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    DIY testing Colemak against Dvorak and Qwerty

    • Started by keyboard samurai
    • 3 Replies:
    • Reputation: 2
    • From: Houston, Texas
    • Registered: 03-Jan-2007
    • Posts: 358

    Maybe the keyboard layout junkies know all this but
    I came across this site yesterday that allows one to compare stats between Qwerty and Dvorak and Colemak.
    http://www.siteuri.ro/dvorak/

    It was interesting to throw some of my own texts up there to see how Colemak did and what the kind of variability is from different types of text.

    Some of the reasons for using Colemak over the others doesn't show up in the such stats but it is still interesting to see how well it does.

    Craig

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,343

    Yes, that site is interesting. However, I hope you've seen the comparison applet on this site as well? https://colemak.com/Compare

    Michael Capewell has a version on his pages that compares a whole bunch of layouts (8 at once). But some of them are fairly oddball and it gets a bit hairy. And he hasn't included Colemak I think - now how about that!

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

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    • From: Houston, Texas
    • Registered: 03-Jan-2007
    • Posts: 358

    Yes, I think I had looked at it a few weeks ago and then forgot about it because I started
    focusing on learning Colemak.

    I gather  https://colemak.com/Compare
    is based on John Maxwell's source code that Capewell also uses
      http://www.acm.vt.edu/%7Ejmaxwell/dvorak/compare.html
    Capewell
    http://www.geocities.com/smozoma/projec … applet.htm

    besides looking the same, they all three give the same numbers for the Qwerty and Dvorak on the same
    text.  So you can easily make the direct comparisons to all those .


    for example
    randomly selected  two page NY Times technology article gives

    Home row
    Klausler  71.8%  Colemak 71.4%  Dvorak 68.7%  Capewell-Dvorak 68.7%
    Arensito 66.6%  Capewell(Close) 65.9%  Capewell(Adjacent) 65.4%
    Capewell-Qwerty 61.0%  Qwerty 33.3%

    Same finger
    Capewell(Close) 0.98%  Colemak 1.2%   Arensito 1.5%  Klausler  2.8%
    Capewell(Adjacent) 1.8%  Dvorak 3.2%  Capewell-Dvorak 3.7%
    Qwerty 5.2%  Capewell-Qwerty 5.6% 

    Distance
    Arensito 66.95m Klausler  Capewell-Dvorak 67.29m 67.64m
    Capewell(Adjacent) 67.39m  Capewell(Close) 67.72m   Colemak 68.75m 
    Dvorak 76.47m  Capewell-Qwerty 82.4m  Qwerty 131.5m

    the rest of the stats also show that Colemak holds its own very well.

    However http://www.siteuri.ro/dvorak/ comes up with different numbers for the same text so its a good thing that he includes Colemak. 
           
    Home row   
    Colemak    60.3 %  DDvorak    59.3 %  Dvorak    54.4 %  QWERTY  25.0 %

    Same finger
    Colemak  1.3 %   Dvorak    2.8 %    DDvorak  2.8 %     QWERTY   4.5 %

    Same hand as the previous key and jumping a row
    Dvorak    0.6 %  Colemak    0.7 %    DDvorak    1.3 %      QWERTY   8.6 %

    Distance
    DDvorak    166.0 m  Colemak       170.9 m  Dvorak  174.3 m    QWERTY   236.3 m

    -------------


    Okay, I am done!   That's my one day of layout comparison.  No more!

    Back to being productive.

    Craig

    ----  (all typed using Colemak layout on my Macbook.    Love my Mac  :)   )

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,343

    Yes, all the apps that look like Maxwell's are indeed based on his.

    The differences to siteuri's are likely because not all the same chars are counted. I think I remember that one of the apps excludes all punctuation. For comparison purposes that may be okay unless there are layout differences affected (I don't think that stop and comma are excluded but I'm not sure). But comparing one apps' results to the other one's won't work.

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

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