cevgar said:Thanks for the info! This should keep me occupied for a bit, so while I'm considering what you've posted, I'll give you something to play with as well.
Edit: You do realize that in that first layout you posted, you put the R on the left pinkie, right? And that the FR, DR, WR and HR are merely mirrored from the Dvorak R/S switch I mentioned. And the V*R and CR have gone from Middle to Pinkie row changes to Ring to Pinkie row changes? The only ones that you mentioned where I see noticeable improvement against those outward rolls are the TR and GR, which are now on different hands. To match with your earlier comments that left home position should be SRNH, not RSNH.
Oh sorry, I gave you the wrong version of that Layout, as I have different layouts. That was the start layout but there was an unatural pattern in it which is the nd. It was not fast ( you can see what I mean by hitting dg, sd, ng on QWERTY) and you will appreciate what I say when your speed increase and you start to feel the shaking effect it leaves on the hand especially if you do not float your hands while typing. There was not actually trouble with r, because remember that I told the pinky on the hand that doesn't hit the space bar(my left) takes much more outward roll than the other pinky because the hand has more freedom to move and thats why some the people that hit the spacebar find no problem with the right hand while it might and would cause a problem for other people especially the ones that do not raise their hands while typing on Colemak. Several times I designed a good layout and I tried to mirror it but it doesn't work because mainly of the staggered nature of the keyboard and because the hand that hits the space bar is more confined and raised up. I was frustrated too many times because of this that I decided to completely replace the space bar by something else, even if it did not appeal to others because at the end of the day I am designing it to preserve my wrists and shoulders, hopefully.
the layout matured to
vldfw jpuoy
nrhsc gteai'
zxmbq k,.;/
with this layout I discovered something important which drew my attention especially after watching this video https://www.youtube.com/user/trigenics# … _rYxqLrzMQ
Lets say if you practiced this layout four a week and reached 50 WPM, you will feel a lot of pain and fatigue in your wrists and at some point you would feel very weak when trying to catch things. At first I wondered why this was happening and I considered quitting the layout, but I decided to continue and see what is happening and after 2.5 weeks my wrists started to improve and become stronger, and I used to suffer weakness in my right hand wrist and pain in the shoulder and this also improved. The only thing that bugged my was the pain in the pinky which was mainly coming from the heavy outward roll ti and the tight roll you, I could have fixed the layout by hitting the spacebar with the left hand or by making the right hand as
pyuoj
gteai'
*****
but I did not because although the layout has more alternation than dvorak, I was still convinced that I could design a layout that minimize the index need to stretch to positions ty on QWERTY and minimize access to C on QWERTY. Also the layout had some long words that roll on the right hand side that contain gauge , itia eatio, and a lot of words that hate ate.., and it felt like sometimes I am dvoraking and sometimes I am Colemaking.
I stopped the layout and tried a different layout with different pattern, but I was almost sure of the pattern that train the upper wrist muscle, lets say so for now as I have too see the effect on the long run like a year. The pattern is is basically a common digraph ( like ou, ld, ea...etc) placed in an inward roll on the upper row between the ring and the middle will have this effect on the muscles in the upper rest and the effect would also slightly extend to from the wrist to the elbow. Try to hit W and then E and then try to roll WE and see the difference (how rolling activates the muscles connecting the finger at wrist levels.
Conerning ' on dvorak, I did not like it either in the beginning, but I have to admit its faster this way. The reasons I did not like it on dvorak is that I use the ring instead of pinky to hit 12 or ! @, so when I type something like !" my ning would go for ! and my pinky would be totally outside the keyboard and when I try to hit the pinky which is totally disoriented at this point, I find my self hitting the tap or even A, but I practiced it for a while and it was not a problem anymore. Also Dvorak separated ? and " and it would require to hit the shift twice to write a combo like ?". Finally, my tests of
'****
***ui (dovrak)
'****
*i**u (Imak)
shows that I' is both good on dovrak and Imak, but a u' is better on Imak (you're), actually much better. When you hit ui on dvorak the hand is more tight and you feel more stretch however when you hit it u' on Imak or dvomak it feels like you are climbing a ladder where the index finger supports the pinky to reach ' and the stretch is thus minimized.
designing the right side of a layout was the most difficult for me first of all because all the testing requires time and I had to make the the layout comfortable when I placing my hand on the keyboard(not floating it). and since I wrote about this wrist effect so people can expect what they gonna feel if they decided to try Imak, I can reveal the ones that I have tested consider to be successful.
1-
(at 67 WPM was comfortable)
pyo,' vfclw
hieau dtsnrx
q/;.k gmbjz
when I tried the layout I was already suffering from trying to load my pinky with nqw (more than dvorak) as in the layout below,
****w
c**rnp
at first I had the right hand
vgclw
dtsnrx
bmfjz
and I could feel the effect of the outward roll coming from the bottom, then I placed f in the only position that the removes its effect on r [Note that hitting fr is more natural that rf (pinky index), should be avoided as it will cause pain] . At 67 WPM it I did not feel any bad effect on the pinky. But I was desperate to bring p from the left hand and I want "to have the roll ld", as It doesnot belong there and I think dvork had no option but to have it there, but with Imak I have the option to move it.
2-
(reached 72 WPM, slightly heavy on the pinky initially)
'yo,k bfdlp
hieau ctsrnq
;/j.x gmwvz
I still want to minimize the access to w and since w is not correlated with the letters on the right side, I found it is better to have it on the pinky with r not with n. The maximum weight I recommend on the pink is v(top)n(middle)z(buttom).
3-
(Now 50 WPM)
'yo,k bfclw
hieau dtsnrq
;/j.x gmpvz
Now 3 is competing with 2. in terms of comfortableness, 3 should be much better than 2 if the V*R did not break my equalization on the pinky. At this stage the outward roll on the pinky is coming almost equally in all directions( top, middle bottom), I think it should work fine but the ultimate test would at speeds above 70WPM where if there is any problem it will manifest at that point. If I want to train my wirst with the ld combo I can switch d and c on 3 for couple of months although the layout would not be as comfortable as it is now on the palm because of the very common nd combo between the middle ring, and the upper middle). In general a common combo should be avoided at all cost on the left side on the staggered keyboard( like se on QWERTY, it is very uncomfortable and fatigue the hand quickly). The right hand side is more tolerant because there is a larger separation distance between li as opposed to se on QWERTY. The only discomfort on the right hand is with a combo greater than "nc", like "nd" , where you would start to feel more pressure on the bony edge at the bottom of your hand palm, this has took me a long time to discover and In the beginning I attributed this effect to partially to wrong keys as I said here in https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1098
As you can see in the thread, if you read it, I told BovFrak that his layout was better than Colemak, but now after gaining more experience, I would not try BovFrak 0.3 not only because of the outward roll (ea, th, etc...), but mainly because of the dangerous design of the right hand side. If you want down wrist pain you should put w where he has put it, and if you want your index to get damaged you should but d there. you should read what I have told jin here about Workman https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1123.
Hitting v is not the same as hitting m on QWERTY because mainly of the staggered nature of the keyboard and because of the fact that the hand that hits the space bar, usually right, hand is slightly elevated. Having said that I had letter of weight of f instead of v and and the tension started to become horrible above 50 WPM and would not go away even after 3 weeks, in fact it was increasing and I had to change the very early version of Imak to something like this.
`1234567890-=
#bcldgjpouf[]\
#rsntwyiaeh'*N
*Lzxmvkq;,./*R
##*S#
*L
#######&**()_+
######JPOUF{}|
######YIAEH"
######Q:<>?
#
*R
~!@*#$%^
#BCLDG
#RSNTW
#ZXMVK
#
although this was not the correct position of f :). also I had once w instead of x on QWERTY and the downward wrist pain started to mount, and that is why dvorak is superior in this sense because it avoids using the lower keys on the left hand, while the right hang can be more tolerant, though I still think that the position of W on dvorak is not that healthy on the wrist , but the right hand side of dvorak forces you to float your hand, which help you drag your hand backward while typing w. It is very lay your right hand palm and type on dvorak, because f and L will keep pulling your hand up off the keyboard and as your speed increase you are forced to float your hand. This is healthy in terms off allowing more blood to circulation, but it would be harder on the shoulder especially for people suffering from back pain like me ^_^.
Dam it, I wasted a lot of time. I should get the hell up and study for my exam next week or I will fail. So I should take break for week now, seriously :). And excuse me for any typos its Imak version 3 testing period.
