On a Kinesis advantage keyboard, can either or both, the qwerty and dvorak layouts be converted to colemak? How about two alternate layouts to replace both the Qwerty and dvorak? Is the base for conversion to colemak using the download, predicated, solely on the keyboard structure, using the physical location only. Note: If one wishes to use the kinesis re-mapping aspect to change the dvorak layout to a colemak layout, it will not hold, when switching between qwerty and colemak. During the switching the previous re-mapping is erased. Was suggested that using macro's for re-mapping would prevent this from happening. However I do not wish to substitute a work-a-around using macro's for what I consider a poor choice of its intended usage. Besides the possibility of lost keystrokes when adding macro's to the mix. Because of the miniscule delay caused by each and every key stroke needing to be referenced against the background macro's.
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Kinesis keyboard changeover, need different approachs!?
- Started by realfuzzy
- 2 Replies:
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There have been several Colemak users that mentioned that they're using the Kinesis keyboard. As far as I know, there shouldn't be any problem.
The remapping can happen either in the keyboard or the operating system level, but not both.
So either you can change the keyboard to QWERTY mode, and use the Colemak download to remap the keyboard on the OS level;
or you could remap to Colemak on the hardware level, and then configure the operating system layout to QWERTY.
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The hardware re-mapping is great if you are using Colemak exclusively, especially if you have to rdp into remote servers. Unfortunately if you switch back to qwerty or dvorak, as you said, you lose all the mappings. However, once you know the layout off by heart, it takes less than a minute to reprogram Colemak, and it while it's an inconvenience it's not a major one. It would be nice if the Kinesis gave you the option to store custom layouts and switch between them with a single key press, but unfortunately it doesn't, so if you are frequently switching between layouts, OS remapping is the way to go.
I wouldn't use macros for this -- it seems a bit of a hack to me, besides which the Kinesis gives you some very severe limits on macro memory.
Personally, I found the Kinesis keyboard great for typing plain text, and it goes very well with Colemak (it also makes qwerty seem more awkward than ever, so I would recommend that if you go for the Kinesis you also go for either Colemak or Dvorak). However, I couldn't hack it for programming, and in the end I gave up on it in favour of the Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard.
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