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Learn Colemak in steps with the Tarmak layouts!

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That seems totally reasonable. I ended up going ahead doing it as sort of a step 3.5, where I just swapped J and P a few days after (J)>R>S>D, since I tend to use P *just* enough to want to move it before getting totally comfortable with the rest of step 3. I intentionally rushed a little bit on steps 1-3, intending to hold off for a while before moving on to 4, to really hammer in the important keys, in order to avoid developing bad habits that I'd need to immediately unlearn (I'm getting used to the ergodox layout at the same time that I am switching colemak, while also trying to break old bad habits with firmware hacks. As a result, I've been relearning qwerty at the same time that I learn colemak. It's been interesting...). I figure that if I'm stopping for a while, I might as well do 1 more key and get the whole hand. I'm hoping it will make the last couple steps a little easier.

So far, the P/J swap has been surprisingly tough to get used to, so I'm glad I decided to isolate that change by doing it a little earlier.

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You're an interesting case, then, switching to Colemak via Tarmak without having a lot of QWERTY ingrained! Let me know how it feels for you. The topic's been debated a bit before. I feel that most people have some QWERTY knowledge to "capitalize on" and that may be enough to warrant the use of Tarmak even if it's primarily intended for seasoned QWERTY touch typists. :-)

It's not so odd that the P step seems tough. P and E are the keys that swap hands, and that's more of a transition. My experience with key swaps is that common keys are easily relearnt, and the rare keys that do move are actually the ones that trip you up the most in the long run. One good argument for choosing Colemak over Dvorak, to avoid moving keys that don't need to move.

Last edited by DreymaR (19-Apr-2017 09:54:33)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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UPDATE: Tarmak-Curl is in place

I rearranged the posts a little so Tarmak-Curl(DH) has its own post now. I think the Curl mod is quite important and its Tarmak steps are a little different so it's cleaner this way.

*** 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 need a little help. I'd like to try out the Colemak system using Tarmak as you suggest. I'm assuming I can do this with my standard Windows PC computer. What are the actual steps to install the first level of Tarmak? I have downloaded the collection of files but I don't know what to do with them. PCL? Don't know what that is.

I'm moderately familiar with the MS Windows system. I know how to go into system folders and change settings, etc.

In the absence of an .exe file, what's the install procedure?

thanks
JT

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Hi! :-)

The main topic post has a link to the Big Bag for PKL, in which you can learn more about the program.

The Main Topic said:
TARMAK DOWNLOADS

Windows:
• Here's My full PortableKeyboardLayout repo at GitHub as described in the Big Bag Of Tricks (for PKL) topic. It should run portably without any fuss. There are layouts for ISO and ANSI(US) keyboards, vanilla or Colemak-DH.

Basically, PKL is a portable program (so you can run it without installing it first, and it can be even be run from a USB drive if your PC permits it). I've made PKL[eD], my own version of it with some additions. There's a full set of Tarmak layouts you can use by editing the PKL_Settings.ini file then running the PKL_eD.exe program. You can specify the layout's path from the main folder directly, or use the lines I've commented out in the settings file. If using those, also set whether you have an ANSI or ISO keyboard and whether you use any ergonomic mods; make the entry "--" if not.

Let me know if that works well for you! ^_^

Let me know if you run into any trouble!

Last edited by DreymaR (20-Aug-2018 08:24:29)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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I don't think a Carpalx analysis of the Tarmak transitional layouts has been posted here yet, so here goes:

Qwerty    3.000 = 1.000 + 1.000 + 1.000
Tarmak#1  2.329 = 0.670 + 0.804 + 0.854
Tarmak#2  2.136 = 0.535 + 0.769 + 0.832
Tarmak#3  2.043 = 0.508 + 0.720 + 0.814
Tarmak#4  1.911 = 0.380 + 0.753 + 0.777
Colemak   1.842 = 0.344 + 0.763 + 0.735

Dvorak    2.098 = 0.397 + 0.937 + 0.765

(effort = base + penalties + path, lower is better, see the carpalx website for details)

Observations:
- step 1 brings the biggest improvement by far, in all areas.  so even if you give up there, you're already much better off, with N and E on the home row.
- step 4 and 5 increase penalties again (finger penalties specifically), but the other parameters compensate for that.

Last edited by ghen (23-Jul-2019 15:41:22)
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Maybe you'd like to spell Tarmak correctly, Ghen? Tarmac was the two-step progression Ezuk used, but since then much has happened. ^_^

I think I used Patorjk to analyze the steps in my posts, so this is useful. But it tells us little new: The steps have been sorted to do the biggest improvements first so naturally the first step brings the most model improvement. I'd be careful about proclaiming that people could stay there happily though, as there are things the models don't pick up on. Some n-grams can be awkward for instance. Well, several of them are awkward in QWERTY so improvement is likely after all. But there's still something. I feel that the last step is really good, even if it brings little model improvement. Finalizing Colemak gets all those little things in place...

Last edited by DreymaR (23-Jul-2019 15:29:08)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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It was not meant to bring new insights, only to confirm existing ones, using another set of metrics.

I would certainly not advocate people to stay with Tarmak#1, but it's interesting to see (or confirm again) that few-but-smart changes can bring such significant improvements, compared to "naive" Qwerty-rowswap-like layouts that we discussed again recently.  Those may look good to the uniniated eye, but are not very efficient compared to the change effort.

(+ fixed the Tarmak name typo, sorry about that.)

Last edited by ghen (23-Jul-2019 15:43:30)
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I don't know whether people use Minimak or any of its siblings. Yes, it is an interesting observation. But I still distrust those layouts for all their model gain. ;-)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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I was wondering if anybody has made a "newbie proof" explanation.  I am hoping to try Tarmak (on windows) and I'm expecting to choose somewhere "level 1" and know which keys have changed.  But if I go the first github I see, I either get EPKL.exe whih doesn't have that "level 1 to 4" or the other GitHub I see - which is Tarmak I believe -  all is  reffering me to autohotkey (which I understand) but still no "level 1"...  Where am I wrong?

Woudn't there be somwehere something like
1 - Download this...
2 - Click on that file....
3 - Do this to set Level 1:
4 - Do that to change when ready to go to level 2

...  That would help me sooooo much...  Thanks

jtimothy said:

I need a little help. I'd like to try out the Colemak system using Tarmak as you suggest. I'm assuming I can do this with my standard Windows PC computer. What are the actual steps to install the first level of Tarmak? I have downloaded the collection of files but I don't know what to do with them. PCL? Don't know what that is.

I'm moderately familiar with the MS Windows system. I know how to go into system folders and change settings, etc.

In the absence of an .exe file, what's the install procedure?

thanks
JT

Last edited by slurpey (20-Aug-2019 22:11:19)
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Hi, I just started with Tarmak 1.  For those interested, I'm using an ergodox infinity keyboard -- also a bit of a change for me, but I'm fairly comfortable with that by now after practicing with QWERTY for a while.

Has anybody here learned at home while still QWERTYing at work?  I'm doing a fair amount of typing at home too, including both "real" typing and deliberate practice.

I'm highly reliant on my typing speed at work and I really can't imagine switching there (even partially) until I'm at maybe 65 wpm on full Colemak.  Also I'm reluctant to abandon my QWERTY skills, in case for whatever reason colemak doesn't work out for me.  But I hope Tarmak might open the door to Colemak for me even so -- I tried some years ago without Tarmak and R and S defeated me -- I think the incremental reward of Tarmak might get me over that.

Thoughts?

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Has anybody developed a Tarmak-like scheme for vim users, that doesn't move the J key around all the time, but rather gets that into place early?  And the same for K and L, I guess.  Is that even possible?

Incremental learning seems essential for me for most of the key changes, but for (H)JKL I think I'd rather go "cold turkey" because those particular keys seem to be directly "geometrically mapped" in my brain when I'm using them for motion, rather than going via any letter meaning.

I'm sure that's not a simple thing to achieve though!

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Hm, how about this for vim-Tarmak?

The idea is to make the Y take the place of the J in Tarmak.

vim-Tarmak #1: (Y) -> E -> K -> N -> J (same as Tarmak #1 but then swap the J with Y)
vim-Tarmak #2: (Y) -> G -> T -> F (same as Tarmak #2 but with Y taking the role of J)
vim-Tarmak #3: (Y) -> R -> S -> D (again just like Tarmak #3 except using Y instead of J)
vim-Tarmak #4: (Y) -> O -> ; -> P (just like Tarmak #4 except J is already in place, so it's only Y moving into its final position)
vim-Tarmak #5 (Colemak): L -> U -> I (identical to Tarmak #5 of course)

Note that step #1 brings all of HJKL except L into place immediately; as in Tarmak, L only moves once, in the final step.

What do you think?  Y is not as rare as J in English, but it's fairly uncommon.

Edited to note: one problem is the big stretch between L and HJK, until the final step.  I suspect the way around that would be to move your right hand one space over to the left while HJKL-navigating, and use your little finger ("pinky" for you US people) for the L -- and then switch to your middle finger in the final step (maintaining the same left-shifted hand position for navigation).  I expect seasoned Colemak vim users can enlighten me on the best final Colemak HJKL technique, though?

Last edited by colemux (24-Aug-2019 11:47:55)
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After that, I wondered if ";" could take the place of J instead, but so far (just basing this entirely off Tarmak without really any creative thought) I found two problems:

1. The "target market" here (vim users) is almost entirely made up of programmers, and many languages use either ":" or ";" extensively.
2. The path I found has only three steps rather than five:

#1: (;) -> E -> K -> N -> J -> Y -> O
#2: (;) -> G -> T -> F
#3: (;) -> P -> R -> S -> D

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OK, though I rather like how "vim-Tarmak" turned out so easily, after some thought and research I think I'm likely to stick with Tarmak proper, combined with, probably, the last "HNEI" cursor key remapping here, which leaves the key motion keys unchanged (hooray):

https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/p … -254357683

With that setup, Tarmak actually won't interfere much with my use of vim keys, since I happen not to use N and E at all (I think because I started with emacs, then moved to vim bindings), and, emacs permitting, I can just not rebind L, U, and I until the last step -- so until then, it'll be "HNEL" rather than "HNEI".

I fear this might break a bunch of emacs packages that may have hand-hacked HJKL bindings... but I hope spacemacs has already fixed any of that in a way that will support this transition.  I'll see.  For those not initiated in emacs ways: spacemacs is a popular and rather polished emacs configuration that is heavily vim-keys-centric, and as you can see above, already has some Colemak support.

The main reason I've decided to go with HNEI rather than sticking with HJKL in their new Colemak positions is that a big part of my reason for wanting to switch to Colemak is avoiding too much up-and-down finger motion.

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Wonderful discussion here now! The earlier Tarmak versions moved the semicolon around for a while then switched to J. So yes, if you don't want to move J then I think semicolon is a decent candidate. But some C programmers didn't like that so to each their own and I won't be supporting this option. :-)

I'll try to get back on the instruction thing as soon as I can spare the time. For now though:

—————
Note: If you download or clone the EPKL repo, the executable EPKL.exe won't be there unless you run Compile_EPKL.bat. But if you go to the EPKL releases the exe file will be there as a separate downloadable "asset" since EPKL v1.1.2.

Tarmak steps come with EPKL and can be selected quite easily. In EPKL_Settings.ini there are some commented-out layout lines like this one:

;layout = Tarmak\Tm1-VK@V:Tarmak1@C,Tarmak\Tm0-VK@K@E:QWERTY(VK)@E

Remove the semicolon from that line (and ideally add one to the uncommented layout line below) then refresh EPKL and you should have Tarmak. There's one line that cycles through the Tarmak steps on layout switch by menu or hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+2), and the one I quoted here that only switches between Tarmak1 and QWERTY. You could easily edit the number 1 in that line to 2, 3, 4 or 5 – which is Colemak but in the same style as the Tarmak steps.
—————

Let me know if that's clear enough!  (✿◠‿◠)

Last edited by DreymaR (29-Aug-2019 11:56:17)

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

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Finding pure TarmakN words (in this sense) using unix shell commands:

Sticking here to words of length 3 or more for the first two levels, because some of the two-letter ones in the really big word list don't look like words to me -- in fact some of the others are a bit weird too (note this does drop "an" and "at" for example from Tarmak1 and Tarmak2 respectively -- you can just add those back by hand).  Also the top 10000 file also includes single-letter "words" like "p" so I've filtered those out too -- maybe somebody can find better word lists for this.

grep '^[qwahnezxcvbkm]*$' words.txt | sed -r '/^.{,3}$/d' | grep 'n\|e\|k' > pure-tarmak1.txt
grep '^[qwahnezxcvbkmfgt]*$' words.txt | sed -r '/^.{,3}$/d' | grep 'f\|g\|t' > pure-tarmak2.txt
grep '^[qwahnezxcvbkmfgtrsd]*$' google-10000-english.txt | grep 'r\|s\|d' | grep -v '^[rsd]$' > pure-tarmak3.txt
grep '^[qwahnezxcvbkmfgtrsdjyop]*$' google-10000-english.txt | grep 'j\|y\|o\|p' | grep -v '^[jyop]$' > pure-tarmak4.txt
grep 'l\|u\|i' google-10000-english.txt | grep -v '^[lu]$' > pure-tarmak5.txt

I used these files:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/first … nglish.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dwyl/ … /words.txt

The resulting files have the following lengths:

Pure Tarmak1: 462 words
Pure Tarmak2: 1068 words
Pure Tarmak3: 1119 words
Pure Tarmak4: 1797 words
Pure Tarmak5: 6653 words

I just noticed that the top 10000 word file was uploaded by a guy (maybe he's on here?) who has this open source Colemak training software:

https://github.com/first20hours/keyzen-colemak

Last edited by colemux (21-Sep-2019 13:01:23)
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What a fun concept! Hmmm... so if I understand this right you filter words that include at least one Tarmak#-specific letter and none of the QWERTY-specific letters at each step? That looks potentially useful.

On the other hand, part of the Tarmak concept is not having to train specific words but just being able to type away on whatever text you want or need to at any time, for work or play. But everyone is different, and some will want this extra bit of specific training material while keeping the allow-typing-everything benefit. I think I'll mention it if that's okay.

Last edited by DreymaR (21-Sep-2019 20:40:59)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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DreymaR said:

What a fun concept! Hmmm... so if I understand this right you filter words that include at least one Tarmak#-specific letter and none of the QWERTY-specific letters at each step? That looks potentially useful.

You put that much better than me, thank you.  To be slightly more precise / explicit: They include at least one new (at that step) Tarmak#-specific letter and none of the QWERTY-specific letters at each step.

On the other hand, part of the Tarmak concept is not having to train specific words but just being able to type away on whatever text you want or need to at any time, for work or play. But everyone is different, and some will want this extra bit of specific training material while keeping the allow-typing-everything benefit. I think I'll mention it if that's okay.

Exactly: happily, having this list of words doesn't prevent you from typing other words ;-)  And some practice on these words gives me motivation to stick to Tarmak4 rather than jump straight to full Colemak ("I'm almost there!"), because I know this component of my practice doesn't have any penalty of learning non-Colemak bigrams at all.  Are you asking about the "front page" of the thread?  If so: of course, if you think it's worthwhile (and if somebody feels like uploading a zip with files similar to these somewhere, I'm sure there will be people who'd find that useful).

But from this point of view, Tarmak does also seem like a reasonable program of study for a pure-Colemaker who doesn't want to actually switch to Tarmak layouts -- also it leaves them free to change their mind and switch to a Tarmak layout halfway through if they feel like it.

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HEY Dreymar,

HOPEfully it's obvious for how it's typing here, but do you have any advice on a technical problem I"M GEtting: WHERe my shift key stays active for WAYYY too long. I"M Just using the regular colemak layout

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This is really a support question for EPKL I take it? So ideally it'd belong in the Github repo for EPKL. However...

So, that's interesting. Looks like you have some sort of problem with Sticky Shift. You don't have that on in Windows by any chance? Because then having it in EPKL in addition could get quite messy. Anyway, look in the Settings .ini file and remove or comment out the StickyMods line. Then you won't be able to tap a modifier and then the letter to modify but I'm guessing your problem may go away too.  (=^・ω・^=)丿

[Update: Found the bug causing this problem, and squished it (June 2020). Make sure you use the latest EPKL version!]

Last edited by DreymaR (17-Sep-2020 08:43:17)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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Hi, I figured out how to download EPKL, though I was really lost with 1 wall of text here, another on the second forum thread then the third on Github (took me a bit to realize you have to go under "releases")

I ran the .exe but under the "Layouts" list I don't have the Tarmak layouts like shown in the screenshot in the OP
C3q8NPQ.png
I have a normal Colemak layout along with two test ones - ItAI-ISO/ANSI-CA.

I tried to uncomment the line in the layout .ini files like in the halp section in the OP but it isn't working as intended.

Could you help me get this working? I really wanted to switch to a better keyboard layout after finding out about the flaws of qwerty but all the walls of text and floods of information and the .bashrc style config files make it anything but beginner-friendly, from what I can feel.

Thanks in advance!

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Okay, in the Layouts_Override file remove the semicolon in front of the Tarmak line (the top one holds all of them and the one below only two of them). Now make sure the settings above are right for you: ANS(I)/ISO, and you probably don't want ergo mods yet so just comment out the Curl/Ergo/Othr lines.

If you can tell me how to make EPKL beginner-friendly and still contain a ton of hella advanced features, please let me know.  ∩(●'‿'●)∩

But the Big Bag topic has a "fast lane" that gets you straight to EPKL with Colemak without any text walls. When you get to GitHub, the second item on the Readme "text wall" is Getting it up and running which should be a simple read-n-click in my opinion. Keep in mind though that the text walls do contain a lot of nice info that you may want to browse at some point. Otherwise you may miss out on a lot of nice things such as Extend!

Last edited by DreymaR (25-May-2020 19:02:43)

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

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Hello, first let me say thank you to DreymaR (and any other contributors) for the incredible amount of thought, time, and effort put into EPKL!

I'm new to keyboard layouts.  I started with Dvorak a couple weeks ago, but I realized that the learning curve is very steep.  I touch type with QWERTY around 110-120WPM, but learning Dvorak was almost like starting over.  I wanted something more transitional so I could maintain at least 40 WPM so that I can use it for work, so I discovered Colemak.  I also wanted something more flexible.  It turns out EPKL and Tarmak are exactly what I need.  However, I really wanted to keep the Extend functionality so I can learn that along the way, and my target layout will be Colemak(eD)-CurlAWide. I'm also (currently) using an ANSI keyboard so that adds some complexity.  I prefer the recommended Angle(Z)Wide mod over A-Wing or FatZ.

I was disheartened to learn that there is currently no Tarmak layout in EPKL for the Wide mod, so I started learning how I could make one.  I realize it would probably be easier to just use Virtual Keys and add the Wide mod on later on, but I'm a senior software engineer, so I am willing to experiment and contribute to EPKL.  After all, I can't be the only one wanting a smooth transition into Colemak(eD)-CAW.

I discovered that in _ed_Remap.ini, there are already reverse Tarmak progressions, so I copied the Cmk-eD_ANS_CurlAWide folder and modified the layout.ini to use:

layoutName      = Tarmak-eD CurlAngle(Z)Wide(')ANSI ergo.
layoutCode      = Tarmak-eD-CAWide-ZQu

baseLayout      = Colemak-eD\BaseLayout_Cmk-eD

mapSC_layout    = Tarmak_1C_@K,AWide_@K
mapSC_extend    = AWide_@K

This works great, and I've been using it for a couple of days now with no issues.  Now that I've practiced and got my speed up to a point where I'm comfortable, I'm ready to move to level 2.  This is where I'm running into issues.

When I make a Tarmak2 layout folder with the following and update my override accordingly, EPKL will not refresh.  If I exit EPKL, it will not start back up (the process runs for a second and dies; no UI or taskbar icon appear).

layoutName      = Tarmak2-eD CurlAngle(Z)Wide(')ANSI ergo.
layoutCode      = Tarmak2-eD-CAWide-ZQu

baseLayout      = Colemak-eD\BaseLayout_Cmk-eD

mapSC_layout    = Tarmak_2C_@K,AWide_@K
mapSC_extend    = AWide_@K

If I change the mapSC_layout back to the Tarmak1 version, I'm able to start up EPKL with no issues.  I suspect the issue is with the Tarmak2 reverse progression colliding with the AWide ergo mod, or perhaps it has something to do with the recent change to the DHm standard.  I haven't yet had the time to dig further, but I thought I'd bring this to your attention since you might know where to begin.

Please let me know if you'd like me to make an issue in GitHub for this instead of having the discussion here.

I also noticed the images / cycles in the main Tarmak-Curl(DH) post haven't been updated with the new DHm standard.  It would help with debugging this if those were worked out.  Please let me know if I can help with that.

Thank you, and I look forward to helping out where I can!

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Hi! Some answers right away:
• My take on the Wide mod so far has been that you can easily learn it after your Tarmak transition.
• You're right, Extend is the bee's knees and we absolutely want it!
• Also, yes indeed – the Angle(Z) mod is recommended and pretty much the standard for ANSI boards. I've mentioned the others mostly out of interest.
• You're also right about me having made Tarmak remaps that I haven't put to good use yet. Indeed, it'd be cool to see those babies in use.
• Yes, remap sequence does matter. But what you did looks right to me so I can't quite say what's up there. I'll test it out later.
• It's been a lot of work updating the pages and files for the new Colemak-DH(m) standard. Yeah, I guess I didn't do the Tarmak topic yet...
• However, the images are in the latest EPKL release and commits. If you select a Tarmak ANS(I) CurlAngle variant there you should get the right one for DH(m) now.
• Also note that the very latest EPKL commit is awesomesauce! It finally contains a Layout/Settings UI that should make life so much easier for newcomers.

Best of luck and yes – if you want to contribute we'll find lots of cool stuff to do! And making a Tarmak-CAW sequence w/ images by using the remaps sounds awesome. Did you manage to make images using the EPKL Help Image Generator (HIG) and Inkscape?

[edit: You're right, something's fishy. For one thing, I've baked the Angle mod into the Tarmak_#C_ layouts without calling them Tarmak_#CA_ as I should. But even accounting for that, there's something that prevents them from working. The plain Tarmak_# layouts work just fine it seems. I'll have to look into it.]

Last edited by DreymaR (26-Nov-2020 10:30:39)

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