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    Colemak with Dvorak Punctuation

    • Started by LightenS
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    Anyone has moved their punctuation to something like this?
    1 2 3 4 5 6 8 8 9 0 [ ]
    q w f p g j u y ; / =
    a r s t d h n e i o -
    x c v b z k m , . '

    I have got this idea from Dvorak and want to know if anyone has did the same or something in similar to ease the pain in the pinky.
    Most of the time people talked about character but missed out on the punctuation. As a programmer, the right pin key is killing me with all those punctuation in a long session.
    I cannot use the wide layout either because it will be harder for my index to reach and I do not press the enter key with my pinky. The wide layout also make me missed 2 keys ( - and ') within touch distance.

    Any suggestion on arranging those punctuation? Is there any reason why Dvorak put those punctuation in those spot?

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    The ANSI-Wide layout puts the apostrophe within comfortable distance, not sure what you're saying? Wide is very comfy. But the hyphen-minus is badly placed either way.

    For Enter I recommend using Extend – I mainly use Ext+Space for Enter. With Extend and/or AltGr it's also quite simple to add for instance the hyphen-minus somewhere comfortable. Layers are nice! Using CapsLock as the Extend modifier may be problematic for you if your pinkies are weak, but maybe it's mostly your right pinky you're having trouble with? I find it very comfortable. If you don't, there's always the option of using a thumb Extend key like SteveP every so heartily recommends. ^_^

    Using Extend with EPKL (formerly PKL) on Windows one can add macro-like strings like "type <p></p> then four left arrows placing your cursor between them". In EPKL there are sample mappings in the coding/strings Extend layers.

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    LightenS said:

    want to know if anyone has did the same or something in similar to ease the pain in the pinky.
    ...
    As a programmer, the right pin key is killing me with all those punctuation in a long session.

    My solution to this is to define an alternative AltGr layer with all the most common programming characters, such as brackets, dash, underscore, etc, right under the home keys.

    https://github.com/stevep99/keyboard-tw … ster/AltGr

    It's much better that trying to re-arrange them between varying degrees of poor positions on the extreme right of the keyboard.

    Last edited by stevep99 (06-Feb-2019 15:03:55)

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    AltGr works best with the Wide mod though, just saying. ;-)

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    Thanks for the solution. .  sadly, the right alt is really hard to press even with wide mode because of my short thumb.  It is better pressed with ring finger but I will missed out all the key to press with that.

    I am using a kinesis edge and has a second layer accessed using the left thumb
    Currently, my fn layer is like this:
    the left side is all ctrl+ base key; I have switched the bottom row to top row so the copy and paste is done with F and P.
    the right side is mainly used for arrow and bracket. the H for { and ; for } plus the bottom row used for =" and ='
    this is why I moved the -_ to the home row as in Dvorak.
    However, I feel that it is not optimized, because I just put them randomly around the arrow keys. 

    Other than that, I do want to have a num pad somewhere on the right side.  I can change one of the hotkey to extend though so will try that out

    Last edited by LightenS (08-Apr-2019 22:52:40)
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    LightenS said:

    Looks like what you've got there is half of Extend. The left space bar makes for a good Extend/Fn key, but if I were you I would definitely be looking to implement a full Extend like DreymaR's. You'd still get your important functions like copy and paste, but don't underestimate the power of home-row modifiers!

    That keyboard looks pretty good, and it being programmable makes it a particularly good choice. My one criticism would be, even though the space bar is split, they have kept it inordinately large - compare with the Matias Ergo Pro which I have, although it's sadly not programmable, it does have the best bottom row (space, alts) I've seen on a keyboard.

    I have two separate extra layers: A "programmer/symbol" layer for characters, and an Extend layer for functions and navigation.

    Last edited by stevep99 (07-Feb-2019 11:32:14)

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    I'm considering a symbol key mod. As SteveP says, you can of course put symbols in layers. At the same time, using the Wide mod moves a few symbol keys anyway. And the apostrophe/quote and hyphen-minus/underscore are too poorly placed so why not improve it layers aside?

    I don't feel particularly moved by Dvorak's placements though. At the moment I'm considering swapping quote and semicolon to make all those t's bigrams nicer, and moving the minus down to the slash/question position where it'd be more accessible – particularly using the Wide mod. For the latter, I think maybe the equals/plus key could join in, like this:

    6   7   8   9   0   =   /
    j   l   u   y   '   [   ]   \
    h   n   e   i   o   ;
    k   m   ,   .   -   _____
    
    QU > SC
    MN > SL > EQ for ANSI; for ISO I'd also swap / and \ (MN > SL > BS > EQ)

    With the Wide-ISO mod, on a staggered board:

      \   7   8   9   0   =
    [   j   l   u   y   '   -
     ]   h   n   e   i   o   ;
       /   k   m   ,   .   _____
    Last edited by DreymaR (05-Mar-2020 15:05:10)

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    I agree that apostrophe is more common than semicolon, so in theory there could be a reasonable case to switch them. But I'm not totally convinced it's worth the effort - neither are super common.

    One additional complication is the apostrophe key has national variations. For example in the UK keyboard shift-apostophe makes '@'.  Double-quote is on shift-2 instead. Such variations might effect people's calculations on the relative value of each key depending on their country. Also, as a programmer, I'm sure I use semicolon more than the average user.

    Definitely keys like minus and parentheses are in too bad a position in default Qwerty/Colemak - I think having a symbols layer is the ultimate solution for those - for me they are all on home keys..

    Last edited by stevep99 (19-Dec-2019 12:19:30)

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    Thing is, "worth the effort" is super subjective. We have several people at the Discord trying out multiple layouts at once just because they can! Oh my. I'm thinking that this symbol rotation would be one of the optional building blocks for the connoiseurs. Some complain that Colemak leaves all the symbol keys in place while Dvorak moved them and fixed some problems,

    For English at least, either one of the single or double quote symbols make the key position worth improving relative to the four rarest letters on their own. So I don't think it'll be bad for locale users, as long as they write some English. The main point is that the apostrophe and to some extent the hyphen are text-oriented symbols that frequently pop up in normal text. Thus, moving them closer to the home position should feel good for the text typing flow. Layers is an acceptable solution but my hypothesis is that a close-to-home apostrophe should be that little bit better. My AltGr layer is busy doing other things anyway and I haven't dared try too much modifier magic outside Extend yet.  (=^・ω・^=)丿

    Last edited by DreymaR (20-Dec-2019 13:37:42)

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    turned out I have been using this variation for a long time and so far I am in loved with it.

    currently I am using a dactyl keyboard, although I am have access to multiple layers.  my right side is still super comfortable.

    6 7 8 9 0 =
    j  l  u  y ;  '
    h n e i  o -
    k m , .  / shift
    `  \  [  ] null

    mostly I have replace quotation with hyphen and replace [ with quotation. 

    bracket and curly bracket I put them to another layer as well.

    for normal keyboard I would put them like this.

    6 7 8 9 0 [ ]
    j  l  u  y ;  '  = \
    h n e  i o  -
    k m , . /

    Last edited by LightenS (07-Jan-2020 01:54:08)
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    LightenS said:

    6 7 8 9 0 [ ]
    j  l  u  y ; ' = \
    h n e i o -
    k m , . /


    Of the three symbols

    - ' ; 

    perhaps the dash/minus is be the most frequent? If so this looks reasonable to me.

    If you are switching around the symbols, would you not prioritize apostrophe higher than semicolon though?

    i.e.

    6 7 8 9 0 [ ]
    j l u y ' ;  = \
    h n e i o -
    k m , . /

    But I'm not really a fan of any of these keys to the right of the main section, so I'd still prefer a symbols layer to re-arranging keys.

    Last edited by stevep99 (08-Jan-2020 14:36:04)

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    As seen in my post in the Q-rotation topic, the apostrophe key is more common than hyphen-minus, especially accounting for the double quote which is a lot more common than underscore.

    I'm typing this with my new SymbolRotation mod. It's a bit confusing for now... ;-)

    I didn't put the semicolon on the upper row as it felt more natural to put it outside the home row. Hmmm...

    6   7   8   9   0   =   /
    j   l   u   y   '   [   ]
    h   n   e   i   o   -   \
    k   m   ,   .   ;   _____
    
    QU > SC > SL > EQ > MN

    Here's another possibility, avoiding a down-curl to the hyphen-minus on vanilla Colemak and keeping in line with its Dvorak placement. It's cute how the semicolon falls in with its relatives the comma and period.  /(⁎≧∇≦)\

    With the Wide-ISO mod, on a staggered board:

      /   7   8   9   0   =
    [   j   l   u   y   '   ;
     ]   h   n   e   i   o   -
       \   k   m   ,   .   _____

    Yeah, guess it'd work. I prefer keeping ' ; - close to the O key, since they are all more common than the slash/question key. The semicolon is only barely so, but it just feels better that way to me. On the other hand, having minus and equals next to each other in my previous suggestion also felt nice. And typing emoji is better with the hyphen "nose" on the upper row making the "eyes"→"nose"→"mouth" triad an inwards roll, hehe! :-)

    Last edited by DreymaR (08-Jan-2020 15:46:32)

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    Hmm, I'd totally forgotten about emojis. The frequencies of the various symbols used in modern typing - messaging and suchlike - must be somewhat different from traditional/formal typing. Yet more complications.

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    stevep99 said:

    Of the three symbols

    - ' ; 

    perhaps the dash/minus is be the most frequent? If so this looks reasonable to me.

    If you are switching around the symbols, would you not prioritize apostrophe higher than semicolon though?

    i.e.

    6 7 8 9 0 [ ]
    j l u y ' ;  = \
    h n e i o -
    k m , . /

    But I'm not really a fan of any of these keys to the right of the main section, so I'd still prefer a symbols layer to re-arranging keys.

    In fact, I do have a layer that cover the symbols.  However, sometime it is just more convenience to have them right next to another key.
    I code with sublime and visual studio a lot so the semicolon is a must and has higher priority than apostrophe.

    putting apostrophe further away might just be a personal experience.

    hyphen is also used more often because I always type these emoji ._.  or -_- or =_=
    LOL, the underscore mouth just works.

    another case is hyphen is used a lot more in html coding, file naming, naming variable etc.
    Sometime people just name their variable with __variable and I just have to follow.

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    All those cases may well be subjective. Do the emoji and coding usages really affect typing flow, or are the keys mainly used as symbol keys for those purposes? The main argument for putting the apostrophe and hyphen closer to the text block is their frequent usage in text.

    These are the relative frequencies of some letters and symbols in English text syllabi including code, according to the McDickens page:

    Excluding code: b , . v k ' " - x 0 j 1 q 2 z ) ( : ! ? 5 ;
    Including code: b , . v k - " _ ' x ) ( ; 0 j 1 q = 2 : z /

    Note that even including code the semicolon isn't more frequent than the parentheses or apostrophe. You're right that the hyphen beats the apostrophe for coders, but the two quotes together hold their own against hyphen+underscore. Looks like nearly a toss-up all in all, but the quotes clearly win for pure text. At any rate, we clearly see why these keys deserve to be near the letter block as they are more common than the rarest letters X J Q Z.

    I remember from my Dvorak days that I really enjoyed the placements of the period and comma. Well, of course I did, they're very good spots. Only later did I realize that their placements were unnecessarily good and there were letters more deserving of them. So what you have to ask yourself is what affects your typing flow the most. Symbols are generally a bit out-of-flow anyway, unless you're a typing prodigy like Sean Wrona.  (=ʘᆽʘ=)ʃ

    But as you can see above, I still do put the semicolon in a close position since it can be situationally needed. For coding though, I'd consider a tap dance like {Extend,o} producing semicolon plus enter. Still two strokes but without a stretch, and if you use it a lot you'll get used to it. Tap-Extend is ideal for boilerplate-producing shortcuts in general. I use it for kaomoji!  Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

    Last edited by DreymaR (09-Jan-2020 15:35:17)

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