English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem? - Experiences

王凯
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13-Feb-2018 00:32:03#1 English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

I'm a high school student who studies quite a few languages. I'm a native English & Irish speaker, and I learn French and Chinese at school. I also took short courses in Japanese and Korean too. So I have a fascination with many languages that don't have the Latin alphabet and I regularly use them. I also have a love for programming since they showed us how to code in Python at school.

The problem is: I'm really bad at typing
I type 45WPM on my British MacBook QWERTY keyboard at 90% accuracy with four fingers — my two index fingers + my two thumbs.
When I type in other languages, I use romanisation keyboards, so I'm just as slow (pinyin for Chinese, romaja for Korean, romaji for Japanese etc)

I came across Colemak on the input sources on my Mac. Apparently it came with the computer preinstalled.

I need to learn how to type properly and I was gonna just do a bunch of lessons in QWERTY, but then I see that Colemak is way better…so what should I do?
Colemak seems great but should I be starting with it and if so, how am I supposed to this with character based languages (pinyin romaji etc).
I don't use anyone else's computer so that shouldn't be a problem. I just think I should stop typing with 4 fingers on QWERTY because it's slow, loud, tiring, and awful.

Any advice is appreciated?
TLDR: Horrible 4 fingered QWERTY typer - need to change
Worried about integration of Colemak with Chinese, Japanese and Korean for me
Need advice on whether I should be sticking to the QWERTY for increased multilingual compatibility, or learning Colemak due to its benefits
I own a MacBook with a British QWERTY keyboard
Thank you :) Hope it made some sense

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王凯
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13-Feb-2018 00:38:41#2 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

I tried typing in Colemak btw and I can see why it's great for typing in English. I found it hard to get used to but it's amazing how many words I could type just with the home row. Unfortunately, I did type with my index fingers and thumbs because it's incredibly hard to type with the others due to never using them for typing (except the pinky for Enter).
I don't want to continue with Colemak if it's not right, compatibility wise. Not sure what to do

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DreymaR
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13-Feb-2018 09:43:15#3 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

Look into Colemak[eD] in my BigBag topic. It allows you to write many special glyphs. Using PKL on Windows, you'll have a whole lot of dead key glyphs available. On Mac, I don't think anyone has done the dead key tables but there are solutions for some of my Big Bag stuff.

Even the standard Colemak layout is better by way of locale glyphs than most non-Linux QWERTY layouts are. Needless to say, I much prefer my own though. ^_^

To type kanji/Chinese/Korean, I believe an IME is the way to go. I don't think the underlaying layout should matter too much in that case, but I have no experience with it.

I've been experimenting with Japanese Kana layouts but PKL doesn't yet support dead key ligatures (one dead key combo outputting a sequence of glyphs) so the project is on hold.

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

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sotolf
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26-Feb-2018 08:37:42#4 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

DreymaR said:

Even the standard Colemak layout is better by way of locale glyphs than most non-Linux QWERTY layouts are. Needless to say, I much prefer my own though. ^_^
To type kanji/Chinese/Korean, I believe an IME is the way to go. I don't think the underlaying layout should matter too much in that case, but I have no experience with it.

At least using sime on linux works really well together with colemak, and I find it more comfortable than using other keyboards to write japanese at least, I'm not doing much of korean or chinese, but I guess that would be about the same.

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DreymaR
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26-Feb-2018 17:01:25#5 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

For Kanji you certainly have to use an IME to get anywhere! But kana would actually be within the reach of a PKL layout, if it could handle digraph output.

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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sotolf
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27-Feb-2018 17:16:47#6 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

DreymaR said:

For Kanji you certainly have to use an IME to get anywhere! But kana would actually be within the reach of a PKL layout, if it could handle digraph output.

Well, yeah, or you could just go for the standard hiragana layout that has each of the hiragana on one key, so that "you will type twice as fast" :p

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DreymaR
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28-Feb-2018 14:08:35#7 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

If you want to learn a new layout (and probably get new hardware), sure. If you type a lot of Japanese that's likely the thing to do.

My layout suggestion is for people who need to type some Japanese and want to do it with Colemak by typing romaji. For me, that'd be way faster than a new layout!

Last edited by DreymaR (28-Feb-2018 14:09:12)

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

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sotolf
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28-Feb-2018 17:36:42#8 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

DreymaR said:

If you want to learn a new layout (and probably get new hardware), sure. If you type a lot of Japanese that's likely the thing to do.
My layout suggestion is for people who need to type some Japanese and want to do it with Colemak by typing romaji. For me, that'd be way faster than a new layout!

That's why I put it in quotes, I'm typing romaji with colemak and then converting to kanji and kana with an IME myself, since that's the fastest way for me. I don't think I met anyone in the one and a half years that I was in japan that typed with the hiragana keyboard, they all used qwerty+IME

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DavisXie
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05-Mar-2018 08:50:57#9 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

王凯 said:

I tried typing in Colemak btw and I can see why it's great for typing in English. I found it hard to get used to but it's amazing how many words I could type just with the home row. Unfortunately, I did type with my index fingers and thumbs because it's incredibly hard to type with the others due to never using them for typing (except the pinky for Enter).
I don't want to continue with Colemak if it's not right, compatibility wise. Not sure what to do

Hi WangKi, wondering if you type in Chinese using Wubi xing as input method? I would like to try Colemak out, but I am afraid that It does not work well well with my favorite input method. Thank you in advacne!

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王凯
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13-Mar-2018 00:10:52#10 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

Sorry 汉语拼音 :(

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sotolf
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13-Mar-2018 11:12:39#11 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

DavisXie said:

Hi WangKi, wondering if you type in Chinese using Wubi xing as input method? I would like to try Colemak out, but I am afraid that It does not work well well with my favorite input method. Thank you in advacne!

I don't know how windows maps that, but I know that the linux IME's has a choice with going on either the keycodes or the letters.

Just not connected to anything, why not use cangjie? Difficult, I've heard that it's quite quick.

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kentarov
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26-Jun-2023 08:01:39#12 Re: English…français, 中文, 한국어 & 日本語…problem?

DreymaR said:

If you want to learn a new layout (and probably get new hardware), sure. If you type a lot of Japanese that's likely the thing to do.
My layout suggestion is for people who need to type some Japanese and want to do it with Colemak by typing romaji. For me, that'd be way faster than a new layout!

I'm trying to write in kana input using Colemak DHW as you suggested but the default pre-installed mac japanese input seems to only use QWERTY for somereason as I wrote here:

https://forum.colemak.com/topic/2952-co … ut/#p24976

Some people seem to be able to type in Colemak if they use the default Colemak pre-installed in the mac input source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Colemak/commen … &context=3

So I tried setting my defaul input of my keyboard to Colemak DHW with this method but I'm still running into the same issue:
https://heylon.ca/how-to-permanently-sw … for-macos/

I keep seeing solutions in Microsoft but not in Mac for a custom input. Is there any solution?

Last edited by kentarov (26-Jun-2023 08:04:09)

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