As you read our experience forum, during transition usually people complains firstly about RS, then EIO or LUY, then PG.

RS is the first complaint and you can get over it within a fortnight/month. Others takes more time to master.

Yeah, I'm considering that. The backspace on CAPS has been pretty useful in the typing tutorials, but I do rely on CAPS as CTRL in Emacs. I may be able to set up a 'tap for backspace, hold for control' setup. I know AHK can do that for Windows; don't know how I'll do it on Linux. Some variation of this, I suppose.

It is a lot like Ergodox, but it's not DIY. I can't be trusted with a soldering iron, so Ergodox is out for me. I'm hoping that keyboard.io will end up being cheaper than a secondhand Kinesis Advantage (not interested in Kinesis Freestyle, because it's the thumb keys I'm interested in). We won't know for a few months yet. I have a Microsoft 4000 at work, and it's not a bad keyboard. Probably the best mass-market keyboard, and very reasonably priced. I'm considering a TrulyErgonomic, too, but that's just as much as a used Kinesis.

I use the opposite-hand control just like I do with shift, so that shouldn't be a big deal. (Assuming sarcasm here, but I can't actually tell.)

Yeah, after following a couple of links, it seems like xcape is the best and standard solution. I may also try using SPC as both SPC and CTRL with xcape.

I'm looking at that right now. I tried MessageEase a long time ago on my previous tablet, and wasn't impressed. The learning curve was too high, and at the time it didn't have word completion, so you had to hit the top of the learning curve before seeing any benefit at all. I'm giving it another try right now. It's eased a bit by the fact that the tap keys are mostly the same as the Colemak home row, and everything seems a bit less random now. It's going to take a while before my ME speed overtakes my SK speed, though.

I wasn't sure. I thought that you might be suggesting those chords are hard to type. But what you say makes perfect sense now.

About MessagEase: It's got word completion now (not that I use it because I don't like word completion). And if you want something that seems less random you could read about my "Colemakoid" MessagEase in that thread. I found it a lot more logical and pleasing to put QWFPG/ZXCVB/JLUY/KM in analogous positions to their Colemak ones, and I feel it helped me learn the layout easily. Can't judge whether it's quite as fast as the default layout as I'm the only user I know of, but I don't see why not.

As of today, you'd have to remap it by hand but that's not hard to do I think.

rs took me months to sort out, but it is worth it

hows your wpm shaping up?

Close to cracking 20 WPM now...got 19.5 with 99.5 accuracy, though it was on an easy sample.

Update: 21.2 (98.0) and 20.4 (97.8) today. Not thrilled about my accuracy. It looks like my biggest problem is with letters that are close to, but not exactly in, their QWERTY positions, especially when they immediately follow ones that are.

Up to 22 WPM today, which is about what I'm used to on a mobile keyboard.

I know it must have been this frustrating when I was learning to type QWERTY, but that was over 20 years ago, and I don't remember it. All I remember was breaking 40 WPM in one semester of high school (on an IBM Selectric, not a computer!). and 90 WPM by my second year of college.

The good (?) news is that, at least when I am trying to type fast, my Colemak muscle memory is starting to interfere with my QWERTY muscle memory, especially for "the" and words containing it.

Down to 22.1 WPM today, though still with 97.6% accuracy. Today is my first day trying to use emacs with Colemak. Not going great. Actual typing speeds are worse than tests would indicate.

Hated letters: G, D, L, ;, but almost anything else, because of QWERTY interference. I have less interference when doing a typing test, because it's its own unique context.

problem i had was that i didn't/don't touch type a lot of the emacs keyb shortcuts, e.g M-gg

e.g. I was looking at the keys in a hunt and peck style

Therefore I was making a lot of mistakes and it was frustrating

What helped me was a judicious rearrangement of some of my keycaps

I know this is frowned upon as it can encourage you to look at the keys and therefore not type correctly but it helps a lot with emacs

Months later and emacs is no longer a problem - I've completely reprogrammed all the shortcut s in my head

as someone else mentioned C-r and C-s are much better under colemak and they get used a lot

persist and all will become clear..

At first, I was all over remapping things, such as moving the minus key elsewhere and getting an unshifted plus key. But now I use the standard variants for those keys – except for the Wide/Angle mod of course. It's less confusing and in the end good enough for me.

hey dreymar, i did think your mods to the no. row were a step to far - you have reverted to standard for the top row now?