I was at 100 WPM on QUERTY, so it's frustrating to be stuck in the mid 50's. It's well fast enough to maintain my work productivity, but slow enough to be a little frustrating, especially since my accuracy has declined somewhat...

Thanks. There's definately some places my muscle memory needs training. On lessons derived from a list of 500 common words, I'm up around 65 WPM, but I think that may have something to do with repetition. On lists of 'bad' trigrams, I'm down around 40 WPM. My main typos now are either letters out of order, or finishing a common trigram where it doesn't actually exist, or having trouble typing a less common letter when it's not in a common trigram (e.g. 'g' but not in 'ing'); rather than QWERTYisms.

i feel that way at plateaus, but it isn't true. it's more like 10 min per day, every day, will get you there. it's the every day part that's hard

Hello everyone.

I just moved to Tarmak 4. I am absolutely loving this journey to Colemak. I've been at this for 8 days now and it has been much easier than I ever imagined. The thing I love about Tarmak is that during the transition you get an appreciation for just how out of place the QWERTY keys are. I've been doing only limited drills, mostly just typing like I always do. I type a lot for my job and I have experienced only a minimal decline in efficiency.

I do have a recommendation for improving it though, that I think you tech guys might be able to make it happen much easier than I can. Here's the main problem I've had with the transition - mastering the minor keys. The common keys (Colemak home row keys) are easy to pick up because they provide a clear payoff and they appear in most words. The secondary keys are slower to pick up because they appear less frequently and do not have a readily apparent payoff. So, you learn the Tarmak steps in an uneven fashion, mastering the common keys much faster. I think to improve this we need some recommended typing paragraphs. For Tarmak 1, the recommended typing paragraphs will emphasize the letters N, E, K, and J (especially K). For Tarmak 2, emphasize F and G (and to a lesser extent T), etc. This would be similar to the famous "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" (which includes all letters). I assume there is some sort of computer program that could generate such a thing.

Do others think this would be a good idea? Has it been discussed before?

-Jon

Drills in Tarmak versions may be good, but since you don't stay with them for very long, that's not very effective.

Once you're full converted to Colemak, then drill...drill...drill...rinse...repeat.

Yeah, I don't think they even need to be highly recommended. Just an additional resource for those interested.

BTW, I just made the transition to full Colemak yesterday about 10 days after the start. I was hitting 35 wpm at 95% yesterday but I seem to have regressed over night.

Wow, nice! I've slowed down lately due to trying the "Curl" ergo mods (D-H), but they're a lot of fun so I'm not regretting it so far. And I quickly regained speed too, since no keys change fingers.

hey dreymar - i'll admit to waiting for your verdict on the new stevey mods

don't want to start sailing that train until i know its seaworthy

but the change does hold a certain appeal as i've long found the d and h a bit tedious

but i prob won't do it if its just a tiny improvement, or improvement of a few bigrams at the expense of some others

theres got to be a reasonable bang for the buck to tip me over the edge

hey brayer - its taken me a long while to get past 80 - plus theres only one text on typeracer that i can do it on, a really short and easy one, every time it comes up i think this could be it and today it was..

Remember, no keys change between fingers, so all bigrams remain the same as standard Colemak in terms of fingers used. The objective is only to make it more comfortable (for D and H especially).

I like the idea of a train that sails! I want one!

Ah, maybe I misunderstood what bph was saying - I meant they are still all typed with the same fingers as before (at least in default assignment, I get that you can do some alternative fingering with e.g KN). Naturally the better H position gives rise a much more comfortable HE -  after all, that was one of the key motivations!

i'm desperately trying to curl it out at the moment

its hard for sure but i think it will be worth it when i'm done.

now on a 45 typeracer average, with accuracy around the 90% mark

I'm already getting the feeling this is one smooth layout

after only a few hours i think i'm sold

bravo steve for the inspiration and dreymar for the perspiration (is that a fair assessment?)