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    Colemak vs Dvorak questions

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    04-Aug-2008 06:38:37#1 Colemak vs Dvorak questions

    Hi, I recently switched from Qwerty to Dvorak, but after discovering Colemak I'm trying to decide if I should make another switch. It's true, there are many other posts like this one, but my circumstances are a bit different.

    A few often cited benefits of Colemak are the easy transition from Qwerty and the preservation of the ZXCV hotkeys. But, in my specific case, these are non-issues, my only concern is ergonomics. So what really attracts me to Colemak over Dvorak are these points:

    -Placing 'L' on the QWERTY 'P' position causes excessive strain on the right pinky. Colemak doesn't place frequent letters where the pinkies stretch.

    -It is significantly lopsided so that the right hand does too much work.

    -'L' and 'S' form a frequent same-finger digraph on the right pinky. Same-finger for the pinky is very rare in Colemak. In particular, Unix commands such as 'ls -l' are very uncomfortable to type.

    And indeed, after a few days of intense Dvorak training I found I had a slight ache in my right hand and down right pinky (undoubtedly typing so intensely with an unfamiliar layout contributed). This right hand lopsided-ness is especially important to me as I've noticed the onset of RSI in my right hand due to excessive clicking.

    Also, I've recently realized that when I type Qwerty, my fingers tend to float and hover around the keyboard rather than staying on the home row like they do when I type Dvorak, in fact I hardly find myself returning to the home row at all. My neutral position seems to be with my pinky and forefinger above A and F and my ring and middle fingers above W and E (the left hand mirrors this). I also find that I never use my right pinky at all and I only use my left pinky for A. And as a side effect of my thought process while writing, I tend to type only in short bursts. Is it possible that this method I've unconsciously developed makes Qwerty ergonomically sound?

    I'm eagerly looking forward to hearing thoughts and opinions from anyone with experience with all 3 layouts.

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    04-Aug-2008 07:34:42#2 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions

    umm, read this thread yet? ---> https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=492

    Also, I heard that the "float and hover" method of QWERTY and the lack of right pinky usage can actually be a big advantage for fast typinig, ergonomics and comfort aside.

    From my experience, I would rate the layouts (from best to worst) as:

    1. dvorak (fastest by far, very natural rhythm)
    2. m-colemak / colemak (a close second. i'm only 3 months in on m-colemak, but i'm finding it diifficult to match my dvorak speed. otherwise, a comfortable layout with good combos.)
    3. qwerty (didn't really give it much of a chance, but found lots of "tricks" available for this layout. fingers fly all over the place so it looks like you're typing fast. lol! But, it's been proven to allow for fast typing so can't really say much about that.)

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    04-Aug-2008 09:05:34#3 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions

    I find Dvorak very natural indeed. I still haven't fully committed yet to a layout, but I gravitate towards Dvorak at the moment. Colemak is great, but personally I don't need its two big advantages: easy transition from QWERTY (as I am a slow hunt-n-peck typist who starts from scratch) and preservation of shortcuts (if you can remap a keyboard, then you can also solve the shortcuts issue). It was discussed before that hand-alternation style is a preference, not a "holy grail", but I found out I do prefer it. Pretty much the only thing that keeps me from taking the plunge is that I'm still looking into the issue of swapping U and I. I can see only advantages, but maybe I'm messing up some of Dr. Dvorak's digraphs... And that pinky L... I do hope the good doctor knew what he was doing.

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    04-Aug-2008 13:45:57#4 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    Isaac said:

    And that pinky L... I do hope the good doctor knew what he was doing.

    My thoughts exactly! It's possible though that my right pinky is weak because I'd never truly used it to type before. But either way for the life of me I can't justify that damned pinky L.

    Compared to own personal Qwerty methods I just can't figure out which is better from an ergonomics standpoint. Everything I've run through the comparison app has shown that Colemak is at least superior or better to Dvorak in every way, yet I hear from everyone that Dvorak has a certain "feel" that they like better. So is Colemak like a slightly "worse feeling" Dvorak with the benefit of preserved hotkeys and easier transition?

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    04-Aug-2008 18:31:23#5 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    gave said:
    Isaac said:

    And that pinky L... I do hope the good doctor knew what he was doing.

    My thoughts exactly! It's possible though that my right pinky is weak because I'd never truly used it to type before. But either way for the life of me I can't justify that damned pinky L.

    Compared to own personal Qwerty methods I just can't figure out which is better from an ergonomics standpoint. Everything I've run through the comparison app has shown that Colemak is at least superior or better to Dvorak in every way, yet I hear from everyone that Dvorak has a certain "feel" that they like better. So is Colemak like a slightly "worse feeling" Dvorak with the benefit of preserved hotkeys and easier transition?

    I don't think it feels worse. I think it feels a bit better. On my own scoring system, Colemak does better on almost every aspect, and does better than almost all other layouts for that matter. I'd recommend that you use Colemak. It's easy to learn, but also feels a bit better according to most people, and is theoretically faster.

    Is there any anecdotal evidence that Colemak actually is easier to learn that Dvorak? I learned Colemak a bit faster because I skipped practice on the whole bottom row, but got up to 65 WPM in the same amount of time on each. I also find that when learning, I got a lot of errors involving keys that changed to the other hand.

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

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    07-Aug-2008 16:18:00#6 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    Leszek said:

    I experimented with dvorak u-i. Hardly noticed the change but 'qu' flow was akward for me - that is Dvorak reason I think.

    I don't think that is the reason. QU is a lot rarer than most people seem to think. It's true that almost every occurrence of Q is followed by a U, but Q appears so rarely that it hardly makes a difference. There are about 300 digraphs that are more common than QU. QU is about as common as TL, RL, and PP. I think the reason Dvorak did that was for the much more common OU digraph, and possibly to make UP easier. QU may have been part of it though.

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

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    07-Aug-2008 23:51:40#7 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions

    Regarding U and I in Dvorak, I found some interesting comments on gmane.comp.hardware.altkeyboards (here's the thread).

    Don @ gmane.comp.hardware.altkeyboards said:

    ... He [Dvorak] thus wanted to make the most common digrams easy to type. TH is the
    most common digram in English. It is typed on the home row in Dvorak.
    Likewise, OU is the most common vowel-vowel digram in English. This is
    probably the reason Dvorak put the U on the left index finger instead of
    putting I there. I is about twice as frequent as U in English, but the
    vowel-vowel digrams involving U are about 40% more common than the
    vowel-vowel digrams involving I. Thus Dvorak slightly sacrificed the
    concentration of keys in the home keys/home row in order to facilitate
    typing the most common digrams.

    The frequency of the following U digrams [au ua ou uo eu ue ju uj qu uq]
    exceeds the frequency of the following I digrams [ai ia oi io ei ie ji
    ij qi iq] by about 40% using a sample of english texts.

    In other words, I is more common than U, but I is most often combined
    with consonants (which are on the other hand in Dvorak), whereas U is
    most often combined with other vowels. Some people have tried to
    "improve" Dvorak by swapping the I and the U, but this is questionable
    when one takes into account digrams.

    For comparison, a layout like Colemak <https://colemak.com/> has a
    slightly higher percentage of keys in the home row than does Dvorak, and
    at first sight, appears slightly better than Dvorak. But, it places H
    and U off the home keys, which slows down the typing of the TH and OU
    digrams (as well as HE, which is the second most common digram in
    English). There are also other very common digrams involving H, such as
    CH, SH, and WH. Those involving U include QU (question), JU, AU, etc.

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    09-Aug-2008 02:56:32#8 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    Isaac said:

    Regarding U and I in Dvorak, I found some interesting comments on gmane.comp.hardware.altkeyboards (here's the thread).

    For me, the I/U swap made no difference. In fact, I preferred the standard dvorak layout with just the L/C swap - With that swap, I actually enjoyed hitting "SCR" (but I used my pinky-ring-middle to do that combo...)

    Last edited by makdaddyrak (09-Aug-2008 02:57:23)
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    10-Aug-2008 00:04:19#9 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    Isaac said:

    Regarding U and I in Dvorak, I found some interesting comments on gmane.comp.hardware.altkeyboards (here's the thread).

    Don @ gmane.comp.hardware.altkeyboards said:

    ... He [Dvorak] thus wanted to make the most common digrams easy to type. TH is the
    most common digram in English. It is typed on the home row in Dvorak.
    Likewise, OU is the most common vowel-vowel digram in English. This is
    probably the reason Dvorak put the U on the left index finger instead of
    putting I there. I is about twice as frequent as U in English, but the
    vowel-vowel digrams involving U are about 40% more common than the
    vowel-vowel digrams involving I. Thus Dvorak slightly sacrificed the
    concentration of keys in the home keys/home row in order to facilitate
    typing the most common digrams.

    The frequency of the following U digrams [au ua ou uo eu ue ju uj qu uq]
    exceeds the frequency of the following I digrams [ai ia oi io ei ie ji
    ij qi iq] by about 40% using a sample of english texts.

    In other words, I is more common than U, but I is most often combined
    with consonants (which are on the other hand in Dvorak), whereas U is
    most often combined with other vowels. Some people have tried to
    "improve" Dvorak by swapping the I and the U, but this is questionable
    when one takes into account digrams.

    For comparison, a layout like Colemak <https://colemak.com/> has a
    slightly higher percentage of keys in the home row than does Dvorak, and
    at first sight, appears slightly better than Dvorak. But, it places H
    and U off the home keys, which slows down the typing of the TH and OU
    digrams (as well as HE, which is the second most common digram in
    English). There are also other very common digrams involving H, such as
    CH, SH, and WH. Those involving U include QU (question), JU, AU, etc.

    I disagree with that post. Digraphs are important, but I don't think it's worth it. Even so, the Dvorak keyboard has less good rolling digraphs than most other big keyboards, like Arensito and Colemak. This is because it tries to increase hand alternation, which is less important when people aren't using typewriters. Digraphs are important, but must be balanced with other things. You can kick H off the home row and put R there, in which case you reduce movement off the home keys, and you can also get the ER/RE digraphs, which have more total occurrences than TH. There are many aspects to balance, and while everyone basically agrees on what they are, they don't always agree on the quantity. Dvorak thinks hand alternation is very important, and Colemak values it, but many other keyboards disregard it and instead have many rolls. Arensito thinks the bottom row should not be avoided , while most people do. (Of course, Arensito was designed for an ergonomic keyboard.) I think the ring finger is nearly as strong as the index and middle fingers, while many people think it's weak and should not be strained. Everyone agrees that travel distance should be as low as possible, but no one agrees on how important it is. Dvorak thinks the right hand should get more work, while some say that the people are ambidextrous when it comes to typing. It all depends on personal preference.

    I think Colemak does the best job of matching everyone's wants. It improves on the flaws of Dvorak: few easy hand rolls, too much same finger, too hard to learn.

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

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    10-Aug-2008 09:24:38#10 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions

    The ring finger is reasonably strong, but it's the least dexterous finger. Consequently, non-home row ring finger positions are considered pretty weak.

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    10-Aug-2008 21:11:29#11 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    tomlu said:

    The ring finger is reasonably strong, but it's the least dexterous finger. Consequently, non-home row ring finger positions are considered pretty weak.

    That seems like it would be true, but I find that the above home row ring position is very easy to hit. Below the home row, though, is very hard.

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

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    10-Aug-2008 22:03:04#12 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    Leszek said:

    When I am typing with my ring finger (and pinky) I slightly change the angle of my wrist to be easy to touch top row or bottom row, thus on colemak my hands are 'waving' a bit.

    I was a bit annoyed by the fact so I have tried dvorak once again today. On dvorak only my right hand was waving. Besides that I felt big imbalance in hands - left hand was laying on home row whilst the right hand was everywhere.

    Comparing both I do like some keys and hate some keys on each. There is no better keyboard among those two and I am definitely staying with colemak - I just don't want to relearn my speed skills.
    I hope that on non-staggered keyboard I will drop that habbit.

    Which keys do you like?

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

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    12-Aug-2008 18:22:08#13 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions

    funny,   i actually like  "you" on Colemak.  It's become a quick roll of three fingers for me.

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    12-Aug-2008 18:47:59#14 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions

    I agree. I find "you" quite comfortable.

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    12-Aug-2008 22:52:52#15 Re: Colemak vs Dvorak questions
    Leszek said:

    I feel down... I cannot type fast (say in my speed) 'art' 'rat' 'ion' 'oin'  - probably my recently trained to type fingers are still a little out of control - I am doing random output in this case.

    I need to work it out asap.

    "Art" requires hurdling over the middle finger. Do people find this hard to do? I think hurdling over the middle finger is pretty easy, but hurdling over the ring finger is harder. I'd guess that this is because the ring finger isn't independent, and wants to go with the other fingers. So I have to be more careful not to press down with my ring finger.

    I also found "you" to be easy. I didn't like B either. Leszek, I like your bottom row. I think that's about the best possible. You could switch Z and X, but I think undo is more common that cut so it should be easier.

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

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