Is there a Dvorak day?  Perhaps August would be good...

You could orchestrate a few video postings.

When I was trying to learn how to touch type, I had a real problem trying to find good videos on hand placement and fingering.  Just lots of promo videos, all very lightweight in content.

So I'd recommend even something with a click-bait title.  That probably doesn't include the word Colemak.

Perhaps some keyboard porn videos with obvious Colemak typing.  Or dare I say it, some speed demos.  'Efficient fast typing' or 'comfortable typing'.

Low-slung tops may help.  Any beautiful Colemakers out there?   Any Colemakers named Beyonce?  Couple that with a keyword mentioned above, and you never know...

By stealth I tell ye!

I agree. "Normal" people do not care about touch-typing and keyboard layout. "Good enough" does not need to be changed.
Honestly, I do not think that any alternative keyboard has a chance to be generally accepted and be used by more than a fraction of percent of computer users, look to the history of Dvorak. Qwerty is a "self-propelling" standard, it will go away together with the keyboard.

If I understand right, the strange absence of Colemak in Windows is a result of stubbornness of a single person.

https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1983-as … o-windows/

http://archives.miloush.net/michkap/arc … 04051.html

@Dreymar, that's fascinating, I know you've mentioned it before.  It could do with being placed in a shady corner in the FAQ.

@SteveP, I was your potential target audience then.  I'd put off learning how to touch type.  Had heard about Dvorak, and I'd read something along the lines that it was more efficient and faster/easier to learn.

Anyway my point was than if I'd come across some good touch typing tutorials, where Colemak was mentioned (but not the main feature), it may have raised my eyebrows.  So a video that shows optimised home row typing could well include a reference to home row inspired layouts.

Once someone has heard of the layout, you've then the battle to convince them that it's a better alternative than the alternatives!  Which isn't the easiest of things.

When it comes to Microsoft operating systems it's still quite clumsy to change and select layouts.  It's buggy.  And other OSs have copied some bad patterns too.  So having Colemak there isn't the saving grace.  I'm stuck with ANSI Dvorak on Windows and that can be a bit annoying for me.  I use a slight UK variant usually.

If I wanted to do things like apply the angle mod, I'd be back to square one.  So a better open universal layout description file that could easily be applied to sessions on whatever system would be helpful.

You can still advocate and get excited, putting the practicalities aside.

Regarding the "better alternative", friend of mine is interesting in alternative layout, and I could not convince him to Colemak because from his point of view it is not "standard" enough. Ironically, he is Mac user, where Colemak is just suppored. :) His choice is Dvorak, Programmers Dvorak to be exact. I suspect that "programmers" flavor was the major point in his decision.

I like the idea of programmers Dvorak, but I'd be stuck on my primary workstation with that customisation.  As I said it's irritating enough swapping a few keys with Dvorak flavours.  No £ sign at fingertips under ANSI Dvorak.  It has cross platform adoption, but it's still weird.  Under Windows 10 recently, I set up Dvorak, but the keyboard still used Qwerty in Internet Explorer even after a relaunch.  Usual weird garbage bug, that vanished probably after a reboot.  So expect friction, and especially expect friction if you go off chops.

Try and coin in one sentence Colemak.  Then another in a mini-paragraph extolling all its virtues.

(I did work in advertising, before I shot myself.)

I know all of these that you are talking about and make sure I told that to my friend. But. He consider Colemak as "homebrew" layout with no support and no potential future (this is his opinion, not mine, I'm typing Colemak right now :) ). While Dvorak is an ANSI standard, this is all about it.

You can raise awareness of alternative keyboard layouts to 'normal' people.  I usually do.  I don't ever tell people I use Dvorak, but if people are stuck finding a key on their keyboard, I mention that different countries have different layouts.

In the UK, rushed Windows installs would often see the keyboard set up for the US, leading to glyph mismatches and ensuing headaches.

I remember having to troubleshoot a Windows laptop configured for an Italian, and I had real difficulty navigating settings.  I can't say that even the icons were much of a help in Windows - I as totally lost, and I was a Windows tech support guy at the time.  OS makers should make it far more intuitive to configure/swap the user interface if needed.

Colemak might be better supported but Dvorak still seems to be the leader in alternative layouts (at least according to Google Trends).

So getting the word out in some way would benefical.

Well Colemak seems to be trending steady but you might be right that people are less interested in trying a new layout. But, maybe that's all the more reason to get out the word on alternative layouts as many people actually might benefit from them.

For what it's worth, here's a "de-composed" Google Trends comparison:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q … d%20layout

The trend is about the same, if a little more noisy and less conspicuous. Over the last 5 years, Colemak searches have been about 30% as common as Dvorak searches with an ever so slight decline in Dvorak searches that does not seem to be present for Colemak. In fact, Colemak searches have been remarkably stable.

I'm also a programmer and I would say the following. I agree that programming well has little to do with raw speed, but once you think of a solution, or know what you need to program, I find it useful to get those ideas down as quickly as possible. For example I couldn't imagine not typing at least 40+ wpm (and for people that spend all day on a computer this shouldn't be too hard to achieve)

Probably more importantly, I'm astounded that he isn't touch typing. This at the very least is important to me. As a job you are programming for many hours a day, and you want to be doing so for many years. Touch typing increases your comfort (reducing potential strain and injury) and it's definitely faster (which probably helps at least in minor ways in coding, but definitely in writing emails, typing documentation, proposals, or many other related tasks).

If he is going to learn to touch type then it seems like an excellent time to learn a new layout and develop better patterns.

As a counterpoint with someone that really feels like typing fast helps out you can have him read the following, We Are Typists First, Programmers Second.