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    Alternative Touch typing technique for Colemak

    • Started by nimbostratue
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    • Registered: 14-Jan-2011
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    Recently I have been analyzing how my hands get exhausted and how the pressure mounts on my Wrists when I type for a long period of times.  Moreover, I have been using the traditional touch typing technique and I was thinking that this is the optimal technique, but for some reason or another I was going for the backspace key with my ring finger instead of my pinky(small finger) . I have developed this habit naturally i.e., I did not force it, and on the long run it turned out to be much faster and efficient than using the small finger. The reasons because of which the ring finger is better than the pinky are:

    1- The  wrist does not have to move to reach the backspace since the ring finger have a natural reach for the backspace.

    2- The ring finger is much faster than the pinky and has a faster firing rate :). I mean it is very fast if there are multiple consecutive typos that need to
    be corrected.

    Strangely After using the backspace and the CAPS LOCK for around a month my brain was able to make use of the two keys at the same time in an optimum manner. When there are multiple typos, I find myself using backspaces, and when there is 1 or two typos I find my self using the CAPS LOCK. Also if a single typo was on the right hand my brains recognize it and Use the caps lock, and if it is on the left hand I find myself using the backspace ( This happens so often, and I think with time this capacity of recognizing which appropriate key do use will increase.

    I decided recently to let my finger decide which are the optimum keys they should be associated with in a manner that reduces  stress on the wrist, brain, and harnesses the natural capability of the fingers and the Colemak Layout. It is really odd that in traditional touch typing the index fingers have to type 6 letters and 2 numbers while the middle and the ring finger have only to type 3 characters and one letter. This seems to be somewhat not natural especially that the index finger types some letters that are within natural reach of the middle finger(4 and p for example). Consequently, I tried for the last month to associate the ring finger with the keys that suits it the most and reduces wrist movement while increasing speed. Thus I used my index to type ~!12  0 - = backspace( I was using backspace long time ago). Note that in traditional touch typing !1 and 0-=backspace are associated with the small finger. The association felt very natural and within few days I become even faster than before ( you can feel it). Now after analyzing Colemak further I think I found a better natural association for the middle fingers and I plan to use it from now on. Thus, I would like to hear you comments about my new touch typing technique, and it would be nice if somebody could try it with me.

    Here is an Image of my Low stress Improved Colemak touchtyping technique, ICT3, which only shows the new keys association with the middle finger and the ring finger. The remaining key association is still the same as old touch typing technique:

    ict3.jpg



    Note:
    ------
    1- with this new key association you do not have to flex your wrist to reach p,g,l, and the overall hand wrest movement is decreased because you are using  longer fingers that have better natural reach

    2- the middle finger has a better natural reach for 4 and p, and considering the colemak layout it you even be better to associate it with the g key provided that you do not use your left thumb to reach the spacebar, otherwise it would be more stressful and awkward.

    3- typing words  that has dg(edge), li (like), pr( product) , feels more natural ( try it out :) ).

    4- I did not associate the middle finger on the right hand with j because the right hand uses the spacebar which limits the middle finger reachability, and for several word like (just, justification), it would be more natural to keep the index finger associated with j. This is synonymous to the old touch typing technique where on the left hand you use the middle finger to reach c and on the right hand you use the index finger to reach m , which is just a mirror of c


    Finally, I would like to hear some critics about this technique, provided that you give it a try out and how do you think it can be improved?. Enjoy!!!

    Edited:
    - technique Figure changed
    - L is not assigned to the middle finger any more
    - ; is assigned to the ring fingure
    -  5 is assigned to the middle fingure
    - 3 is assigned to the ring fingure

    Last edited by nimbostratue (15-Mar-2011 03:46:42)
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    After testing the This technique for one day I managed to reach 54 WPM for 5 minutes test but this is still below my best 66WPM. Initially my speed dropped to 37 WPM but I was able to improve it in one day to 54 WPM. I Also noticed it you more natural to type f with the ring finger instead of the middle finger. I think this would reduce the confusion on the brain and the middle finger have now only two letters to type in the upper character row ( p, g). Thus I have updated the figure above, where the ring finger is now associated with f in addition to w. After adding f, my speed dropped again to a max of 47 WPM, but I still have to practice f more now.

    I think I like the technique and it feels more comfortable though it is some what still confusing. I have also created lesson if you want to practice of common words if you want to practice (p,g,l) , but I still have to create a lesson for f.

    Lesson:

    up will would like long thing look could go people part get place live little only good give through great help low line right tell play put port spell big point world build self should school still learn plant thought let keep might left late while night stop open together children begin got walk example paper always letter until mile group began enough plain girl usual young list though feel talk dog family pose leave song product black numeral numeral class happen complete ship half problem piece told pass top king during step hold sing listen table travel less morning simple several lay against vowel pattern slow love person appear map govern pull fall power fly unit lead plan figure field able pound develop sleep strong special produce lot nothing course wheel full blue island gold possible plane laugh ago game shape brought bring perhaps fill weight language among although please tell last analysis subtle anger alleged cigarette urinal electrochemistry premise navigation should would could while model beautiful change changing healer God people get heal healer go would only dignify astrology encyclopaedia illumination light all pat pants will always disturbing disrupting climb guy illusion filled imprisoned contributing skill

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    • From: Switzerland
    • Registered: 21-Aug-2007
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    The technique you suggest seems to be a correction for the major flaw of most keyboards: staggered keys. I'd rather use a good keyboard instead. For example P and G with middle finger, or F with ring finger feels totally wrong for me, but then again I'm using a Kinesis keyboard.

    Last edited by boli (11-Mar-2011 10:15:02)
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    I actually do not use a desktop, and have been far away from home for 3 years now, so I am limited to my laptop keyboard, and I do not like the idea to buying a usb keyboard and take it around with me. Moreover, When I am typing my hands are not floating over the keyboard, they rest on the laptop, and due to the fact that I use my right hand to hit the space bar, the alignment of my left hand is slightly different from my right hand which has more freedom to align naturally. When I am laying on the ground typing, my left hand has an alignment such that if I extend my middle finger without twirl, it would be naturally over the p character, and my index finger would be over f. I could not really practice today the technique cause I am on water fast detox and my mind feels like crazy, but while I am typing I feel its very natural to me, and I noticed that my typos have decreased. Maybe this is because I am still typing at slow rate, and I have to give it a one month try to be completely decisive about some key, while I have already made my mind about both ring fingers, except f, since I have been typing like this for a month.

    Interestingly, I opened an account at typer acer and when I was looking at the about section, I saw a video for a guy who goes for g and p, with the same middle finger as I do and he is really fast 120+  http://data.typeracer.com/misc/about . Moreover, I had a friend few year ago, who never used his small finger to type, but he was very fast 100+, so now I am at an age that make me doubts about everything I learn, and I listen to my body much more to see if something suits it or not. Thus, I think that changing the typing layout alone will not completely remove any discomfort, though it does help in extending your typing hours, and I noticed that it is really devastation on my wrists if I went for the p,g,j,l with the index finger, as there is a lot of tension in the tendons where my hand plung down and my other 3 fingers( samll, ring, middle) rise up. Furthermore, I feel that my hands is very heavy when I go for g ,d b, especially after typing for a  long period of time. I guess this has do with the layout, as not every layout is perfect, but definitely colemak is much better than Qwerty.

    In the end, if your keyboard makes you fell better, then you should stick with it, and I will tell my decisive opinion about this technique within a month or month and a half.

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    • From: Switzerland
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    Fair enough, if you're stuck with such a keyboard I can imagine it working quite well. If you're comfortable with something definitely stick to it. Or in other words: each to their own. :)

    Anyway, looking forward to your conclusion.

    Last edited by boli (12-Mar-2011 12:13:47)
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    Now Around Five days have been passed since I started to use this technique, and I decided to make some changes again cuz I discovered some irritating flaws.I have updated the figure above and the first post to reflect these changes.

    After 2 days of straight typing with this layout, it become clearly evident that there is a problem in the right hand scheme. Although it is not stressful on the wrist to assign L to the middle finger, it became more difficult to reach the j letter and the spacebar with the index finger and the ring finger respectively and I have to slightly rotate my wrist to allow the reach of the mentioned keys. It would be better to assign the middle finger to j as well, but then spacebar and other programming keys ( []{}) would be slightly trickier to reach. But this is not the whole problem, I had a lot of heat generated in my right hand fingers after a long period of typing, so I realized it is not appropriate, although the assignment is promising to be faster. I think it is more natural to expand the right hand to the right therefore, I decided to keep the middle finger only assigned to the u letter instead of u and l, and to assign the :or ; to the ring finger.

    For the Left hand and due to its orientation to the left, it is more natural to assign the number 3 to the ring finger and 5 to the middle finger. So, I made these changes and continued testing. Now I can make comparison between the alphabet assignments of the old touch typing technique which is followed by my right hand and my improved touch typing technique which is followed by my left hand.

    Now,after testing it for 3 days, I can really feel the difference, while my right hand wrist get tired I do not feel any thing in my left hand and it is very smooth with almost no wrist movement. Although, it was first confusing to switch the fingers on the left hand, but within 5 days this is becoming less problematic and some key combination like ping , edge are really fast, and I was able to reach 63WPM for 5 minutes test. I definitely now recommend the left hand scheme, and you will feel the difference in your left by comparing it to the  right hand. Definitely, it will be problematic to do the switch for the first 3 days, but keep hanging there and force yourself to follow the scheme. Honestly I did not test the numbers quite enough now since most of the text that I type do not contain that much numbers, but I guess they will be as smooth as the alphabet are. I would like to hear the experience of other people about this way of touch typing. Furthermore, I have  noticed that my typos have improved, but I cant not make decisive decision because I am still below my best of 66WPM, however, I am surprised with improvement. 
    Finally, here is a lesson to help you in your testing of this technique.
    up will would like long thing look could of for from form before often differ feet friend fish fall fine fly go people part get place live little only good figure field if follow off self father found food left face feel give through great help low line right tell play put port spell big point world build self family front final free fact full first find after found food four should school still learn plant thought let keep might left late while night stop open together children begin got walk example paper far left half fire farm full force foot surface life few fast five always letter until mile group began enough plain girl fill feel fee fad fan few flu fly deaf chef deaf deft defy face fact usual young list though feel talk dog family fade fail fair fake fall fame fate fear feat feel feed fell fees pose leave song product black numeral numeral class happen complete ship half problem piece told pass top king during step hold sing file fill find fine fire firm flat flaw flea fled flee flog flip listen table travel less morning simple several lay against vowel pattern slow love person appear map govern pull fall power fly unit lead plan figure field able pound flow furl fury fuss brief ffair affect belief wife beliefs benefit develop sleep strong special produce lot nothing course wheel full blue island gold possible plane laugh ago game shape brought bring perhaps fill weight affected barefoot blissful beautiful affiliate find fine figure language among although please tell last analysis subtle anger alleged cigarette urinal electrochemistry. premise navigation should would could while model beautiful follow before differ fainnesses inflecting inflection fellowshiping change changing healer God people get heal healer go would only dignify astrology encyclopaedia illumination light all pat pants will always disturbing disrupting climb guy illusion filled imprisoned contributing skill flapping flimping flipping flopping
    ictspeed.png

    Last edited by nimbostratue (15-Mar-2011 05:46:16)
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    Interesting thoughts there. The ring finger is a bit enigmatic: It does have a higher repeat rate and maybe higher strength than the pinky, that's true. I think it may be less independent regarding lateral travel though?

    I wouldn't go and change the letter fingering, myself. Although the ring finger reaching the 'F' is a straight one, it's a bit longer travel but more importantly, puts you at risk of incurring some worse digraphs than before. I'm thinking of for instance 'from', 'barf', 'spa', 'ipsi'.

    On the number row I usually recommend that people do what feels best for them because that's where differences in finger lengths and other anatomical variation play in the most I feel. As you may know already, here's how I do it:

       CmkIBM-ISO60d-Wide1a1b_Finger.png
       A PC105/ISO keyboard with Colemak and the Wide(Angle) mod

    (See for instance this topic by cevgar)

    This way, there's a little flexibility regarding the number keys 3/4, 8/9 and the two keys in the middle. Myself, I prefer using the ring finger for 3 but I sometimes use the middle finger for 9 depending on what comes next I guess.

    The Wide mod moves some load off the right-hand pinky and brings it closer to the Back, Enter and RAlt/AltGr keys which I think is good. For your purposes, it would also bring the right-hand ring finger closer to the Back key. To me though, it feels less comfortable than using my pinky. I may have a fairly well trained pinky since I play music?

    Last edited by DreymaR (15-Mar-2011 15:55:50)

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    Nice but long thread by cevgar, and I have to complete it later. One of his aims from creating wide colemak is to allow the hand placement to be more natural especially for people with wide shoulders, which would potentially reduce the effort. The idea is logical but it seems to me that moving the right hand and one key to the right and shifting the rightmost key to the left, it seem that this schema will put a lot of stress on the index finger if the ' key (left most key to the right hand) is frequently accessed, and I have been noticing for a while that most of the stress and pain in the wrists comes from the stretch of the index finger. Also not all keyboard are alike, to apply cevgar's schema, for example, I have arstd hneio'\ on the home row, but I think to be fair one should try wide Colemak for a while before judging. My idea is similar to him, I align my left hand such that my shoulder is floating freely from my side.In contrary to my right hand, I now feel no stress and paint in my left hand. The Figure below shows the difference between the placement of my left hand and my right hand. With this placement, my left hand ring and middle figures are naturally on f and p respectively when I stretch out my figures, and each finger moves laterally one direction, the middle to the right and the ring to the left. I found that that the middle finger becomes very unstable and shaky if it moved laterally in two direction ( right and left) and it became very annoying when I assigned it f,p,and g at first, but then after I assigned f to the ring finger everything became better. I think the best key assignment that I have done is assigning f to the ring finger and for some reason hitting f is much faster than pressing w with the ring finger, and typing words that has 'fr' ,'ps' is very straight forward and almost as fast as the old typing way, and I find no problem now. I even think that my accuracy has improved because I have to hit these keys with the same fingers (f & r, p & s). I think I have found the best way to type for the left hand, and I am still trying to improve the experience for the right hand, but I will give my final judgment in a month after my left hand get completely used to the this typing method.

    Regarding numbers, I do agree that it depends on the length of the fingers and that several keys can be typed with more than one finger. For instance I can go for 3 with the middle and the ring finger easily, but I decided to assign is to the ring finger because I wanted each finger to move laterally in one direction.

    Finally, I remember that I have watched a move about music where they were saying that playing musical instrument increases the finger independence, and I think that the best instrument to increase finger independence is the lute.

    In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGFkSQX … re=related  , the guy has really weird finger independence although his music is like shit, or at least I don't like it, bud I like the ones below which are for the best player in the east. Amazingly he can play with one hand on the lute.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqoegR5 … re=related
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcIto0Riuds

    handplacement.png

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    After 9 days of using the improved Colemak Touch Typing Technique (ICT3), I managed to reach my average speed for 5 minutes test(66WPM) http://hi-games.net/profile/4468 . My Experience now is that:
    After typing for 3 consecutive days, I wake up with pain in my right hand wrist( which follows old touch typing except for the ; key), while there was no pain at all in my left hand, and while I am typing I notice how little is the movement of my left hand compared to my right hand. When I achieved my score of 66 WPM I was typing effortlessly and was not speeding up, and I really feel that there is more room for improvement using this technique than the old touch typing technique. So, If you care about your wrist and you want to feel comfortable, I advice you to switch at least the left hand and do not say I do not like to go for the f key with my ring finger, try it for 5 days, and align your hand like me and I am sure that you will love it. Now, I must do some tests again on the right hand to see how I can improve it, knowing that I am now convinced that pain in the wrest comes from the index finger stretching from the middle row to the upper one (j,l,6,7). If you tried this technique please share your experience here and let me know how do you feel, especially in your left hand.

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