Hey, I have been using Colemak DHm ANSI for a little less than 22 months now and have been very pleased with it. I learnt today that I was using the WRONG layout with the bottom row being ZXCDVKH instead of the supposed XCDVZKH. This has been very comfortable so far and I have not really felt the need to "curl" in. This is also comfortable because of its proximity to QWERTY considering I sometimes have to use QWERTY at college. However, are there any specific reasons for which I might consider switching to the latter layout? By the way, is there some name for the former variant?
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Need some advice
- Started by natto1784
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The term "curl" in layout design refers to how the home row curls down in the DH mod.
You've been using the DH mod without its included Angle mod. This variant is intended for matrix/orthogonal boards. Row-staggered boards such as ANSI have a severe weakness in their traditional fingering technique in that the right wrist can be kept horizontally straight but the left wrist can't – it experiences what in medical terms is known as ulnar deviation. This is strainful and bad for you, so the Colemak-DH layout includes an Angle mod.
For QWERTY it doesn't matter so much since the whole layout is so bad, but Colemak was developed for the traditional technique in which for instance EDC (Colemak FSC) are all on the middle finger. Some QWERTY typists simply "Angle cheat" for a straighter wrist, typing C with their index finger. Again, that doesn't matter much on QWERTY but on Colemak it's a bad idea as it ruins some of Colemak's excellent design benefits.
Read more about this on the Community site:
https://www.colemak.org
Last edited by DreymaR (23-Jan-2023 13:51:39)
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I wonder what fingers you have been using for which keys?
If you've been using your index finger for C and middle finger for X, then you have adopted the recommended "angle" technique but are using the wrong fingers (sometimes called the "angle cheat" method).
Or, you might have been using the traditional technique (C with middle finger), which is the correct finger assignment but is significantly less comfortable to use.
Using the Angle Mod gives you the best of both worlds: correct finger assignment plus more comfortable.
Last edited by stevep99 (23-Jan-2023 17:14:52)
Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.
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Yep, I meant angle technique of course, corrected.
Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.
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Hey thanks, Dreymar and Steve for the information. I can see now why xkb-configs use the angle mod by default; been using that for a day now too. Will try not to angle cheat anymore. :P
stevep99 said:
I wonder what fingers you have been using for which keys?
If you've been using your index finger for C and middle finger for X, then you have adopted the recommended "angle" technique but are using the wrong fingers (sometimes called the "angle cheat" method).
Yep that is what I have been doing.
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Best of luck! Such transitions can be a little awkward but they tend to settle down soon enough.
*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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