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    Colemak's Birthday

    • Started by juice43
    • 6 Replies:
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    • From: New York, New York
    • Registered: 22-Nov-2008
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    27-Mar-2020 20:04:40#1 Colemak's Birthday

    What date (day and year) was Colemak officially published?

    I'd like to know Colemak's birthday, haha.


    If completed before then (and the information is available), when was it conceived?

    Colemak typist

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    • From: Belgium
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    28-Mar-2020 18:56:19#2 Re: Colemak's Birthday

    The colemak.com domain name was registered 10 Dec 2005, the forum (and website?) launched on 11 Dec 2005.

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    • Shai
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    28-Mar-2020 20:50:25#3 Re: Colemak's Birthday

    Colemak in its current form was released on 01/Jan/2006. There were a couple of previous versions beforehand. Here are the historical versions:


    ASERTH (Jul/2005):

    QWFDG YMKLP[]\
ASERT HUION'
ZCXVB J;,./

    Asetion (Aug/2005):

    QWFDG YMKLP[]\
ASETR HUION'
ZXCVB J;,./

    Old Colemak (11/Dec/2005):

    QFWPG JLUYK[]\
ASRTD HNEIO'
ZXCVB ;M,./

    Colemak (01/Jan/2006):

    QWFPG JLUY;[]\
ARSTD HNEIO'
ZXCVB KM,./
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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    29-Mar-2020 22:02:36#4 Re: Colemak's Birthday

    Thanks Shai, that's interesting info!  d( ^◇^)b

    Could you write up a bit more about how you designed the layout, please? How much of it was modeling (and ideally, by what tools and parameters), how much testing and feedback and what came down to thought and preferences? You said a while back that you wanted to flesh out the backstory and there's certainly many who'd like to read about it!

    Last edited by DreymaR (29-Mar-2020 22:02:54)

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

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    30-Mar-2020 09:48:34#5 Re: Colemak's Birthday

    Is "QFW" in the Dec 2005 version of Colemak a typo?  Should be "QWF" like in all other versions?

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    • Shai
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    30-Mar-2020 13:53:39#6 Re: Colemak's Birthday

    ghen, no that's not a typo. It was that way to avoid too much same finger.

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    31-Mar-2020 14:02:21#7 Re: Colemak's Birthday

    Hmm, very interesting. I'm curious about the last iteration (old Colemak -> current Colemak). Definitely it was the right choice to switch the K with the semicolon. But if you do that while still keeping the left-hand side of "Old Colemak", you'd have:

    QFWPG JLUY;[]\
ASRTD HNEIO'
ZXCVB KM,./

    W and F are quite similar in frequency, as are S and R, so there's not much to choose between this layout vs the final Colemak. Maybe it would make it slightly easier to transition to by avoiding moving the notorious S... But then I guess people would complain about the difficult W instead?

    Last edited by stevep99 (31-Mar-2020 14:08:16)

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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