I started trying to type phonetically Bulgarian with Colemak, it was soo slow and hard. I must have typed with 30wpm or less. And I was in the 70s in English.

I can't state that it's true for everyone, but it has been true for me and everyone who I've discussed this with at least.

Languages is a perfectly fine example. The problem I'm talking about with the whole "using the same tool in a different way" is how one deals with muscle memory. When one speaks a different language, your muscle memory doesn't interfere with you trying to speak that different language. That is, it's not as if you're trying so speak in Spanish and then mid-way through a sentence, you finish it off with English or say every other word in English. I haven't heard of a single case where someone trying to speak a new language claim that the ones they already know actually impair them from learning new ones. Of course, trying to learn two languages would be harder than learning one at a time, and I'm primarily discussing how learning one affects the ones you've already known.

This marked difference can clearly be seen in practical reality as well. Recall trying to learn Colemak and having your QWERTY bias constantly take over and type the wrong letter (in my case, I would constantly use 'R' instead of 'S', since the 'S' in Colemak is so close to QWERTY's). This is also the point of contention that many make towards keyboard layouts that are "almost the same but slightly off from QWERTY" layouts. Because the key placement is so like QWERTY's but off by one or two places, it makes it harder to adapt away from QWERTY's key placement. This isn't to say that Colemak must then be harder to learn than Dvorak, but take your main layout, transpose every single key (i.e. so every key is only one or two places off), and you'll have one of the most ridiculously tough layouts to learn.

I fail to see how that relates at all to keyboard layouts. If one learns Colemak, there's very very little that one could gain if their true objective was to improve QWERTY. Sure, the typing training itself could improve your overall keyboard-typing technique, but you could already do that AND improve your QWERTY muscle memory by type-training with QWERTY. And learning conscientiously about how layouts work and what one does better than another does nothing to improve one's muscle memory and WPM. Take any top QWERTY-only typist out there for example. It's highly unlikely that he or she would improve their QWERTY by mastering more layouts (and as I've argued above, it would actually impair their QWERTY unless they were to consistently train both layouts frequently).

After a couple days of increasing confusion and sharply declining typing accuracy, forgetting where keys were, I took a break.  I actually quit using QWERTY completely not too long ago; I just decided that I no longer really care if I can type well in that layout or not.  After all, it will remain printed on the keys of every keyboard I come across, and I will probably never forget the general area of the keys.  It was partially this 100% switch to Dvorak for everyday typing, and not just for practice, that I think caused it--though in the end I think it will be worth it.

Anyway, my typing is still slow but it seems like with today's resurgence of accuracy (and then some) it's slowly improving.  Also, with my mind more relaxed, I have been able to type with somewhat reduced mental effort; more stuff just seems to flow from my mind to the keyboard without errors and seemingly without even thinking about it.  Certain words and sequences of letters are starting to feel pretty good and natural.  Because of this, I've been able to take notice of a few things about the layout itself.

First, the LLS/LS/SL sequences--while they still irk me because of their frequency--seem to be getting much more tolerable.  I am also getting used to the locations of the W and V keys, another of the one of my original complaints, although it's still an uncomfortable reach.  The period, comma and apostrophe are the first three punctuation keys I got used to, and I actually like Dvorak's placement of them.  The main exception is the quotation mark, and this is mainly because I tend to only use the left shift and it's a damn-near impossible reach.  Using the right shift always gives me hand-misalignment problems and causes more trouble than it's worth, so I usually tend to avoid it.

The hyphen/underscore key placement, in my opinion, is excellent (pinkyache was spot-on with that one)... I always wondered why it was always way out of the way, like that damn exclamation point.  The slash/question mark is... different, to say the least.  Not bad in any way, though; it just takes a bit of getting used to.  I tend to use underscores and hyphens frequently in file names and passwords, and just hyphens pretty often on the command line.  Their Dvorak location is a nice change.  The colon/semicolon location, on the other hand, kind of... sucks.  I use the semicolon occasionally in normal typing, and the colon sometimes in passwords (and also in regular typing).

So far, I'd say the worst things about the Dvorak layout are the locations of the quotation mark and colon, mainly due to their location relative to the left shift key.

Yeah the period and comma do get premium positions, might be worth remapping them to something else - I wouldn't quite know what.

The Dvorak US layout (I think shipped with Windows) places the double quote under Qwerty's shifted Q position, which isn't that awkward, it's nearer than on Qwerty.  You might be struggling by having the double quote 'above' the 2 - where the UK layout places it.

Which shows there are slight variations to the Dvorak layout.  I use the UK version, which can sometimes be awkward when moving to a Linux console, where I seem to have the US version - and the same on Windows.  A couple of the keys are different, like the tilde and vertical pipe.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Si … rak_layout

Looking at the above link: the double quote doesn't seem to have made it into the the original patent!  The numerals are in a different order.  So there are many variations.  At least Colemak is more consistant!

I use the right shift to obtain a double quote.  Perhaps using alternative hands for shifting might make it more comfortable.

Those were the days indeed ,' (damn, can't do it)  I quite like the simplified approach...  Reminds me of the hyphen, en-dash and em-dash thread.  Are the diacritics done, were done, or done like that (writing back over the character using the BACK SPACE) under some languages, for some glyphs in the same manner?

Yes, the quotation mark is in the QWERTY "Q" location.  I rarely ever needed a "q" to begin with, and practically never need a capital one, but I use quotation marks relatively frequently.  I'm using the "standard" ANSI variant; not the classic, programmer's, single-handed, or some other specialist variant.

As I mentioned already I actually don't mind the locations of the main punctuation (' , .).  It's just shifting to get the ".  I probably use periods and commas more than W and V most of the time, and those are the main characters I find difficult to reach... if they were swapped, I wouldn't be having too much fun with the commas and periods.  I think the real problem is the physical number of fingers we have, which limits the possible (comfortable) keys on the board.

The thing that really annoys me is how some of the keys are way out of the way (!, @, $, %, &, *) and the complete lack of others (°, ¢, etc.), and that remains the same across all layouts.  At some point I will probably try to see if I can figure out how to set custom key mappings to AltGr.  The method to achieve that functionality is there... and yet, Shift is the only modifier commonly used (talk about limiting!).  I've tried the US International layout and didn't like both the apostrophe and quotation marks being dead keys.  The US International with no dead keys was horrible in its own ways, using AltGr but combinations that made no sense and focused exclusively on foreign characters (ie. no degree sign).

For example... why is ! mapped as Shift+1?  Why not AltGr+/ (same key as question mark)?  Little things like that.  I'd rather keep my fingers away from that wretched number row if at all possible.