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    Learning touch type for the first time

    • Started by Nopaste
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    • Registered: 30-Mar-2017
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    I'm switching from ISO (Italian) layout to the ANSI, with a new mechanical keyboard.
    I want to take this opportunity to learn how to touch type.

    After a few days of practice and once that I got the grasp of the layout ... I discovered Colemak and Dvorak.

    I tryed Colemak and I find it confortable, much more than QWERTY...
    Since I'm still in time, I think I'll try to learn it instead of the classic QWERTY.


    Instead of the "standard method", I think that I'll use a combination of Colemak and The Symmetric Typing Project.
    That is, typing in this way:

    10yjrpw.jpg

    So that the bottom row with the left hand is much more comfortable.


    What do you think about it?
    Is it a good idea to learn touch type for the first time like this?
    I'd like to not change the layout again while I'm learning it xD


    P.S.
    My main language is Italian and I think that I will insert the special keys with the "compose key" binded on the right alt.
    Do you know a more ergonomic key to bind it, or a more ergonomic way to type special characters? (The important ones are àáèéìíòó)

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    davkol said:

    Similar modifications are fairly popular among some hyperactive users around here. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

    See, for instance, the Mod-DH.

    Oh I see!
    Actually that one is the standard colemak, I changed only the fingers with which I should press the keys: ZXC (the important ones)

    Last edited by Nopaste (31-Mar-2017 00:03:06)
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    • From: Chicago
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    In DH Mod there are no change of fingers, this is the point. You may also look to the Angle mod, same idea without fingers change for the standard Colemak (it is actually can be applied to the qwerty as well).
    Difference between this forum and The Symmetric Typing Project is that the standard keyboard with the standard layout is not a holly cow for us, we all departed from "standard" already :) So keeping standard fingering is seen as more important here than keeping layout untouched. DH mod is developed from standard Colemak using this principle.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    Your suggested fingering scheme is sound, and nearly what I recommend myself. I just use an Angle ergo mod that moves ZXCV to the left, which is very nice.

    Check out my signature topics as well (the XKB one is most fleshed out). I have an Italian locale layout, with ergonomic fingering etc etc. It's a long read but should be worth it. :-)

    Make sure you look into at least:
    • Extend!
    • Angle/Wide (I prefer ISO boards for this reason, but if you're getting an ANSI board then so be it)
    • Curl (my name for the DH mod); there are at least two variants to choose from depending on your preferences
    • Locale Colemak[eD], Italian variant (or the Spanish one if you like dead keys!)

    There's a lot of power and you'll have a lovely journey, I'm sure of it! Buon fortuna! :-)

        Tarmak-Curl_SpectralAnimation_45d.gif?raw=1
        A Tarmak progression for learning Colemak-Curl(ISO) in easy steps
        (Primarily designed for touch typers who know QWERTY already, but you may find you know it better than you think...!)


        Cmk-ISO-eD-CurlAWide_90d_FShui.png?raw=1
        Colemak[eD] mappings, with CurlAngleWide ergonomic mods (phew!), showing my recommended fingering scheme

    Last edited by DreymaR (31-Mar-2017 12:07:06)

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

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    Nopaste said:

    Is it a good idea to learn touch type for the first time like this?

    I was in a similar place to you - learning Colemak and touch-type at the same time. I also initially used exactly the strategy you propose, i.e using the "wrong" fingers for Z, X, C.

    I'd say it's not a bad idea to learn this way, just not the best idea.

    The main drawbacks are:
    - the B key is very far away and hard to reach.
    - it introduces a CT same-finger bigram that Colemak normally should not have.
    If you can live with that, then there's no reason why you couldn't go that way. Personally though, as I adapted to Colemak, I found the B be irritating, and I wanted a better solution for it.

    The other options are, you could apply the angle mod or a DH mod.

    Last edited by stevep99 (31-Mar-2017 11:06:54)

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    DreymaR said:

    Your suggested fingering scheme is sound, and nearly what I recommend myself. I just use an Angle ergo mod that moves ZXCV to the left, which is very nice.

    Check out my signature topics as well (the XKB one is most fleshed out). I have an Italian locale layout, with ergonomic fingering etc etc. It's a long read but should be worth it. :-)

    Make sure you look into at least:
    • Extend!
    • Angle/Wide (I prefer ISO boards for this reason, but if you're getting an ANSI board then so be it)
    • Curl (my name for the DH mod); there are at least two variants to choose from depending on your preferences
    • Locale Colemak[eD], Italian variant (or the Spanish one if you like dead keys!)

    There's a lot of power and you'll have a lovely journey, I'm sure of it! Buon fortuna! :-)

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/ub363imkf12yw … .gif?raw=1
        A Tarmak progression for learning Colemak-Curl(ISO) in easy steps
        (Primarily designed for touch typers who know QWERTY already, but you may find you know it better than you think...!)


        https://www.dropbox.com/s/1tvaze9m9438a … .png?raw=1
        Colemak[eD] mappings, with CurlAngleWide ergonomic mods (phew!), showing my recommended fingering scheme

    Thank you!
    Actually I just bought an ANSI mechanical keyboard, so I'll stay with it

    For the common characters in Italian I think I have just found my solution: compose key binded on the caps lock.
    It is easy to reach and allows to insert a lot of special charcters with intuitive sequences. It's just a bit annoying pressing the caps lock and ` with the left little finger (to insert èàì), but I think I'll be able to get used to it!

    edit. I'm not so sure... I think I'll test some solutions and chose the one that is more comfortable for me

    However I'll read the topics you suggested!

    stevep99 said:
    Nopaste said:

    Is it a good idea to learn touch type for the first time like this?

    I was in a similar place to you - learning Colemak and touch-type at the same time. I also initially used exactly the strategy you propose, i.e using the "wrong" fingers for Z, X, C.

    I'd say it's not a bad idea to learn this way, just not the best idea.

    The main drawbacks are:
    - the B key is very far away and hard to reach.
    - it introduces a CT same-finger bigram that Colemak normally should not have.
    If you can live with that, then there's no reason why you couldn't go that way. Personally though, as I adapted to Colemak, I found the B be irritating, and I wanted a better solution for it.

    The other options are, you could apply the angle mod or a DH mod.

    Actually there isn't the CT bigram in Italian
    I'll have just to try if the B is comfortable for me :D

    Last edited by Nopaste (31-Mar-2017 12:45:18)
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    The begin is hard... my 20 wpm writing seems a slow motion video compared to the previous 50/60 wpm :(

    And I keep doing a lot of errors, that "s" :|

    Last edited by Nopaste (01-Apr-2017 10:40:41)
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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    Yeah, RS is hated and feared by Colemak beginners everywhere. Best of luck! ^_^

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

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    I see!

    Mhh... I  intalled the standard Colemak, where can I find information about the ALT GR layer?

    That is:

    ALT GR + e -> é
    ALT GR + ` + ` -> ~~

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    Thanks, I totally missed that page!

    Last edited by Nopaste (03-Apr-2017 21:10:33)
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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    Be aware that there are other AltGr options. In my sig topic you'll find Colemak[eD] which I feel works a lot better for me at least.

    Standard Colemak AltGr mappings work, but in my opinion they are suboptimal and there's a lot of missed opportunities there.

    Cmk-eD-usym-aw_Xm.png?raw=1

    Last edited by DreymaR (04-Apr-2017 11:21:47)

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

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    DreymaR said:

    Be aware that there are other AltGr options. In my sig topic you'll find Colemak[eD] which I feel work a lot better for me at least.

    Standard Colemak AltGr mappings work, but in my opinion they are suboptimal and there's a lot of missed opportunities there.

    Yes I read that topic, but:

    1) I couldn't understand how to install it (the topic are all linked togheter and I feel stuck in a loop xD). I'd like to try even Extend, but couldn't find how to install it

    2) The Italian version is this (correct me if I'm wrong). From what I can see it changes even the base layer of Colemak, but I'd like to keep  the colemak base symbols

    I'm thinking to implement àè[...] so that they are on the  respective base key, when possible

    Last edited by Nopaste (04-Apr-2017 09:48:02)
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    Okay, just ask and we'll get through this, nessun' problemo! :-)

    I couldn't see your link (it's better to use img tags in square brackets for this forum!) but my "Unified Symbols" solution for Italian Colemak[eD] is this:

    DreymaR said:

    • For the Italian layout, several different accented letters are needed but capitalized letters weren't in the default layout.
    • Thus, the letters were provided directly as in the default layout. The éè key was kept on LBr and the rest put together.
    • The letters çłñ may be used (for Ligurian and Venetian script for instance) but they're rare so they're on lv3-4 mappings.
    • As an alternative to this direct approach, I'd recommend the Spanish/LatAm layout! It does the same using dead keys.

    Cmk-eD-it-usym-aw_Xmc.png?raw=1
        Italian 'Unified Symbols' Colemak[eD]

    Also, note this (nominally for Spanish but an alternative for Italian too I think – maybe change Ññ for èé!?) if you like the idea of accent dead keys:

    Cmk-eD-es%2Blatam-usym-aw_Xmc.png?raw=1
        Spanish (Spain and Latin America) 'Unified Symbols' Colemak[eD]

    What this means, is that the bracket keys are converted to special letter/accent keys, like what is often the case with the standard locale layouts. It's easy enough to get brackets with AltGr if you don't use them often. If you do for programming or suchlike, you can have two layouts with only the brackets different, and switch between them as necessary! The last key I change is the VK_102 key, which is often not used for anything important; if you like, you can leave it as you're used to instead but I think it's nice for this purpose.

    Other than that, the base layers are unaffected. Keep in mind that for effective typing of text you want all letters to be readily accessible. Brackets and many other symbols aren't necessary for typing flow in general, unless your text really has a lot of them. But for Italian, you really want a nice accessible è at the very least, and likely also éàìòù. I find that using AltGr for letters in your language gets too clumsy in general! Some are easy to hit (like ç), but more are a little too much of an interruption – especially in capital form! (Well, capital accented letters isn't much of a problem for Italian at least, but still.)

    My preferred solution for Windows, is the PortableKeyboardLayout (PKL) program by Farkas Máté. That's what my Big Bag (Windows) topic is describing. For this program, I did actually make both the Spanish and Italian layouts but not with dedicated help images. Also, you have to edit some commented lines in the layout.ini file of the "Colemak-eD-lat_ISO" (or the CurlAngleWide variant if you want that) to activate italian! Example:

    ;SC01a = OEM_6	4	[	{	*{Esc}	å	Å	; QWERTY [{ ; Cmk-eD_ISO
    SC01a = OEM_6	4	dk6	dk13	*{Esc}	[	{	; QWERTY [{ ; Cmk-eD-BeCaFr
    ;SC01a = OEM_6	4	dk15	dk16	*{Esc}	[	{	; QWERTY [{ ; Cmk-eD-BrPt
    ;SC01a = OEM_6	4	dk15	dk13	*{Esc}	[	{	; QWERTY [{ ; Cmk-eD-EsLat
    ;SC01a = OEM_6	4	è	é	*{Esc}	[	{	; QWERTY [{ ; Cmk-eD-It

    Here, you would have to move the semicolon away from the "Cmk-eD-It" line and to the "Cmk-eD-BeCaFr" line to get the Italian variant!

    PKL is portable software, so you can just run it and it'll work. I put it in my PortableApps folder on my computers, but you can also have it on a USB drive so it's always with you on the move. I have a shortcut in the Startup folder so it starts when Windows starts.

    Last edited by DreymaR (04-Apr-2017 10:46:07)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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    Thank you for the reply!

    So, I'm using an ANSI (US) keyboard.
    I like the idea to have a layout with dead keys that I can switch out when I don't need them

    I'm trying to get started, but seems like the download link you provided isn't valid anymore?

    This link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/145 … reymaR.zip
    From the section 5.1 of this topic: https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1467-dr … s-edition/

    It should be the one I need, right?


    Can I have the same behavior under a Linux machine?

    In practice I need only to change [ and ] to the dead keys ' and `, in an ANSI keyboard (and remap [] and {}).


    Regarding this:

    It won't be running at logon but will be if you lock your machine, so I do recommend getting a layout-independent password or learning your password on all layouts you're using!

    Setting the layout (on windows) to Colemak should solve the problem, or not?


    edit.
    I'm thinking that actually I should be able to do this simply defining a new layout... I think I'll try to do it

    Last edited by Nopaste (04-Apr-2017 19:57:38)
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    The bad link is due to Dropbox removing its Public folder as you can see in my latest forum topic. It's fixed now, thanks for pointing it out! :-)

    Yes, I think you should be well served with two layouts where one has accents directly on the brackets for typing much Italian, and the other one has the brackets on top. You can put the brackets on AltGr for the accent variant and vice versa, to make it simple to remember where everything is. It's simple enough to set a hotkey for layout switching; mine is Ctrl+Shift+2.

    You could edit the line yourself, but you could also use the enclosed "Latin" layout and just uncomment the lines for Italian. Keep in mind that you have to choose the right pkl.ini file and edit the layout name/description line in that as well, to make it active. It's not very practical, but it's free. ;-)

    If you want to make a MSKLC layout install instead, you could do that but I'd work from a layout that already has the dead keys so you won't have to reproduce every character in them manually in the dead key table! It's not so hard to save a layout as a .klc file and move the dead keys by editing that file before starting it up in MSKLC again for compilation.

    The problem with PKL regarding logon is that it won't be running until startup and logon is done. So yes and no, if you install Colemak as your system layout and make it also your logon layout then your logon will happen in Colemak but I use PKL normally so I don't get to do that.

    In my main sig topic I describe how my Big Bag is implemented on Linux. It's different technically speaking, but mostly with the same end results.

    Last edited by DreymaR (07-Apr-2017 13:54:21)

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    If you want to create your layout in multiple formats, you could also try my Keyboard Layout Files Creator. With KLFC, you can generate multiple layout formats from a single definition, including KLC, PKL and XKB (for Linux). It is also useful if you want to add more advanced features in the future. There are some examples in the examples folder, and you can also import layouts from other formats, so you don't have to start from scratch.

    Create advanced keyboard layouts in various formats using my Keyboard Layout Files Creator!

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    DreymaR said:

    The bad link is due to Dropbox removing its Public folder as you can see in my latest forum topic. It's fixed now, thanks for pointing it out! :-)

    Yes, I think you should be well served with two layouts where one has accents directly on the brackets for typing much Italian, and the other one has the brackets on top. You can put the brackets on AltGr for the accent variant and vice versa, to make it simple to remember where everything is. It's simple enough to set a hotkey for layout switching; mine is Ctrl+Shift+2.

    You could edit the line yourself, but you could also use the enclosed "Latin" layout and just uncomment the lines for Italian. Keep in mind that you have to choose the right pkl.ini file and edit the layout name/description line in that as well, to make it active. It's not very practical, but it's free. ;-)

    If you want to make a MSKLC layout install instead, you could do that but I'd work from a layout that already has the dead keys so you won't have to reproduce every character in them manually in the dead key table! It's not so hard to save a layout as a .klc file and move the dead keys by editing that file before starting it up in MSKLC again for compilation.

    The problem with PKL regarding logon is that it won't be running until startup and logon is done. So yes and no, if you install Colemak as your system layout and make it also your logon layout then your logon will happen in Colemak but I use PKL normally so I don't get to do that.

    In my main sig topic I describe how my Big Bag is implemented on Linux. It's different technically speaking, but mostly with the same end results.

    I'm using this method (the dead keys on the brackets keys). I works fine for me!

    The only problem is that the right pinkie is a bit too stressed ... but I think I can handle it. (I don't see any better solution).

    39aldo39 said:

    If you want to create your layout in multiple formats, you could also try my Keyboard Layout Files Creator. With KLFC, you can generate multiple layout formats from a single definition, including KLC, PKL and XKB (for Linux). It is also useful if you want to add more advanced features in the future. There are some examples in the examples folder, and you can also import layouts from other formats, so you don't have to start from scratch.

    I'm a little busy at the moment so I can't try it now... I'll do it in the future!


    ---


    A little update on how it is going!

    I'm fairly satisfied with the speed tipyng only lower case, without special characters.

    etvd41.jpg
    (accidentally I erased the statistics some time ago)

    The problem is that in real world tipyng I'm much slower.. Upper case, accented chars and special character are a pain.
    Probably the problem with the special chars it that they are moved compared to the italian layout which I used...

    I'm changing a bit the fingers placement, hoping that learning the special characters is simpler in this way.
    2s84aac.jpg
    With this it should be:

    • More confortable to type 4 and 8
    • Index fingers should have less work to do, stressing them less

    Last edited by Nopaste (11-Jun-2017 12:27:59)
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    Your number fingering is pretty much the same as mine, as you'll see in my sig topics! :-)

    Please try a Wide ergonomic mod! It puts the brackets on your index fingers, which might be perfect for you if you can handle hitting these keys in the middle with the increased separation. I think it works well for my locale layout, but that only has special letters and no common accents.

    Last edited by DreymaR (11-Jun-2017 15:22:54)

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

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