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    modified colemak

    • Started by ruinchristmas
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    • Registered: 05-Jun-2013
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    I used to use QWERTY for 20 yrs.  I was a touch typist, I don't know how fast, maybe 80-100 WPM.  I use Windows 7.  I started learning Colemak about a week ago.  I tried Dvorak for one day, but it just frustrated me.  I did the lessons at: https://www.learncolemak.com/

    I did one lesson a day, and repeated past lessons:
    Day One: #1
    Day Two: #1-2
    Day Three: #1-3... and so forth, except that when I got to lesson 7, I went ahead and did the rest.  Probably should have stuck with the plan, but I got impatient.

    I did make some minor changes: switching the positions of the S and R keys, and the U and L keys because I kept getting them mixed up.

    Also, I type a lot of French and Spanish accented characters, but I didn't need a lot of the fancy ones, so I erased them in my layout.  And I made a separate "Colemak International" with the dead keys: ~, `, ', ", ^ like I was used to.

    I'm real slow now (15-20 wpm?) .  N is my hardest key.  But now that I am only typing this way, I will get faster soon; I'll post a typing test result when I improve.

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    Your impatience will do a lot of things.

    Looking forward to your further modifications.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
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    Haha, Tony said it!

    The main reason S and R are in a difficult-for-newbs constellation in Colemak is bigrams. You've created a layout that's easier to learn but significantly less effective; time will show whether you'll be happy with that.

    For an example of difficult bigrams, type 'sw' fast a couple of times and see whether your 'switch' feels right. ;)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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    sw sw sw sw sw sw.  I ain't worried.  Switch swoop swizzle swift swill swoon.  It just doesn't appear in that many words.  I'll move my keys where I like.  Today my speed was 23 wpm on typingtest.com.  Still slow but i'll keep you posted.  SWISH.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    We're not stopping you. We're giving you advice. Take it or leave it, of course. ;)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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    daily speed reports:

    6/5/13 - 15 WPM
    6/6/13 - 28 WPM
    6/7/13 - 34 WPM
    6/8/13 - 35 WPM
    6/9/13 - 37 WPM
    6/10/13 - 42 WPM

    I swapped Y and J.

    Further, I think 80-100 wpm with QWERTY was an overestimate.  I think 60 was closer to the truth and I really wish that I had tested my speed.  Now I am committed to cold turkey so I don't want to screw myself over by going back to test.

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    Let the past go by.

    We are only looking at your current Colemak speed, secretly comparing it to our previous Colemak speed at the appropriate day when we switched.

    Last edited by Tony_VN (11-Jun-2013 05:42:33)
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    If you were touch typing for 20 years, your estimate was probably right.  It just feels unatainable right now.

    You're making good progress anyway.  At least by the time you are typing at 40wpm, you cease to want to bash your head against the wall repeatedly.

    You might not want to eschew Dreymar's words of wisdom, he's rather annoyingly normally on the money.

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    Hang on – you swapped Y and J where, what now? According to cryptograms.org, the Y is more than 10 times more frequent in English than J is. And that's why Colemak puts J in an awkward position and Y in a much better one.

    If anything, you might consider that I think the Colemak WF and UY positions to be nearly home-row quality. In that perspective, Colemak could've put better letters on those keys – but then there's the bigram issue again. If you put two very common letters on keys right above each other, you should make sure they don't occur in common bigrams to avoid bad same-finger bigrams.

    Same-finger bigrams are a pain, especially when you type fast. They disrupt flow and lead to tension. I use alternative fingering to avoid some of them, like Colemak NK/KN, TB/BT, NH/HN, TD/DT etc.

    Last edited by DreymaR (12-Jun-2013 08:20:11)

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    Colemak's J is where Dvorak places F - and Qwerty's Y.

    I don't feel like I struggle that much with the above placement.  I do have to drift my hand though - otherwise it's a bit of a stretch.  It explains why Colemak has quite a different feel on the right hand.  That; and that it doesn't use Qwerty's P poistion for a letter and the other punctuation, lifts some of the burden from the right hand.

    However I'm not the biggest fan of using my left hand for typing.  I have been trying alternate fingering on Dvorak's P/Qwerty's R/Colemak F - giving it the middle finger.

    @Dreymar, do you use different fingering for the wide mods?

    Giving the Colemak layout a cursory glance, If I'd swap anything, it would probably be the B and the J.

    The odd thing for me is that when I do look at Colemak's layout, I notice that it's easier on the right hand, and expect it all to be lumped on the left, but then I notice that the left still has Z, X and Q on it and wonder if it really is that overloaded.  At which point, I can't quite figure out where some of the letters have gone!  The subtle changes between layouts can actually have quite a measured effect on the overall feel, so it's difficult to try and imagine these things practically.

    Last edited by pinkyache (12-Jun-2013 09:06:39)

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    There's no difference in fingering for the Wide ergonomic mods, apart from those symbols in the middle. Those are even more of a stretch than the J position but it still feels as nasty to me as the B position without an Angle mod. The symbols in the middle are, well, symbols – and I always float/drift in for them anyway while the J is more of a stretch.

    I keep both my wrists straight – if I didn't the J and G would be somewhat easier to reach I think but then the wrists would be bent which is something I really don't want.

    Using an Angle mod is a better solution than moving the B, in my opinion. Especially if you have an ISO keyboard of course.

    Last edited by DreymaR (12-Jun-2013 09:05:44)

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    Aha, I forgot you used the angle mod.  That would certainly help with the B (that was my introduction to Colemak due to a layout glitch under Debian, where someone had entered the anglemod version of Colemak into the repos!)

    I find my right wrist is easy to keep straight, but not so with the left.  If I used an angle mod, and shifted some of my fingering on the top row I could straighten it up a little.  Might be a little hard for me to put into practice.

    I'd have to rehome my pipe and backslash.  Perhaps to Qwerty's B position, which actually probably wouldn't be that bad.  It would have helped with vim too under Dvorak, as at first I struggled with the colons placement, and I still can contort my left hand a little because of it.  Weird standard keyboards...

    Last edited by pinkyache (12-Jun-2013 09:21:14)

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    Here are my latest speeds:

    6/11/13: 46 wpm
    6/12/13: 48 wpm
    6/13/13: 49 wpm
    6/14/13: 52 wpm
    6/29/13: 54 wpm *

    *Note that I was on vacation for 2 weeks and only had my (ubuntu) netbook.  I converted it to my modified Colemak, but it is very little and hard to type on.  So I did no tests or drills and limited typing (hey, I was on vacation) .  But I at least got continued familiarity with the keys.  And now that I am home I can take my daily speed test.  I was gratified to see that I made at least some improvement while I was gone.

    I am very happy with my J/Y switch.  I think a lot of these keyboard preferences are personal.  For me, I can lash out with my right index finger and jab any key a lot faster that I can do anything with my ring finger. For example I have always hit periods with my pinky finger.

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    ruinchristmas said:

    For me, I can lash out with my right index finger and jab any key a lot faster that I can do anything with my ring finger.  For example I have always hit periods with my pinky finger.

    You might consider a wide layout (similar to the one shown below) to move some of that pinkie cover to the right index finger:

    BOPkhel.png

    That way, your pinkie would only be responsible for one bottom-row key, while the index finger reaches / ? pretty easily.  The main disadvantage is that, on US ASCII keyboards, the quotation key ' " would be displaced to the top row.

    (I tried displacing it to Return at some point, but that didn't work out so well..)

    Last edited by lalop (30-Jun-2013 07:20:33)
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    DreymaR said:

    Same-finger bigrams are a pain, especially when you type fast. They disrupt flow and lead to tension. I use alternative fingering to avoid some of them, like Colemak NK/KN, TB/BT, NH/HN, TD/DT etc.

    I've never understood why the B gets mapped to the left hand--I've always used my right index finger to reach it. It's just as comfortable, imo.

    (Also a big thanks for your easily installable Tarmak layout. I'm on level three and I still feel like the changes are just challenging enough at each step!)

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    Having both hands comfortably reach B is a waste of a spot.  The wide layout (pic above) puts the /? on the right hand's B position, trading away its former, bad pinkie spot.

    In your case, if B instead went with the right hand, then /? would just go with the left-B position.

    Last edited by lalop (02-Jul-2013 04:14:45)
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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    I understand the concern with B: It's too long a stretch relative to the letter's frequency.

    The Angle mod fixes this without moving the keys around which works wonderfully for me, but ANSI keyboard users have a harder time using that and have to move the Z or something to get its benefits.

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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    totally used to the new layout for some time.  Just gave the old typing test one try and got 65 wpm on the 2 minute test.

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