Thanks guys, that's so nice :-)
Hm, okay, quotes from simonh and keyboard samurai...
"Cortez Peters said even at 200 wpm he still thought about every single key."
Can you elaborate on this?
It's from that book I mentioned in my second post. I got it from the library recently and thumbed through it. That guy could type 200 wpm without errors on a MANUAL typewriter (ouch). He was strongly against any pushing for speed. He wanted 100% accuracy, that was most important. He didn't want any of this "just thinking about the word and let your fingers do the rest" he wanted you to actually think about the location of every single key.
I've found my speed is faster when I pause to make sure I'm hitting the right key. I always attempt one hundred percent accuacy now. I've found this the surest way of achieving a consistent and accurate speed.
Yep, I think that's the best way. It's a bad idea to just fumble through and rely on the backspace all the time.
I seem to recall Dreymar plays also. Maybe there is some appeal there for the rolls in Colemak. Though I certainly do not have the dexterity of a classical pianist. I wonder if there is any connection in hand position training for the piano and keep the wrists in a more straight position while typing.
I don't think Colemak has much in the way of rolls. Dvorak sure does. The moves you make in Dvorak are really beautiful and elegant. There's a constant sense of inward rolling just like in Chopin's Harp Etude. The keys just naturally come in clumps that are very easy to remember and I think that contributes to the speeds some people can attain. I really like Dvorak's having all the vowels and Y on the left and the consonants on the right. It's just that much easier to remember.
Dvorak is a more... dare I say natural... layout. It seems designed with such art behind it. It's like a masterpiece by Van Gogh
Colemak on the other hand is a 'perfect' layout in a way that human creations are seldom perfect. It's more like a design produced with CAD. A bit colder, if you know what I mean.
I would use Dvorak, I think, despite the loss of the shortcut keys, if it were not for that one huge fault of the overworked right pinky. R and L are in stupid positions and when I tried Dvorak I was just starting to become aware of some complaints coming from my right 4th and 5th fingers. That would have gotten worse. That's a big fault, a big downside that can't be ignored.
Colemak has NO significant fault, has the keyboard shortcuts and doesn't overwork any finger, so I'm sold...
I can do 80 already and I'm just typing away happily, so maybe next time I'm bored I'll start doing drills again and go snag the top spot for Colemak on the typing test. I keep that little fantasy in the back of my mind :-)
I feel I'm repeating myself, sorry :-)
I gather from the picture that you are using fairly standard staggered keyboards.
Yep, it's already inconvenient enough to have to install something on a computer before I can type, I wouldn't want to get used to a different /shape/ of keyboard than the standard one.
It's also been claimed that a major advantages of QWERTY is that typing with it can be done effectively using only 6 or 7 fingers (pinkies not needed). As some one that had previously topped 110 wpm in Qwerty and now able to hit 80 wpm in Colemak after a few months of training and use, it would be interesting to hear you response. Were you a strictly correct touch typist on Qwerty? Could that have been some of the source of the pain and perhaps less conventional, no pinkies style of Qwerty touch typing might have been enough to alleviate the pain?
You don't seem to feel any loss from the loss of your Qwerty tricks...
Okay, some light's dawning for me. These tricks must be what people use when they don't type with the right fingers. But I learned to type with the right fingers. So maybe it's possible to teach onesself to touch-type in Qwerty without using the pinkies at all? Well I don't know anything about it so I can't comment.
It's claimed that these tricks or secrets are a major advantage of Qwerty and that this advantage of Qwerty is unfairly downplayed. A layout like Colemak or Dvorak is seen as bad because it shuts out these “shortcuts” due to the lower same-finger key presses. What's your experience?
None :-)
Must be pretty well downplayed, I've never even heard of it before. Is it people who can type really fast in Qwerty who are saying this?
Another claimed major advantage of QWERTY is that a lot of the most common digraphs/trigraphs/suffixes/prefixes found in the most common english words are near to, or next to each other in superblocks - “ASDWERT”, “YIOUL”. As someone that touch typed at a high level in Qwerty for many years, does that seem a fair claim from your experience.
I never heard of that either. Maybe I was missing out on something in Qwerty all these years?
Anyway all I get from Qwerty = yuk yuk gag heave *throw keyboard through window*.
Qwerty = fingers jumping around over the home row, back and forth, missing the home row since there's nothing important on it, like Olympic athletes going over hurdles again and again. Qwerty = BAD!!!!
...I could have chosen any layout a year ago and actually start on Dvorak for few weeks before stumbling across Colemak, but what got me willing to commit to Colemak was the large amount of work Shai obviously did to develop it, his rational willingness to apply a threshold as to diminishing returns and say enough and finalize a standard, and then work to make it freely available on all platforms.
Yep I'm with you there. Colemak is a wonder and I'm intensely grateful to Shai for it.
I really don't have anyway to relate to why one of the super elite Qwerty typists falls in love with Colemak and then falls out of love with Colemak over a period of time and another doesn't, though I suspect pain is the main factor.
I know why they do. I encountered it just the other day at the house of a relative I'd just met. I had to sit down in front of his girlfriend's computer and look up something on the internet, and of course it's Qwerty which means I'm looking at the keyboard... I said something self-conscious about not being able to type because I switched layouts, and it didn't even register with him, like most people he assumes the keyboard is just the keyboard, a reality to be accepted, and he started crowing about his girlfriend's wonderfulness in the typing department. He said, "She types so fast you can't see her fingers moving! She types faster than I can think! She was a housewife for years and never had a job, but she got hired at the courthouse and she's been promoted and promoted, and it's all because she can type so fast!"
I just shut up and didn't say any more, it wasn't the place, there were people talking all around us and he just went away, I finished what I was doing and went back to the party... but I was SO absolutely humiliated because, you know, that used to be me and I bet I could beat her...
I would always hear people say, "Oh my God, how do you type that fast??" People would say it on the phone if they'd hear the keys clicking in the background. If I was typing at the library people would stop to stare in amazement. But not any more!
One time a while back when I visited my sister's office and was sitting there chatting with her, her boss stopped in and said she'd been interviewing people all afternoon and nobody could actually pass the typing test, and my sister said, "Janel can type 100 wpm," and the boss said, "Can I hire you? Please? Please?"
That is why they switch back to Qwerty...
Last edited by Janel5 (29-Jun-2008 15:53:00)
