Hey JLuber,

I don't have any data to back my claim up, but I don't think it deteriorates Colemak in any way since those keys aren't really used often and they weren't even changed from the QWERTY position. Basically, in my opinion, you can go ahead as planned.

Hooleon has German stickers among other options:
http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Sc … de=OV-0346

To use Colemak well and follow its intentions, a German user will probably want a German Colemak install. That is, an install that keeps your symbols in place but changes all the letters to their Colemak positions. The ü and ä keys stay where they are, while the ö has to move one row up because it's too rare to defend a home position placement. For comparison, look at my Norwegian board (the one I'm typing this on!) which is fairly similar.

I'm not sure whether we got around to making a German Colemak Windows install? Vilem on this forum can answer that, unless he's on vacation. If there isn't one, I could make one but not upload it in a couple of weeks.

The non-English Colemaks aren't official, but more of a fan project. Shai will chime in if he thinks we're doing anything wrong with one of them; so far he's only been positive. The general principle is to keep all the Colemak letters, and all the rare stuff of the standard (QWERTY) national layout as far as possible. Punctuation is rare and therefore hard and unnecessary to relearn.

As mentioned, the Ö is too rare to be on a home position key. The O deserves this space much much better. It also means that the only deviation from the standard Colemak within what I consider the main key block of 3x10 keys will be the semicolon and minus keys.

Yes, the ö is the same as our Norwegian ø - we just never learnt how to write töddeln.  ;)  On a side note, my personal opinion is that all the countries (Scandinavian and Germanic) that use the äöü and æøå letters should change to one conform and easy-to-write standard! Such as a line above or directly on top of the uoa instead of lifting the pen to write two dots. (The å has to stay I guess.) Like that'll ever happen.  :D

One issue is whether a layout optimised for English is really that good for other languages? My and others' searches have suggested that it is surprisingly good for the European languages - see for instance the forum topic by Checkit at https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=128 which contains both figures and much discussion, or my own stuff at http://folk.uio.no/obech/Files/Keyboard … encies.zip (if you're especially interested). At any rate, most Germans type a lot of English too these days I believe.

I found Vilem's layout image, by the way:

Vilem has done an impressive job for the German Colemak, including a Wikipedia article. Unfortunately, it got deleted. We'll have to wait a bit before trying again I guess.

No, I didn't get round to making one, as I am perfectly happy with the standard cmk. I rarely type german on my computer anyways, perhaps only for chatting and that kind of stuff. I could make one, but not right now. JLuber, why don't you download the M$ keyboard layout creator and all of the other required programs [clenching_fists]stupid microsoft[/clenching_fists] and make the german variant yourself? On the contrary you could of course wait for DreymaR or me to find time and patience to make it.

This definitely won't happen, I agree, but I don't think that's too bad. The different symbols for the umlauts give you a pretty good clue which language you're dealing with. If you see ö and å in the text, that's swedish, for instance. Therefore, I think they're quite convenient for those ignorant of the scandinavian and german languages for differentiation between them.

The german and norwegian keyboards seem to be nearly identical! I think placing the semi-colon on the comma key makes more sense than giving it it's own one, although I don't like how < and > are placed on the same key, as I never know whether I need to press shift to produce >, or not.

@JLuber: Gut zu sehen, dass es auch Landsmänner gibt, die cmk benutzen!

I've tested the MKLC and was totally surprised that it was so easy to to do the remapping. The only problem I have is that one can't remap caps lock with backspace. Is it it possible to modify the layout without using registry tricks, which probably have to be redone every time the layout is freshly installed? Otherwise one can use the layout already. If there is enough interest it can be uploaded somewhere. Any hints?

Nun, ich habe erst heute mir Colemak installiert, aber ich hoffe, dass das Umlernen recht schnell von der Hand geht. :)

I'll try that.

I have only mapped the keys which are shown in the keyboard layout you posted a few days ago. But looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:KB_ … tional.svg shows that the German layout has a lot collisions with original layout. So this leaves me with three problems: The first one is that I don't know where I should place those characters. As I'm not knowledgeable in the reasons why Shai put them there in the first place, I have no idea what kind of damage I'd cause. The second one that I didn't manage to figure out how those special Windows and Macintosh keys are supposed to work. So I couldn't add them even if I wanted. And lastly, where should I upload my file? I haven't seen an upload possibility here (could have missed that though) and I'd prefer an official server instead some web space I have access to.

Ah yes, that bit is tricky. Only change it if you're the absolute master of your computer of course, and make sure you know your passwords the way they're typed in Colemak! (I use passwords that are compatible with both layouts - there's a thread down the page on that subject.)

What you'll need to do is fool around in the registry. It's a bit messy, but doable and fairly safe. Press Win+R for a run window and run Regedit, then look up the key HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload where you'll find a number of entries numbered from 1 and up. These are the codes of the layouts you have active on logon. Now find your own user (which, unfortunately, may be just a cryptic number like S-1-5-18) and note how the corresponding entries look there. If you're in doubt, you could always look at the users, then change your layout settings (activate or unload a layout, or make another layout the default) and look at them again to see what changed in the registry entries.

Now change the .DEFAULT user's Preload values to look like your user's Preload values, and logon should start using the same layout settings as you have!

Hope that's helpful.

Well that depends what layout the logon screen is in, you see? But I too reccomend cmk-qty compatible passwords like for example

or, since you are using kohlmak, I believe ;D,

(not as safe as the other one though!)

Edit: Oops, sorry, I forgot that you use qtz and not qty, so that unveils many more possible cross-layout compatible passwords!