I forgot how I came about Colemak.

Actually, no. I do remember now.

There have been a couple posts on arsTechnica lately about one of the contributors / editors / journalists making the transition to Dovorak.  Her (iirc) experiences weren't all that great (not that it had anything to do with my decision).  Anyway, one of the commentors had mentioned Colemak. 

Upon looking it up initially I couldn't decide if being so similar to Qwerty was just a crutch or a gimmick or something - but after giving it some thought and reviewing heat maps and the other proponent stuff listed on the Colemak site that it seemed viable to give it a go.

After a few days of casual research, came across some blog posts that discussed your transitional layouts.  I was intrigued by the L-U-I loop so did a bunch of reading of the forum posts and such.  Continuing along this approach, the granularity of the loops was abusive :(.  From 3 letter loop swap to 219508 character loop swap to 197509128501928 swap just isn't friendly IMHO.  The "one hand at a time" thoughts also seemed interesting.

Something that seemed extremely counter productive IMHO was the temporary movements of keys.  There's great arguments made for it in the threads here, but it always seemed... counter productive IMHO.

I will note that I am an EX-smoker, and that I did successfully quit cold turkey my first time for ~6months before stress kicked my booty.  Cold turkey seems to make a lot more sense for training the subconscious.  Although I'm not Qwerty -> Colemak cold turkey, I do think whole hog is the correct approach IMHO.  Could also be my 'stuck in my ways' and the jarring of learning something new seems 'worse' if ya gotta learn something 'new' more than once heh. I'm old, not a layout junkie, etc.  Many 'layout' sites and their authors do seem to make assumptions about folks that aren't true heh.  I suppose it's akin to "experts set the bar higher than it really is for the common man" or something.

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If there was a Tarmak system that had smaller granularity on the loop swaps it seems like it'd be more viable.  I dunno if that's possible or not.  I dunno if you folks have tried writing some brute force stuff to attempt to find other short (2-5 character) replacements or not, etc.

For what it's worth, reading a lot of your (you specifically heh) conversations here did help make me decide to make the switch to Colemak, and I did seriously contemplate Tarmak or even the L-U-I layout.  If doing things cold turkey, L-U-I seems like it'd be a great first step without a shadow of a doubt.

Been home for a bit.. time to install software and hit the tutors for first time at home :D

Great to read your very detailed posts. The first three weeks are the hardest, so stay strong.

Sorry if the Tarmak posts seem chaotic. I only recommend that you read my sig topic about each subject at first, and if that's badly written in any part please let me know. In the sig topics I link to the particular post that's of interest – but soon I'll try to get an updated one written as there have been a recent update of the Tarmak progress.

I really wouldn't try to break the loops into smaller chunks than the current 3–4 keys! As you too mentioned, having a key jump about the keyboard into wrong positions doesn't make you happier so it's a necessary evil to get the loop thing working. Currently you can choose to have the J wrongly placed somewhere between once and three times depending on which steps you skip, and that's a good range I feel.

Woke up, came to work.

Fiddled around a bit trying to warm fingers up, including going through a dozen waves of typing game:

http://phoboslab.org/ztype/

Forgot to do a warmup Colemak lesson where I had left off last night (lesson 8) and went ahead and did typing speed tests:

Qwerty: 93wpm / 96%
Colemak: 21wpm / 89%

I probably have the keyboard memorized.  Technically still have four 'new' keys to learn in the typing tutor: FUY; (along with a bunch of standard Qwerty keys).

Will continue with the typing tutor for at least today. It has ya type gibberish, which I think is beneficial to thinking about key position.  Sure, ya don't pick up common di/tri-graphs, but I seem to like it honestly.

The D key isn't the bane of my existence anymore.  Sleep apparently did some good :)  The N and L keys are prolly the worst offenders of Qwerty-isms so far this morning.

Am feeling more comfortable with Colemak today.  While I had fully planned on going through The Change (TM) come hell or high water, I'm now beginning to feel confident about it \o/

My hands are still a little stiff, but do feel better than they did yesterday 'morning' (note, I'm in the USA but by whim I've got a night schedule for the last couple days).

-------------------------

As an aside, I have plans on getting a mechanical keyboard, right ? I almost wonder if some of the faceless keycaps would make more sense now.  Before I always considered them just a very stupid egotistical statement - but having more than one layout active on a keyboard... makes it a bit more attractive.

I've looked down only a few times during the typing lessons and learned very quickly to never do that again hehehe.

Have switched over to all Colemak all the time for casual typing with the thought that have to use it to get better.

Typing tests put me at 18wpm or so. Actual typing not from "copy" is far slower :(

At least it feels far slower.  Possibly due to the inability to keep up with thoughts is infuriating heh.

Check this
http://skwire.dcmembers.com/fp/?page=keycounter

Modified.  I dunno how much it really helps, but:

myKeys := "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890"

; Iterate through myKeys variable and create a hotkey for each letter and number.
Loop, Parse, myKeys
{
    Hotkey, ~*%A_LoopField% up, CountKeys, On
}

Stack := Object() ; creates stack object

Return ; End of auto-execute section.


CountKeys:
{
    ; Get the third character from the left of the hotkey name.
    StringMid, myKey, A_ThisHotkey, 3, 1    
    
    Stack.Insert(myKey)

    if Stack.MaxIndex() > 10 
    {
       Stack.Remove(Stack.MinIndex())  ; remove the top bottom the stack
    }


}
Return

~BS::
{
    ; we're counting stuff...
    if Stack.MaxIndex() > 0
    {
        LastKey := Stack.Remove(Stack.MaxIndex())

        %LastKey%_Count++    
        Total_Count++
    }
}
Return

F1::
{
    ; display

    ; Null out report variable.
    myReport := ""
    
    ; Iterate over myKeys variable and build out report, key by key.
    Loop, Parse, myKeys
    {
        myReport .= A_LoopField . ":`t" . %A_LoopField%_Count . "`n"
    }
    
    ; Display report with total at the bottom.
    MsgBox, % myReport . "`nTotal:`t" . Total_Count
}
Return

F2::
{
    ; display and zero

    ; Null out report variable.
    myReport := ""
    
    ; Iterate over myKeys variable and build out report, key by key.
    Loop, Parse, myKeys
    {
        myReport .= A_LoopField . ":`t" . %A_LoopField%_Count . "`n"
    %A_LoopField%_Count := ""
    }
    
    ; Display report with total at the bottom.
    MsgBox, % myReport . "`nTotal:`t" . Total_Count

    Total_Count = 0
}
Return

It's not truly a stack. It also has issues as to not truly knowing what was being deleted via backspace, etc.  But for generic typing ... such as:

The quaick broewn fox jumps over the lazy dog.

It should see the 'a' and 'e' deletions correctly.

Some fun comes where you:

The quaiick brown...

Cause it will tag both A and I as deleted, which may or may not be conceptually correct ?

Known bugs:
* If you switch to a different window and start deleting ...
* Or if you move the keyboard carat position and start deleting ...
* Doesn't see punctuation key strokes as deletions
* only 10 character buffer for keeping track of strings of deletion stuff (could be larger I suppose, but do you often type more than 10 characters and then delete the entire line and go back ?)

Ideas:
* specific macros for punctuation - i think these have to be specific at least given how the script works
* output to the clipboard instead of the screen (or, rather, both?)
* directional arrows clears the 'stack' so that deletes don't get applied
** maybe mouse clicks too ?
** alt-tab'ing too ?
** or is there a focus event in ahk, too ?
* don't apply a "delete" count until a key is pressed and the last key was the delete.
** ie: back space a bunch
** hit a letter
** it treats the last letter deleted as the faulty one, not the entire set of deletions

--------------

addenum: i dunno if the AHK discussion belongs in this thread ? heh.

cursing: using the v0.3 tool from Colemak, this AHK script still sees all of the key presses as Qwerty instead of Colemak heheheh

Took Sunday off for the most part.

Get to work today, at more regular hours, and things are a bit pressing and I've discovered a problem with the autohotkey based implementation of Colemak remapping. Basically, arrow keys seem to stop working an I can't ctrl-c in putty etc.

Actually, I just tested it out (restarted the exe) and I appear able to use all those keys again.

*Scratches head*

Ok, back into Colemak!

Morning 3min speed tests:

Qwerty: 87 wpm / 96% accuracy
Colemak: 26 wpm / 92% accuracy

Morning 3 min speed tests results:

Qwerty: 87wpm, 96% accuracy.
Colemak: 31wpm, 90% accuracy.

I did note during the Qwerty test that I made many more Colemak errors than in the last few days.

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edit: currently hated keys: F, G and L.

I got to work today and could not type at all.

Was trying to type Qwerty just to warm up hands... and whatever I was typing was Klingon half Qwerty / half Colemak.  Completely befuddled.

Took 5min to get settled so could type LOL.

As far as improving better than you, JF, I doubt it.  25WPM / 98% trumps 30/90 or even 40/90 IMHO.

Gonna continue to wake up and stuff.  Will edit this post in a bit to add the morning typing speeds after take the tests.

Was entirely too busy yesterday to get back and take a Colemak typing test.  Did manage a Qwerty test though.

Qwerty 3 min: 81wpm / 97% accuracy.

I do use Colemak nearly exclusively at home now.

-----------------------

Got to work today and immediately did a Qwerty typing test.  Am typing this post out in Colemak as a way to warm up for Colemak typing test coming up.

Qwerty 3 min: 90wpm / 96% accuracy
Colemak 3 min: 30wpm / 90% accuracy.

Felt weird today. Last night typing was going great in Colemak, today I'm stumbling all over myself :(

Woke up, did some typing at home ar in Colemak and then headed to work and immediately took a Qwerty speed test.  It was some lyrics of some song I didn't know - but it was pretty repetitive so my score is a bit inflated.  Am now typing this message out as my warm up for Colemak.

As a cute aside, I appear to type better in Colemak if I close my eyes as I type.  Fewer errors and stuff.  I wonder if I'm visualizing each key stroke or something.

Morning 3min speed tests.

Qwerty: 102wpm / 97% accuracy.
Colemak: 31 wpm / 89% acccuracy.

Although the Colemak score isn't that great, it felt pretty good while typing it.

Due to the mix of layouts I sometimes get into ruts of having to correct every other keypress due to Qwerty-isms. This test I didn't really have that problem.

I've noted that any long string of characters that does't require leaving the home row, I tend type pretty fast and nearly always flawlessly. So having to move fingers off home row is a stumbling block for me.  I should prolly run some more typing tutor lessons that focus on particular keys.

Annnnnnddd - it's fucking awesome to say "string of characters that doesn't leave home row".  It becomes more and more obvious each day the amount of non-home row typing qwerty requires.

One last thing that prolly isn't helping me is that I've been noticing some chatter in this mechanical keyboard.  Qwerty E and L keys in particular.