How is distance measured in typing like qwerty takes 20,000 miles and dvorak/colemak takes only 5000 miles ?
considering qwerty layout; what's the unit for home keys, bottom 'B' key, top rows 'Q' and 'T' count while measuring ?
Dvorak User
I personally take distance measurements in typing with a pinch of salt because they make some assumptions that aren't always correct. For example, they assume that your fingers rest on the home row most of the time, that all your movement is in your fingers and none of it is in your wrists or forearms, that you always hit each key with the "correct" finger, and so on. Especially when typing with qwerty, this is often not the case, though they would be more accurate with Dvorak and Colemak, which are designed around these assumptions and tend to enforce them somewhat.
I don't think that even Colemak strongly enforces "textbook fingering". I think one important reason QWERTY typists use nonstandard fingering a lot more than Colemak typists do (judging by appearances) is that Colemak hasn't been around for so long. I only recently started using non-standard fingering because up to now I've been busy learning the standard one.
I don't know how much this influences the calculated distances though. In my case at least, I suspect the effect would be fairly insignificant.
Iyon: Which measuring are you referring to? Hi-games, Jon A. Maxwell's java applet (or its' implementation on the colemak site), or what? I'm not quite sure they all use the exact same algorithms or weights.
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I dunno, I use standard fingering pretty much all the time on Colemak, and it feels pretty natural. On qwerty I'm all over the place.
For a bit of extra speed at the cost of more learning time I've found that some non-standard fingering is useful. Most prominently, I use index and middle finger for 'kn' and 'nk' combos. The other similar combos, like 'bt' and 'dt' seem too uncommon to really bother me.
If I weren't using non-staggered keyboard I might look into using non-standard fingering for 'wr' and 'ue' as well, as they do bother me a little.
I use standard fingering pretty much all the time on Colemak, and it feels pretty natural.
Didn't you mostly abandon Colemak after about four months - even going so far as to criticize people who found that a bit rash? And now you're expecting that non-standard fingering tricks would develop over twice that time? Not trying to be nasty but, you know, maybe you aren't being the embodiment of the virtue Patience? ;)
I have a feeling we're all pretty much Colemak noobs in this context, since the less than 3 years that Colemak has been in existence really isn't much in comparison with the years and years of hacking away on other layouts.
I've recently taken to using non-standard fingering on the LK and KL digraphs (the PB and BP hardly occur so I've not given those a thought - besides, the pitch isn't the same on the left hand). Before that, TB/BT/NK/KN/TD/DT/HN/NH and maybe a few more (but probably not all the time). UE/LN slide pretty well, but the other 2nd-to-home row digraphs don't for some reason.
I think single-finger is quite bad. Therefore, a slight hand movement should be in order if it can avoid single-finger digraphs.
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Not that I've tried alternative fingering, but I'd be surprised if the effort needed to learn would be worthwhile. How much of a speed boost are we talking?
I've just tried typing a load of words containing the digraphs that tomlu and DreymaR mentioned. They felt okay to me (not noticeably annoying). I couldn't think of any words with KL except kludge, so I did a search:
http://www.morewords.com/contains/kl/
ankle is a really nasty one! One that I've never typed before in Colemak. In fact most of those words I'd have no reason to type...
"It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in." - Earl of Chesterfield
I tried "ankle" using an alternative fingerings and it really didn't feel all that much better. I think you would have to awfully comfortable and burned in with the layout to find any of these alternatives worth using.
Iyon: Which measuring are you referring to? Hi-games, Jon A. Maxwell's java applet (or its' implementation on the colemak site), or what? I'm not quite sure they all use the exact same algorithms or weights.
I mean then java applet and some articles which keep mentioning the distance in some unit (like miles) and opera's widget shows in centimeter ?
Didn't you mostly abandon Colemak after about four months - even going so far as to criticize people who found that a bit rash? And now you're expecting that non-standard fingering tricks would develop over twice that time? Not trying to be nasty but, you know, maybe you aren't being the embodiment of the virtue Patience? ;)
Oh c'mon, lay off the poor man. While you are right, I don't think he's saying what you're saying, and anyways our prodigal son is safely back in the pen now :)
I've recently taken to using non-standard fingering on the LK and KL digraphs
Ah yes, I all but forgot about talk, walk et. al. I do those, too.
Not that I've tried alternative fingering, but I'd be surprised if the effort needed to learn would be worthwhile. How much of a speed boost are we talking?
To type quickly it is said to be advantageous to keep a steady flow. Same-finger works against this flow. Therefore, I dare guess that you could gain something like 1 wpm per trick. If you were to learn all of the tricks that represent the low-hanging fruit, I would hazard to guess your speed would go up something like 5 wpm. Your mileage may vary.
I'm hoping that James will take it in good humour. :)
Simonh: LK is the main reason for starting to use that trick. But while I did that, its' reverse came naturally as well as a bonus. Maybe not a commonly used bonus, but as long as it is virtually free then why not?
5 WPM? Nice. I hope you're right Tomlu! More importantly to me, it feels much more comfortable.
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Actually my point was that I don't see the need for non-standard fingering with Colemak because its very design enforces standard fingering -- which is a massive boon as far as accuracy is concerned. On the other hand, you need all sorts of non-standard techniques to get any mileage whatsoever with qwerty.
And yes, I do take it all in good humour :)
5 WPM? Nice. I hope you're right Tomlu! More importantly to me, it feels much more comfortable.
Yes I daresay so. By low-hanging fruit I mean: kn, nk, lk, nkl (as in inkling), bt (obtain), wr and ue (requires staggered keyboard). The latter I believe to be the most common same-finger digraph in English for Colemak. There are more still with diminishing returns.
If you practice those for 2-4 weeks I boldly claim you'll see improvements on the order above (and hopefully more than what you would have gotten from practicing typing normally for a couple weeks).
Actually my point was that I don't see the need for non-standard fingering with Colemak because its very design enforces standard fingering -- which is a massive boon as far as accuracy is concerned. On the other hand, you need all sorts of non-standard techniques to get any mileage whatsoever with qwerty.
I think so too, although with less hyperbole. It is my opinion that there isn't much more you can eke out of those tricks using Colemak beyond perhaps 10 wpm, and that's for an expert typist that's learned the lot of them.
Didn't you mostly abandon Colemak after about four months - even going so far as to criticize people who found that a bit rash? And now you're expecting that non-standard fingering tricks would develop over twice that time? Not trying to be nasty but, you know, maybe you aren't being the embodiment of the virtue Patience? ;)
Oh c'mon, lay off the poor man. While you are right, I don't think he's saying what you're saying, and anyways our prodigal son is safely back in the pen now :)
HOLY COW! stop the presses!!!! :-)
Obama is President-elect and Jammycakes is using Colemak!
-- another dang Texan Indie lost in Bushland
what happened to my query ?
lyon: your answer may lie in here somewhere -
"It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in." - Earl of Chesterfield
what happened to my query ?
I made you an answer, but I eated it. ^_^
Sorry about the derailing. I do seem to remember looking at the code for the javascript applet; it's freely available. You could take a look in there, and maybe like I did learn a bit about javascript in the process!
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