The ugliness of IRC-speke for a typist - General

DreymaR
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From: Viken, Norway
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21-May-2008 08:17:33#1 The ugliness of IRC-speke for a typist

I play an online game. Things are fast and loose and we use IRCish abbreviations to communicate our status. "gtg pb afk brt gj" are constantly flying through the air.

I noticed how much I hate typing those on the Colemak! The same-finger ratio is high and the same-hand ratio through the ceiling. It's interesting - maybe typing Colemak will discipline me into typing "got to go" instead of "gtg" simply because there's nothing to gain on using the latter for me now?

Then it struck me that those abbreviations don't look easier on the QWERTY. If anything, it's worse: "sec" for instance, is a same-finger "wordlet" in QWERTY.

I notice that a lot of these IRCish wordlets can be typed with the left hand only. In the heat of battle you don't have much time to type and keeping a hand on the mouse in case something happens fast is smart. I still feel like typing properly now, since I've become so aware of the feel of what I'm typing.

gg gtg brb ;)

(Yes, we tried Ventrilo for a while. Somehow it fell into disuse again, since not all players were using it and we're not a tight-knit group these days.)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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SpeedMorph
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23-May-2008 18:12:09#2 Re: The ugliness of IRC-speke for a typist

I have that problem in World of Warcraft. I frequently type abbreviations. The most annoying one is BG, which not only is on the same finger but requires row jumping. I usually use QWERTY with World of Warcraft though. On QWERTY, some abbreviations are hard too, like BRB and GTG.

My typing speed record: http://hi-games.net/typing-test/watch?u=493

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SpeedMorph
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04-Jun-2008 01:44:34#3 Re: The ugliness of IRC-speke for a typist

What you could do is have a modifier key that enables one of two things: either a layout designed to make abbreviations easy to type; or a layout where each button corresponds to an abbreviation. I think the first would be better, due to flexibility, but it would be harder to learn. To make something like that, first you'd have to create a list of common phrases.

(in estimated order of frequency)
lol, gtg, afk, gj, brb, brt, rofl, lmao

Some World of Warcraft only ones: (in no particular order)
bg, ab, wsg, av, eos, fr, bs, be, ne, dm, vc, wc, ubrs, lbrs, lots more that I don't feel like listing

What would be useful is some sort of program that tracks the keys you type. Then you can use it while playing online games, count the digraphs, and make a layout with those abbreviations more heavily weighted. It would probably look something like this.

 
 q w k m g   j p u h y
 a r o l s  d t e n i
 z x c v '  b f , . ;

I put L and O together for easy rolling and stuff like that.

My typing speed record: http://hi-games.net/typing-test/watch?u=493

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