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    Colemak and IKEA

    • Started by vilem
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    • From: Köln, Germany
    • Registered: 01-Apr-2007
    • Posts: 264

    This title may sound really strange, but I have an idea I'm totally obsessed with since I went to IKEA yesterday. IKEA, as some of you may know, has an "exhibition" of the furniture, the accessories, kitchens, etc. where everything is assembled as a room or even an appartment. Interestingly, most rooms have a fake computer: a screen with just the plastic enclosure and a glass plate on the front, an empty computer hull, a fake mouse and an unlabled keyboard without a cord. On some keyboards I saw the attempts of children labeling it with qwerty letters. I pulled myself together and did not write the cmk keys on the blank keyboards and colemak.com on the keyboard, but since then, I wondered how many people see these keyboards every day and how they would get aware of cmk if all those keyboards were cmk. I know this is just a crazy phantasy, but imagine the publicity cmk would gain... Of course IKEA would have to 'sponsor' colemak or people would just look at the keyboards and then look away again and the thing is over. I'm sure that colemak would be great to write swedish too, however I don't have swedish letter frequencies at hand. xD

    Last edited by vilem (08-Jul-2007 13:14:24)
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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
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    I know I would do it if I were the IKEA CEO. Unfortunately for Colemak, I'm not.  :)

    Last edited by DreymaR (09-Jul-2007 07:18:18)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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    • Registered: 07-Jan-2007
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    a n e t r o are the top six in order of sequence and Colemak has a 3.5 same finger rate.

    "Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them" - Will Rogers
    "...even the dog doesn't think I'm a monster." - Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny (1954)

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    • From: Köln, Germany
    • Registered: 01-Apr-2007
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    Thanks, sorenk. You are swedish?

    This proves once again colemak isn't too bad for other languages! Although I have to admit I have no clue what same finger rate is. Couldn't find anything about it on colemak.com or the web... Is 3.5 good?

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    • Registered: 07-Jan-2007
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    Same finger rate is how often the same finger is used twice in a row, it's best to keep it under 4%. But it's not necessarily bad by itself. If most of the same finger combinations are on the index and middle fingers (E-D on qwerty) and adjacent then it's not bad. But if the same finger combinations jump the home row (Y-period on Colmak) or occur an the pinky then and middle fingers it can a pain in the tendons.

    By the by, aside from practicing on TyperA.tk I don't type Swedish. The information came from analyzing "Verner Von Heidenstam" by Folkungaträdet with a program written by Michael Capewell to give letter frequencies. And a java applet by Jon A. Maxwell that gives letter statistics about how a keyboard handles a text.

    "Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them" - Will Rogers
    "...even the dog doesn't think I'm a monster." - Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny (1954)

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    • From: Köln, Germany
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    Yah, the inward rolls are very comfortable indeed. I find them even more comfortable than 0% same hand rate words like "Andes".

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    • Registered: 27-Oct-2007
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    Typing Swedish on a vanilla colemak layout is not that nice since then extra vowels å,ä,ö are all on the top row (q,w and p keys (in qwerty layout)). Although, while I have not done so myself yet I was planning to swap the opt/alt state of the q,w and p keys with the home row (probably the same columns, but I do not know yet), in order to make the keys easier to reach. At the moment, when I write Swedish with Colemak, I transliterate the vowels to a, a and o respectively, just because I do not like moving my pinkies when pressing alt. I will not replace any of the normal state keys, since I am a programmer and use punctuation symbols more than the vowels.

    I am considering making a Colemak derived layout optimised for programmers who write Germanic languages (or at least Swedish and German since they share two vowels, for Norwegian and Danish it is probably best to have the same layout but swap ä with æ, and ö with ø).

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
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    Even the Norwegian and Danish layouts aren't quite the same although very similar. Apart from some symbols which are different for historical reasons I suppose, the Norwegian board has ØÆ and the Danish has ÆØ at the far right. Sounds stupid, but it is as it should be: The frequencies of those two are very different in the two languages, as you may be aware of.

    So I suggest making your Swedish Colemak after the same principle as we made the Norwegian one: Stick with the Swedish QWERTY layout for anything other than the letters, and move the Ö to the QWERTY 'P' key which will work well because it's situated directly above the O.

    After making that 'canonical' Swedish Colemak, you're of course going to have fun moving some symbols around for your personal programming needs.  :)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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