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Asking Microsoft to add Colemak to Windows ?

  • Started by wjames
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  • From: Belgium
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NottNott said:

It makes me wonder what made Apple put vanilla into the OS in the first place actually.

Maybe just one employee in the right departement is a Colemak user and sneaked it in? :-)

Not everything is a company decision governed by strict policies.

Last edited by ghen (20-Jul-2018 19:15:44)
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  • From: Viken, Norway
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Yeah, the Linux DH. More to the point, why haven't I gotten all my Colemak[eD] stuff properly into Linux instead of as a download?

Don't know. Because I haven't. Would be nice.

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I have seen a lot of people who have switched to Colemak because it is the default on MacOS. This kind of access does indeed help a lot.

Microsoft under Nadella seems to be a different company, but I am not sure if this has really led to change in their policy for layout additions.

I am really intrigued by the ANSI application. So basically for a fee of $5000, you can apply to ANSI to review adding Colemak as a standard? This might be an interesting route to pursue, as this is not a huge amount in the era of crowdfunding and ANSI has already blogged about Colemak..

We have to be realistic here - only the standard (no pun intended) Colemak can be standardized. If you would like to standardize DH then.. which one? There is an ANSI, ISO and Ortho ones, each with an angle-mod. I think by design mod-DH is more a collection of personal utility hacks of Colemak than a separate layout.

Last edited by realArst (24-Jul-2018 13:52:21)
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I'm afraid you're right about DH. It'd have to be all three variants (ISO/ANSI/Ortho) or at least the first two plus Vanilla and that may be overmuch to swallow for the good folks of ANSI. And even so it wouldn't work for those who want a different Angle mod from the default one for their keyboard type.

Last edited by DreymaR (24-Jul-2018 17:10:32)

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I don't think it matters that much. I think the goal is not so much to get this/that/other specific layout into the various OSs, but rather to get to a place where it *doesn't matter* what layout you use, because it would be seen as a just another user preference. OSs would make it trivially easy to use any arbitrary layout the user desired, as though it were no more of an issue than changing the desktop background.

Last edited by stevep99 (24-Jul-2018 17:26:05)

Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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realArst said:

I have seen a lot of people who have switched to Colemak because it is the default on MacOS. This kind of access does indeed help a lot.

Excellent! This is why we need to pursue this.

realArst said:

I am really intrigued by the ANSI application. So basically for a fee of $5000, you can apply to ANSI to review adding Colemak as a standard? This might be an interesting route to pursue, as this is not a huge amount in the era of crowdfunding and ANSI has already blogged about Colemak..

Easier said than done. Crowdfunding is one option, but perhaps that other company could be another (they probably wouldn't do it? we need to reach out?) If not, crowdfunding it would be. We would need a dollar counter on colemak.com, and whatever media coverage that can be scraped together. I have no idea how successful that would be, it'd either fly or go nowhere. Shai should run this, but not before researching what the upkeep costs of maintaining the standard after it would be approved. I bet it would be minimal.

realArst said:

We have to be realistic here - only the standard (no pun intended) Colemak can be standardized. If you would like to standardize DH then.. which one? There is an ANSI, ISO and Ortho ones, each with an angle-mod. I think by design mod-DH is more a collection of personal utility hacks of Colemak than a separate layout.

We have infinite money, make ANSI happy

stevep99 said:

I don't think it matters that much. I think the goal is not so much to get this/that/other specific layout into the various OSs, but rather to get to a place where it *doesn't matter* what layout you use, because it would be seen as a just another user preference. OSs would make it trivially easy to use any arbitrary layout the user desired, as though it were no more of an issue than changing the desktop background.

This is the real truth. The only reason this isn't a thing at the moment is very few people have such an interest in this level of customisation, so they wouldn't do this as it stands. I bet implementing this feature would cost hundreds of thousands in development costs for MS for instance.

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NottNott said:

Shai should run this, but not before researching what the upkeep costs of maintaining the standard after it would be approved. I bet it would be minimal.

If there would be a recurring cost, who's paying it for Dvorak?

Agree it should probably be driven/initiated by the author, but we as the user community should help funding.


Oh! This is actually very promising?

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Someone needs to get asking ANSI about this stuff, you can contact them on their website. If there's no upkeep cost... a one-off $5000... sounds good to me.... although it is an application fee and i'm not sure if it gets refunded if you're unsuccessful

Last edited by NottNott (24-Jul-2018 23:38:54)
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Was thinking of maybe a change.org petition. Will make one if people here think it's a good idea - they can't ignore a petition? Problem is it probably wouldn't even break like 100 people so...

Maybe all they need is a reminder, no matter how many people sign

Last edited by NottNott (02-Aug-2018 19:51:47)
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Should be interesting. :-)

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Hacker's Keyboard for Android (a 5–row keyboard that has symbols in the same place as a full PC keyboard) has QWERTY, Dvorak and Carpalx's QGMLWY, but not Colemak, which is strange.

Banned from Colemak

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PiotrGrochowski said:

Hacker's Keyboard for Android (a 5–row keyboard that has symbols in the same place as a full PC keyboard) has QWERTY, Dvorak and Carpalx's QGMLWY, but not Colemak, which is strange.

Well, colemak doensn't really make sense for an on screen keyboard anyway, it mostly makes sense when you're writing with 10 fingers.

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sotolf said:
PiotrGrochowski said:

Hacker's Keyboard for Android (a 5–row keyboard that has symbols in the same place as a full PC keyboard) has QWERTY, Dvorak and Carpalx's QGMLWY, but not Colemak, which is strange.

Well, colemak doensn't really make sense for an on screen keyboard anyway, it mostly makes sense when you're writing with 10 fingers.

Neither does Carpalx by this logic!

Banned from Colemak

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No keyboard layout will be optimal for a touch screen device, I believe. Yes, Piotr, that includes all the variants.

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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