• You are not logged in.

    Only use half of Colemak-DH?

    • Started by darkness
    • 4 Replies:
    • Reputation: 2
    • Registered: 19-Nov-2012
    • Posts: 22

    I have tried colemak back in 2012 but have been back with qwerty since then. I recently got a moonlander and decided to get into colemak-dh since I couldn't type in qwerty anyway on the keyboard. :lol:

    After struggling for a week or so, I could never seem to get the hang of colemak-dh. Somehow the muscle memory of the vanilla colemak is sort of there, but I recognise the advantage of the DH placement. In the end, I'm now in some sort of a hybrid situation where I adopted the left hand portion DH (with the shifted D) while retaining the vanilla right hand of colemak (keeping H on the home row which I found to be way more intuitive since that is also the qwerty placement).

    Would like to hear from the colemak veterans on your views for such a weird setup and if there is anything that I should note. Thanks!

    Offline
    • 0
    • Reputation: 117
    • From: UK
    • Registered: 14-Apr-2014
    • Posts: 975

    In the first release of DH back in 2014, it was presented as the combination of a left-hand "D" mod and a right-hand "H" mod. I was semi-expecting some people might prefer to do one side only at the time, but as it turned people have tended to do both sides or neither. But still, I think it's OK to do one side only, especially if you want to keep H and M same as Qwerty. The big drawback is the HE bigram of course, which for me would be a significant problem, but as long as you're happy with it I say go for it.

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

    Offline
    • 0
    • Reputation: 210
    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,343

    Most people who want only half of Colemak seem to do it the other way because they don't like the Angle mod on row-staggered boards. So to me it seems that the H-M swap is in fact the most popular half of the DH mod!

    However, apart from a little more hassle on the implementation side of things (whenever you need a software solution and not just the Moonlander) there's no big reason to not run the left hand Colemak-D mod only.

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

    Offline
    • 0
    • Reputation: 2
    • Registered: 19-Nov-2012
    • Posts: 22

    Thanks for the encouraging replies from the original creators of the DH mod and tarmak! It nice to know that the DH mod can be implemented independently on separate hands. I'm not bothered by the "th" or "he" bigrams given the "years of training" on qwerty, and the placement for m for ngrams such as "me" and "ment" trips me up incessantly which leads to my predominant frustration with the right hand mod. Furthermore, "ight" just makes so much more sense to me when they are in a single row.

    The major problem that i am still struggling with is the r-s swap. Years of typing with "s" on the ring finger is not helping.

    Offline
    • 0
    • Reputation: 117
    • From: UK
    • Registered: 14-Apr-2014
    • Posts: 975
    darkness said:

    I'm not bothered by the "th" or "he" bigrams given the "years of training" on qwerty

    Just to point out that of course in Qwerty, E is on the left-hand side. So although H doesn't move, the difficult HE bigram only comes apparent on vanilla Colemak because of unchanged H in combination with the new location for E. By all means try it out though, once you become reach a certain level of fluency you'll be able to assess the situation and decide if the H-M switch would be worthwhile too.

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

    Offline
    • 0