Nice writeup! And thanks for choosing and supporting Colemak-CAW[eD]! :-)

It's sad that Tarmak isn't better profiled for newcomers. I blame Shai who hardly maintains the pages at all. And myself, for not making my own pages. ;-) However, as I recall it Shai made his own version of a step-by-step learning programme for Colemak and tried to promote that instead of Tarmak a little back (but at a point when Tarmak was rather well established). So maybe he doesn't want to link to Tarmak on his front page?

I do keep an active presence in the forums and have Tarmak in my signature, so whoever reads the forums before switching will be aware. But quite often this isn't the case and I feel that cold-turkey switchers will protect their investment even one week after the switch – even if it's painful for them. So Tarmak will lose "customers" this way.

Parts of my Extend layer are readily configurable, indeed. I only recommend keeping the modifiers and navigation/editing mostly as it is, because I've tested that a lot and it works very well. Other stuff like the mousing, special and duplicated keys is more of a matter of personal preference.

Nice report. Interesting Extend mapping too!

I seem to remember others have discussed moving the arrows to the left as well. I think this was previously discussed on the forum in relation to making right-alt/AltGr the Extend key. I can see the attraction of having single-handed navigation, but isn't it a bit of an awkward stretch if you are using CapsLock as your Extend key? I have remapped left-alt to be my Extend key, which does make it a bit easier to simultaneously access the Extend mappings on the left-hand side (obviously at a cost of having to remap Alt elsewhere).

The beauty of having Control and Shift in your Extend layer is that you can use these *in combination* with the arrow keys to select characters/words. I think the true power of this is not always obvious to new Extend users, but once you get used to it, you can't live without it.

If you want to compare notes, my Extend layer is like this, it's somewhat more similar to DreymaR's original:

Thank you!

To be honest, I was thinking about that it may be awkward to some people who might choose to use my Extend mapping or something similar. But to me, personally, it's not awkward and comes natural. It's most probably because of my ‘gamer past’. I used to play a lot of FPS games (classic Quake 3, Wolfenstein, Call of Duty and all that) and I always bound the movement keys to (QWERTY) E, S, D, F and all the weapons around these keys. My pinky got used to the streching to ‘Ctrl’, ‘Shift’, and ‘Tab’. So stretching my pinky out to Caps Lock and doing my own thing with the rest of the fingers comes naturally easy. Also, playing the guitar for the past 6-7 years definitely helped with the stretching. On Colemak (CAW) I can easily reach out with my pinky to Caps Lock and my index finger on ‘[’ and ‘]’—it's not something I do commonly though. :)

Now as I read this, it just hit me... I switched the place of ‘Alt’ and ‘Ctrl’ immediately as I got home. And yes, it's golden! I've no idea why I didn't think of this. I guess I didn't have to do much text selecting today at work. :)

Yup, I, too, fell into this trap. It's now fixed though. I made ‘Alt’ and ‘Ctrl’ switch places.

Well, yeah, this makes me think. I'm thinking of moving these keys to a better place.

Fixed. :)

Update:

I've been making a lot of progress regarding gaining back my WPM performance that I had on standard Colemak (~85-93 WPM) since I've switched to Colemak-CAW—I'm now up to the higher ranges of 70 WPM.

The biggest gain I've discovered so far: The slight pain/soreness in my right wrist has gone completely! I used to experience some soreness and discomfort in my right wrist and occasionally in my palm after long hours of typing on standard Colemak, but it's gone completely on Colemak-CAW. I'm very happy for this. However, the fingers on my right hand in general feel like they are all over the place—they move a lot but not as much as on Dvorak. =P I'm OK with this though.

The issues I mainly had with making the transition from standard Colemak to Colemak-CAW: Confusing M with H and vice versa, plus trying to hit C in its old position. Then getting my middle finger to hit C with the tip of my finger and not curl it in that much that actually my nail would push the key—this felt really awkward. Interestingly, getting used to placing my hands wider and the new positions of the K, B, G and D keys came rather natural.

I think I'm in love with this Colemak variant.

I'm sorry for the late reply, I've been too busy with practicing typing to eliminate every remaining quirk. :)

Yes, you're right. I don't confuse M and H anymore and strangely adopting to the new position of B came easily to me, although sometimes I used to look for it in the lower row, especially when I would to the Ctrl+B (to bold text) shortcut. And yes, the new position of D definitely feels a lot more comfortable.