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Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

  • Started by knightjp
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18-Oct-2017 14:58:13#101 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.
ckofy said:
sotolf said:

I don't know, I have more the feel that mouse use is a way higher contributor to RSI than what a keyboard is.

This is true also. AFAIK, users of old typewriters had less RSI issues than the users of modern computers. Their hands had great physical exercise every day, and there were no mice.
Tons of mouse alternatives exists - vertical mouse, trackball, touchpad, Contour roller mouse.
It is not a big challenge to master in alternative mouse for a person who committed to learn Colemak. ;)


Yeah, I've been using a tiling windowmanager, and know most keyboard shortcuts in the programs that I use most often, so it's not so bad for me, but I know quite a few people at work that have problem with their right hands because they didn't want to learn the shortcuts :)

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23-Oct-2017 09:00:41#102 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

For mouse worries, use Extend. ;-) And maybe other things like Sotolf mentions.

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11-Feb-2018 14:24:02#103 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

My fingers disappoint me...

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12-Feb-2018 13:45:48#104 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

That looks strange, Knight! Any idea what's causing it?

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15-Feb-2018 10:37:30#105 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.
DreymaR said:

That looks strange, Knight! Any idea what's causing it?

Don't quite know. I'm just trying to get to grips with it.
I know it sounds crazy but it really seems like my finger and my mind aren't even connected at times. I see 'A', I'm thinking 'A', so why does my right hand type 'R'?
Even now while typing this... My progress seems to be getting worse rather than better; no matter how much practise.

After getting pretty much no wear with QWERTY for 3 years, I switched to Dvorak. The only one that seemed to make sense with my fingers as I can remember. I can tell you it is does feel so much better but my fingers do tend to feel a bit cramped at times. Much the same like when I was using Colemak. However with Dvorak, my fingers learned the layout so much faster. Within a month I was back to the same point and speed that I was with QWERTY. But does not seem to progress beyond that. Anytime that I think I am, my progress on the training site - keyhero.com shows pretty much that I am loosing control over my own fingers.

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16-Feb-2018 00:47:43#106 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

Do something where you type slower than you would. Sandbag yourself during practice. Aim for over 95% accuracy, 80% of the time practicing.

When you get bored or feel faster, use that for 20% of either testing speed or balls to the wall typing.

Testing should be the only time when you should let your fingers fly loose. Errors can come, but typing first and foremost should be deliberate regardless of the speed.

When you are driving fast, you want your body to be centered not going all over the place. That is the car's job.

Believe it or not the fingers aren't doing the typing. The keys are. The fingers must be in control for the keys to follow.

Every input corresponds to a key therefore perfect typing can be broken down to that level. 130 WPM or 650 KEYS per minute.

That is a good speed, but without accuracy 100wpm remains impressive.

Colemak typist

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16-Feb-2018 00:52:25#107 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

Typing for speed, some ebook I read once on typing, recommends breaking down words into single letters.

When you see each word you should visualize the zone where the fingers will go.

Eventually this visualization leaves your mind and is projected onto your fingers.

For Colemak especially, but Dvorak and other optimized layouts too, you can also think about rolls as units.

Rolls can be seen as both (like wave-particles) discrete units and groups of keys.

Again, you should practice with things that are comfortable for you to type, as well as hard.

Varying difficulty for varying speeds. Try to get the hard as fast as the easy, in an attempt to make them all super high.

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16-Feb-2018 16:28:35#108 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

Breaking down words into letters is kind of the opposite of what master typists do: They chain n-grams, agglutinating more and more letters into patterns. So I'd modify your claim, saying that you should treat the words as a stream of n-grams. It's nice to flow through them – I've often gained speed by remembering not to stop between words but treat them like a more steady flow – but whenever you encounter something you know how to type fast you should. Like the 'ould' in that last word, I sped through it. Conversely, when you know there's rough waters ahead it's okay to slow down a little. For instance, I suck badly at 'ough'. Better to type it correctly than to speed and crash.

Last edited by DreymaR (16-Feb-2018 16:29:38)

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23-Feb-2018 01:23:15#109 Re: Good Bye Colemak.. Its Been Fun.

That's what I meant with the duality of rolls which is how I try to cluster bi and trigrams, followed by same hand. Big reason why Dvorak was weak in my attempt, though its other flaws are also glaring. With same finger, knowing that the same finger will be hauling performance ahead of time is key (pun intended).

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