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    Swap N and R ?

    • Started by sdothum
    • 4 Replies:
    • Reputation: 1
    • From: Canada
    • Registered: 23-Mar-2015
    • Posts: 27

    Just wonderirg if anyone has analyzed whether swapping the N and R keys improves the Colemak layout (for English, anyway, with its common ER/RE bigram).

    Planck with R N swapped

    In a somewhat related question, what software is being used on this forum to analyse and compare layouts (then, I wouldn't need to ask here :-) ?

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    • Reputation: 21
    • From: Chicago
    • Registered: 27-Apr-2016
    • Posts: 221

    Do the NE/EN bigrams are less common? Combinations of N and R with all vowels are pretty common as I see. This is pretty much symmetric swap.
    My opinion for this is: leave well enough alone.Mod DH does not change fingers for letters and so essentially it has the same fingering as in Colemak. You personal modification with V in the top row follows the same rule. But what you propose now can not be called Colemak in my opinion.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,360

    Sounds like THR would be rather awkward with this mod? And I don't see how it'd improve anything much, really.

    Then again, my ring fingers may be stronger than some people's. They're quite dependent, but that doesn't affect their home position key significantly I think.

    In terms of the Colemak design goals, it loses a few points by swapping keys between hands. Colemak only has one such swap (E-P) because Shai found them more confusing.

    Last edited by DreymaR (27-Jun-2017 09:35:40)

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    • Reputation: 117
    • From: UK
    • Registered: 14-Apr-2014
    • Posts: 978

    According to my analyser, swapping R and N doesn't make a lot of difference, but doesn't improve anything either. Score (lower is better) goes from 1.63526 (Mod-DH) to 1.64203 (Mod-DH with N/R swap).

    With the modified layout, the most common new bigram identified is actually WN.

    N is more frequent than R, so you'd probably want to keep N on the stronger finger. And keeping N on the same finger as Qwerty is probably a good thing as far as ease-of-learning goes. And as DreymaR says, better not to have letters swap sides unless really necessary.

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    • From: Canada
    • Registered: 23-Mar-2015
    • Posts: 27

    Thank you all for your thoughts.

    I posed the question because while most R/N letter combinations from the home row position appeared to be a wash, the ER/RE bigram for English words is significantly more common than EN/NE. Trying the swap, it was difficult to determine its effectiveness or not, due to finger memory.. A good reason to leave well enough alone! It did seem to produce some rhythmic rolls with the R vowel combinations though. In the little usage I tried, the right hand seem to benefit, the left less so.

    Thank you Steve99 for the link to your analyser.. It may get me into trouble!!

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