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Learning Colemak-DH on a split columnar keyboard

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stevep99 said:

Sounds like you have done well on the "you" issue. I still have a bit of trouble with "you" even after all these years, esp as you say, if it comes up frequently. In contrast, "ion" has always been ok for me. I think it's that initial stretch of the ring finger up to the "y", knowing that "o" is next, that seems to disrupt my natural flow.

FYI, when I type "you", I don't stretch my ring finger up. I shift my whole hand up slightly instead, so it's almost like typing "i/e" as far as my fingers are concerned. I float my wrists, so this happens naturally for things sequences like LY and JU also.

However, I wouldn't claim that I've solved the "you" problem. I type pretty slow in the grand scheme of things, so typing "you" at 80-90 wpm pace makes it a fast word for me, but others would be complaining. If I try to do the motion significantly faster, I make errors. I think I'm mostly just much closer to my theoretical peak for "you" than I am for other words that have hand alternation or are simply less easy for my brain to see and react to.

I should also note that I've actually been practicing the "you" movement since before I choose Colemak-DH! When I was researching for the best and most practical alt-layout for a split columnar keyboard, I found something that spoke highly of Colemak-DH but noted that turns like "you" and "ion" were potential downsides. So, I opened up notepad and typed "o;i o;i o;i o;i" and "l;j l;j l;j l;j" repeatedly to see how much it bothered me. Going in knowing that those movements were trouble points was probably really helpful. I also have had no lingering issues with R and S, probably at least partially for the same reason (switching cold turkey was also a benefit here).

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Progress is now really slow, but I feel that my consistency has improves noticeably. I really don't have bad tests anymore once I've warmed up. I did just hit a new PB of 59.39 wpm on the 60s English 5k test. So close to 60wpm.

I've become more conscious that I'm missing a lot of rolls on my left hand. By "miss" I mean that I'm typing them as discrete letters rather that rolling them in one motion. I'm especially missing AR and RA rolls, but even ST sometimes doesn't happen in one quick and smooth stroke like it should. I've started doing some sessions where I really slow down my fingers and concentrate on making all movements smooth and rolling if possible. We'll see if that helps.

Here's my latest average of ten (English 5k; 60s):
54 wpm
98% accuracy
74% consistency

59.39    59.39    99.33%    77.27%    297/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 12:03
51.59    51.59    97.74%    75.79%    258/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 12:02
54.19    54.19    98.55%    75.35%    271/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:48
54.59    54.59    99.28%    71.87%    273/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:46
51.99    51.99    95.96%    74.38%    260/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:45
52.79    52.79    98.14%    70.78%    264/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:43
55.99    55.99    98.25%    77.88%    280/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:36
53.99    53.99    98.55%    75.35%    270/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:34
56.99    56.99    97.94%    71.63%    285/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:30
52.59    52.59    98.50%    72.05%    263/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:28
54.20    54.20    99.27%    71.23%    271/0/0/0    time 60            28 Jan 2022 11:24

Last edited by ikcelaks (28-Jan-2022 18:11:55)
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I've decided to try out a minor modification to Colemak-DH by adding a cycle of (Z, ;, '). The motivation of the mod is to move the quotation mark a better spot. Specifically, I want it off the right pinky.

I initially tried the cycle of (Q, ;, '), but I didn't like that very much for a couple of reasons.

  1. The top row pinky positions are significantly worse than the bottom row pinky positions for me on my keyboard. I have short pinkies compared to my other fingers, and the conservative columnar stagger of the Moonlander puts the home and bottom row keys in good spots, but I need to shift my hand a bit to reach the top row pinky keys. The quotation mark is easily the highest usage key among those I'm dealing with, so it deserves better.

  2. 're and 's are specifically bad when the quote is in the top left pinky position.

  3. I actually dislike having the Q on the right pinky. I thought having QU on an inward roll would be good, but QUE and especially QUI were just worse.

  4. Z tends to usually follow a single vowel, so it doesn't cause redirect problems when on the right pinky.

I'm curious how long it will take me to learn the new positions. I think the new quote position will be natural pretty soon, if I just type some fiction for practice. The new Z position will probably require some more specific practice.

I've now moved Ctrl-Z off of the left hand. Avoiding doing that for the core shortcuts was one of my original core principles and a reason that I chose Colemak-DH over other more exotic options. Still, I think it's okay. I've become used to using Extend for the Undo action anyways.

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The apostrophe isn't ideal, I agree. But I think it's not so much being on the right pinky that's the problem, it's the lateral stretch that's awkward, especially for bigrams involving I, such as I'm, I'll, etc. What I do is move the apostrophe to the semicolon position - moving it to directly above O makes I' a relatively comfortable roll, and it avoids having to relocate any alpha characters. DreymaR also has a Symbol Mod which moves even more symbols around if you're so inclined - although I quite like having the less common symbols in a separate layer.

Last edited by stevep99 (05-Feb-2022 12:10:11)

Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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I know that swapping the quotation mark and semicolon is a good and sufficient fix for a lot of people, but the top row pinky positions are just significantly worse than the bottom row pinky positions for me. If I had to put numbers to it, I'd say that the bottom pinky is about 2.6 and top pinky is about 3.2 (compared to 3.2 on bottom and 3.0 on bottom that you have for matrix keyboards on the Colemak-DH site). Pinky preference seems to be highly personal and probably related to both the relative length of your pinky and keyboard choice.

But mostly, the right pinky is just the worst finger for the quotation key for anyone who inputs a lot of quote encapsulated file paths or even just comma delimited lists of strings. Since writing and modifying PowerShell and sometimes Bash scripts is a fairly common occurrence in my day job, this isn't rare, and it's not comfortable.

I finally decided to get serious about the issue when I wrote something like the following PowerShell command:

'.\path1\', '.\path2\', '.\path3\' | fix-permissions

You don't have to write a command like that too many times to want to move the quotation key off of the right pinky.

So, it's almost just a nice bonus that the bottom left pinky is also a fantastic spot when the character is used as an apostrophe in contractions and possessives. The inside roll for 's, 't, 'd, 're, and 've are all between good and great. And the bad interactions with I' and you' are eliminated (I' is really bad for me when putting the quotation key in the top right pinky spot, probably because of my relatively short pinky and minimal columnar stagger).

Finally, spending a day with this change has made me truly appreciate how irreverent the position of the Z key truly is. I would bet my accuracy on it is at about 25% (haven't drilled it at all yet), and even that just doesn't matter, because I basically never type it!

Bonus: On a whim, I just did a find-on-page for 'Z' on this post edit page, and if had 13 hits! Five of those hits were referring to the letter / key itself, one was in ZSA, and only seven were in normal English words. If I wrote British English, I think that only "amazing" would still contain a Z. WOW.

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That combination of ' and / looks especially tricky, I can certainly see what you're getting at there. Analytics tools are often based on letter frequencies in text, but there can be significant variation, especially for the less frequent keys - I suspect I might use Ctrl-Z more often than plain text Z.  So your Z is currently above O?  I guess it shouldn't cause too much of a problem - as long as you aren't a dozy zombie zoologist called Ozzy.

It's good that Z doesn't matter too much actually, it means ANSI users needn't fear relocating it angle-mod-style to the middle of the board.

Last edited by stevep99 (06-Feb-2022 15:17:15)

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That's a good point on the ANSI angle mod. I never use Colemak on ANSI, but if I had maybe I would made the realization of the rarity of Z earlier. It's definitely not something anyone should worry about when considering the angle mod.

My Z is currently above the O. It's a pretty bad spot for any consonant. -ize is not very good in my hands. That trigram is not so common that I'm worried about it. No trigram with Z is really worth worrying about. Not sure if OZ / ZO is more or less common than AZ / ZA. Again, it doesn't really matter.

However, I'm strongly considering moving the Z again anyways. :) The dash is a pretty common character for me, and I currently have it to the right of G on the extra center column that Moonlanders have. This isn't a good spot for it, because so many Powershell commands are Get-Noun or Set-Noun, and "T-" makes for an extremely nasty SFB. However, that's a perfectly fine spot for the Z (as long as you don't type much German with TZ). The spot above the O is absolutely perfect for the dash, because it doesn't have any particular interaction with the vowels or the other punctuation on the right hand. Extra bonus: this returns the Z to the left hand! This means I'll be able to use Ctrl-Z with only my left hand on any occasion when that's more convenient than Extend-'.

My basic take-away from this experimentation is that everyone should consider the Z free to move. Consider putting whatever key (or lack of key, as in ANSI angle-mod) works best for you in that spot, and just let the Z go where ever is convenient once the rest of the keys have good homes.

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It's a bit inconvenient that the characters that merit their own spot in the main 30-key body of the keyboard are the 26 letters plus 5 most common symbols , . / ' -, giving 31...
So you either have to decide to relegate a symbol or a rare alpha key like Z.  To be fair Z is less frequent that some symbols so it sounds reasonable.  I have opted for having - in my symbols layer but at least it's on the home row so not too bad.

Last edited by stevep99 (07-Feb-2022 17:49:59)

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Yeah, the home row of the symbols layer is not too bad. That's where I've put my parens. By usage, they're almost definitely more common than Q and J, but the home row of the symbols layer works very logically for them.

I think there is something to be said for keeping even the rare letters like Q and J on the prime 30 spots, because they're always used within the rhythm of typing, where as something like the parens or other brackets frequently occur where there is a natural mental break.

I do wonder if people who like to type all numbers on a numpad layer might be well served to dedicate the easy to reach keys on the number row (2-4 and 7-9) for my hands on the Moonlander) to some of the symbols that they use regularly, whatever they may be. I feel like those number row keys are better than any position requiring a layer activation for single characters. I haven't tried that, because I like the number row for numerical entry (it's faster than the number pad, which has SFBs like crazy), but I might make a numeric layer that moves the numbers down to the home row and try doing other things with the number row on the base layer.

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ikcelaks said:

I finally decided to get serious about the issue when I wrote something like the following PowerShell command:

'.\path1\', '.\path2\', '.\path3\' | fix-permissions

If you have to do that often I'd make a quick mapping on an Ext-tap layer or a Compose sequence (or even a CoDeKey deadkey mapping) that types out

'.\'

then moves the cursor inside the quotes. Getting out again is a simple matter of Ext+Y (End). Decide for yourself whether you want to add a comma and space to that, it depends on how many entries you have per list.

If you don't, it won't really be a problem?

I have a feeling you may be ever so slightly lost in a modding haze now? That's fine but be careful. It's very easy to prefer your latest (or rather, your next) move to everything else, the brain is very biased like that. Hope you arrive at something that's good for you.

I fully agree on the "rhythm of typing" thing, or the flow as I call it. It's a major reason I took to using the Sym mod which helps the hyphen and apostrophe positions, since they're both used in the middle of normal text. Even though some symbols are more used than some letters I prefer not to break the block feelings to keep things clean-ish, but at some point I think that efficiency is more important than "aesthetics" after all – so at the end of the day it's a balancing act.

Last edited by DreymaR (08-Feb-2022 11:23:25)

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DreymaR said:
ikcelaks said:

I finally decided to get serious about the issue when I wrote something like the following PowerShell command:

'.\path1\', '.\path2\', '.\path3\' | fix-permissions

If you have to do that often I'd make a quick mapping on an Ext-tap layer or a Compose sequence (or even a CoDeKey deadkey mapping) that types out

'.\'

then moves the cursor inside the quotes. Getting out again is a simple matter of Ext+Y (End). Decide for yourself whether you want to add a comma and space to that, it depends on how many entries you have per list.

If you don't, it won't really be a problem?

I don't type lists of quoted Windows relative file paths nearly enough to dedicate and learn a compose sequence for them. Similarly, I don't do enough quoted Linux file paths (which use the other slash), or lists of quoted strings, or any other single kind of awkward interaction between the quotation key and the other punctuation on the right pinky. Individually they're annoyances. Together they're a problem with an easy solution: move it to the old Z spot.

Do you actually think that top right pinky is better than bottom left pinky for the quotation key, or is the objection with my decision to move Z?

Once, the decision is made to put the quotation and dash keys are both more worthy than Z for spots on the 30 prime positions, I think it's clear that dash should go to the top right (near its old position and well placed for typing 555-555-5555 phone numbers, etc.) and quotation should go on the bottom left (to avoid the clashes with all the other punctuation and the o' SFB and I' awkwardness).

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I and many others think the top-right spot is better, yes. But I have noted that there are individual differences regarding that. Both finger lengths, finger strengths/agilities and typing style seem to affect it.

I shouldn't object to moving Z, really, since we do that in the Angle(Z) mod for ANSI anyway. But your mods are somewhat more dramatic than ours, keys change hands and whatnot that Colemak design philosophy tries to avoid. More like what the Q-Mods do.

I've got nothing big against your mods, don't get me wrong. But I wouldn't advice recommending them to just anybody. I do believe that whey won't be worth it for most, although they may certainly be beneficial to you!

Dvorak has its dash next to the home row (Colemak's apostrophe position, my semicolon position). I agree that it deserves a far better spot than tucked away up on the number row! But since I'm loath to swap the left-hand letters for punctuation unless truly warranted, I do prefer the Sym mod I use which betters both apostrophe and hyphen in a very nice way for me. I do see the point of the o' bigram, but it seems I alt-finger that with pinky-ring intuitively. I don't use it very often I think.

Last edited by DreymaR (08-Feb-2022 16:32:08)

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I think maybe my modifications feel more major than they are, because I've explained them with words instead of showing the keymap:

* 1 2 3 4 5 *       * 6 7 8 9 0 *
* Q W F P B =       | J L U Y - \
* A R S T G Z       $ M N E I O ;
* ' X C D V           K H , . / *

That's not really much of a change. The Z is actually in a similar sort of spot to the ANSI Angle-Mod, which wasn't intentional, but I think it would be a plus for someone who also used that. The =, $, and | are there because I use PowerShell a lot and definitely personal choices. Perhaps this layout gives too much priority to the dash for anyone who doesn't use command line interface, but it's a very dense character in that situation, and it's more common that Z even in normal typing if you hyphenate compound nouns properly and use "--" at all.

Have you ever tried putting the quotation key in the bottom left? Even if you don't care about the way quote interacts with .,/ and O, bottom left is really good for all of the contractions and the possessive 's / s'. I don't expect that you'd keep it there over your Compose key, but for people who either don't use Compose or put it on a thumb, I think it's worth considering. That's especially true for people with short pinkies.

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You're right, the changes aren't so big after all. And yes, I do like the Z position being so similar to its ANSI Angle-Z one. That helps consistency.

Since I use ISO keyboards, the "bottom left" key actually sits in the old B key spot. So my Compose keys are that one, reachable by both index fingers, and the thumb key next to RAlt. I really like those! I use both with the same Compose tables although you could have separate tables for each one or mix and match. The thumb key is what I prefer for typing flow, but the one in the middle feels great for actual sequences and I often use that one for special letters that are also in the middle so they become rolls.

The actual bottom left key – the ISO "102" key – is still Z using the ISO Angle mod. Since that's so consistent and the position isn't all that good anyway, I think it's perfect for me to just keep Z there.

There are some coders who use the hyphen key frequently. One major factor is the underscore characters which is abundant in for instance the Linux source code as seen in my Sym mod topic. For people who use that a lot, I suspect the hyphen key can benefit a lot from a good placement. But I believe we both have that now, you with your mod and I with mine – although yours is better of course. If I were to type a whole lot of underscores I'd probably add it to my thumb dead key with a home row mapping?

I haven't tried your suggested apostrophe placement, no. I see your point about 's, but what about the t' bigram? The t's trigram becomes a redirect involving the pinky which could be a bit tiresome in the long run?

Last edited by DreymaR (09-Feb-2022 13:15:47)

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DreymaR said:

but what about the t' bigram?

Ayup, t'problem even worse for people from Yorkshire.

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t's in isolation is pretty fast for me, because I can easily chord it, but I'm not a great judge of it. ION and YOU are both fast trigrams for me, and I know that typist who are actually fast typically consider them problems. AT'S (as in "that's") is okay. I just type that AT and 'S as distinct inward rolls. There's definitely a bit of a pause between the T and the ' in that case, almost like it's a SFB, except that each action gives two characters (so not that bad).

At any rate, it's much less troublesome for me than either I'm or I'll were when the quotation key was in either of the right pinky positions. For me, these redirects involving the pinky are much easier if the pinky key is either on the row of the other keys (as in ION) or one row below (as in YOU), and not up a row or stretched out a column horizontally. I imagine that t's is worse on a row staggered keyboard or a columnar keyboard with a more dramatic columnar stagger. That extra 0.5u of stretch makes a difference.

My feelings are that this mod is a good thing for people to try if the following applies:

  1. They have issues with the way the quote interacts with the other punctuation and/or I and O OR they want a good spot for the dash key.

  2. They type in a language where Z is extremely rare.

  3. They use a keyboard that's columnar, ISO, or ANSI with Fat-Z.

People who like the quotation key on the right pinky but want to promote the dash key could simply swap the dash key with the Z. I feel like decent number of people already do that sort of thing and put the Z on either a layer or combo.

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I'm trying out the I' bigram on thumb key then apostrophe (in vanilla's semicolon position). Including the shift for I that's a three-for-two deal so it should be good. But I never remember to use it, so there's the matter of mental load versus utility...

Last edited by DreymaR (09-Feb-2022 18:02:17)

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DreymaR said:

I'm trying out the I' bigram on thumb key then apostrophe (in vanilla's semicolon position). Including the shift for I that's a three-for-two deal so it should be good. But I never remember to use it, so there's the matter of mental load versus utility...

Yeah, I tried giving I' its own dedicated button based on something you posted somewhere (I think), and I basically never remembered to use it, and the times I did remember about it, the pause between hitting the macro key, and remembering what my hand should do next to get to M or LL more than negated the theoretical three for one advantage.

However, I've assigned $_ to the symbol layer (on the $ key), and that two for three macro is worth it, because $_ is essentially a whole word in PowerShell. Eventually I want to create a whole layer of useful macros, and I'm pretty convinced that they'll need to be whole words or phrases to be useful. Otherwise, my brain needs to learn all then new bigrams between the macro and the letters that come before and/or after it. I'm not interested in that mental work to save a handful of keystrokes.

Last edited by ikcelaks (09-Feb-2022 23:47:59)
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You're so right! The punctuation tricks work relatively well since punctuation is for word boundaries, but I agree that a word part is much harder to remember and use. People with really quick and agile minds may use such tricks and benefit I guess. A trick like autocompleting Q to Qu might be okay, especially if you're mostly writing English texts, but I don't think it's really worth it either and it'd mess me up whenever I didn't intend to follow the Q with an u.

I have a demo PowerString in EPKL that I don't actually use but it's there to show the power of AHK syntax. It prints out:

for (int i=0; i<; i++) {
    
}

Then it moves the cursor next to i< so you can write the max and then arrow-down to proceed. That shortcut should be worth remembering if you use C for loops a lot.

One neat feature of EPKL is that the dead key help images can give you a pointer to make it easier to remember where you put mappings. I'm planning to release a new feature soon, that lets you specify a 1–2 character string to use when generating a help image for any prefix-syntax mapping. Today AHK code is merely displayed as ·α· on the generated images, which isn't very helpful after all.

Last edited by DreymaR (11-Feb-2022 16:06:46)

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The thing about symbol/programming macros is, they are typically used within a specific context, i.e. the language-specific IDE. IDE's usually let you define your own macros or templates, so you could argue having these as a keyboard-level feature is not really necessary. I mostly use Linux and so power shell isn't relevant for me, but I do have some bash aliases and custom shell scripts to make common tasks shorter to type.

I also had the thought that for programming templates like the for-loop example, it depends a lot on your programming language. Some of the more modern languages try to avoid the need for boilerplate constructions like for loops, so if you wanted to iterate over a list of items, instead of

for (int i=0; i<list.length; i++) {
  do_something(list[i])
}

you'd do

list.forEach(::do_something)

In such cases the need for templates is reduced even further.

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Yeah, programming boiler plate should be dealt with by a smart editor / IDE. The editor has so much more contextual info, so typing for... can be expanded out to whatever is appropriate for the language you're working, and the expansion can include tab-stops to aid movement between the places that need customization. And the editor can easily handle indentation. This sort of thing can become extremely powerful if you work with languages that are heavy on the boiler-plate. Emmett does amazing things for HTML, CSS, etc., if you have the misfortune of having to deal with those sorts of things.

Even BBCODE tags aren't super useful as macros, because every forum that I use regularly already includes keybindings for the codes that I use most frequently, and they're smart enough to add the tags around selected text, if I decide to add the bold or italics after the fact.

I think there's something to be said for programing super common keywords or identifiers as macros in QMK since you can trigger them without consuming a hotkey combination, but even then it's often going to be better to create language specific Snippets in the editor and assign a keybinding.

I feel like the sweet spot for EPKL / AHK macros is for commonly used phrases like full names of me and key coworkers, common URLs, emails, phone numbers, business names, product names, etc. All the sorts of things that are commonly used in emails, chat messages, and documents.

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Oh, also, I've started to improve my speed again! I think the key was, ironically, cutting out almost all MonkeyType practice for a week. Instead, I started doing some TypeLit.io practice, and just got some stress-free general typing in. I think the break from MonkeyType helped break some mental blocks. I have improved in all categories and recently broke 60wpm for a 60s English 5k test. I also broke 64wpm for a regular quote (with capitalization and punctuation) that lasted 63s. I'm really fast (150+ wpm) at typing words like "the" now.

Here are my last 10 results on MonkeyType English 5k:
57 wpm average
98% accuracy average
73% consistency

58.18    58.18    98.99%    76.63%    291/0/0/0    time 60
55.58    55.58    97.56%    68.51%    278/0/0/0    time 60
57.97    57.97    98.31%    71.85%    290/0/0/0    time 60
60.59    60.59    97.74%    76.25%    303/0/0/0    time 60
55.16    55.16    97.18%    73.32%    276/0/0/0    time 60
52.17    52.17    96.68%    74.28%    261/0/0/0    time 60
56.19    56.19    98.25%    72.55%    281/0/0/0    time 60
57.57    57.57    96.64%    73.00%    288/0/0/0    time 60
54.58    54.58    97.87%    73.29%    273/0/0/0    time 60
57.18    57.18    97.95%    73.02%    286/0/0/0    time 60

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The thing about having those things in EPKL though, similar to Extend, is that you'll have it at the ready everywhere. You may want to write, say, a signature footer or an address macro in several apps such as your email program(s) and text editor(s), and this way you'll likely only have to implement it once. So yes, for hardcore programming you'll likely want to implement that in the IDE of your choice – but I still think there's a real benefit to having the power to implement PowerStrings that are always with you.

I always type out my BBCode tags manually. Turns out that using Colemak-CAWS such tags as b are sweet rolls for both index fingers!

And as I said, the C4-loop is only intended as a proof-of-concept from my side. It shows off the ability to write multiline strings and move the cursor.

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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DreymaR said:

The thing about having those things in EPKL though, similar to Extend, is that you'll have it at the ready everywhere. You may want to write, say, a signature footer or an address macro in several apps such as your email program(s) and text editor(s), and this way you'll likely only have to implement it once. So yes, for hardcore programming you'll likely want to implement that in the IDE of your choice – but I still think there's a real benefit to having the power to implement PowerStrings that are always with you.

I always type out my BBCode tags manually. Turns out that using Colemak-CAWS such tags as b are sweet rolls for both index fingers!

And as I said, the C4-loop is only intended as a proof-of-concept from my side. It shows off the ability to write multiline strings and move the cursor.

Sure, EPKL / AHK level macros are definitely useful for things that you'll want available at a global level. That's what I was talking about in the last sentence of my earlier comment about using it for names, email addresses, phone numbers, business names, etc.

When using Colemak-CAWS, do you hit the center column punctuation with which-ever hand is most convenient at the time? That configuration is very similar to my Moonlander config, except that I have a separate "center" column for each hand, so I get more unique keys, but I need to be more aware of SFBs (as I discovered back when I had the dash on my left index, which was a terrible SFB with T).

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Another week and another small gain. I'm no longer really drilling the English 5k list anymore. Most of my practice now is with real quotes. However, I still do a series of ten every once in a while to see if I'm making progress. Now that I'm two months in, I'm finding it much easier to relax into a good typing zone. In the past, I would need about thirty minutes of warm-up drilling the 60s English 5k test before I was able to string together a good batch of ten times. These times today are actually the only ten tests I did in this format. And they aren't perfect runs, but I'm now able to keep good speeds even when my accuracy dips below 97%.

58 wpm average
97% accuracy average
76% consistency average

58.39    58.39    96.70%    75.37%    292/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:24
59.78    59.78    98.68%    77.88%    299/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:23
59.59    59.59    98.03%    80.98%    298/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:21
57.18    57.18    97.96%    73.21%    286/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:19
54.99    54.99    95.19%    73.16%    275/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:17
58.59    58.59    98.65%    76.26%    293/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:15
57.98    57.98    96.67%    73.67%    290/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:14
60.18    60.18    97.76%    77.57%    301/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:12
60.18    60.18    97.73%    79.12%    301/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:10
57.98    57.98    96.67%    70.79%    290/0/0/0    time 60            22 Feb 2022 13:08

Additionally, I'm now confident that I'm at least as fast on Colemak-DH as I ever was on QWERTY, regardless of the metric used to judge (with the probable exception of a few CLI commands that I learned to spam really fast on QWERTY).

I've been able to achieve >64 wpm a couple times on TypeRacer races, which is about where I was on QWERTY, but I'm actually better (relative to QWERTY) on Colemak when the complexity of the quotes goes up. A lot of this is due to rearranging symbols, which isn't strictly part of Colemak, but it is part of the total layout change. Having the Quotation on the left pinky is probably the biggest gain on the complex texts that have dialog, but having the Dash on a prime spot is also really helpful for some of them. The rest of the credit goes to how much practice I've put into the English 5k and 450k lists. Long words aren't intimidating, especially if they're made of common trigrams.

I'm now also decidedly faster when typing PowerShell commands and scripts. This is due mostly to moving $, |, =, and especially - to good spots on the base-layer of my layout. Being able to type out several commands in a pipeline without even touching a modifier key (except for the parens and brackets) makes the typing so smooth. I'm 100% convinced that the good double reach keys are better for me than layered (including shifted) keys unless I'm likely to stay in that layer for multiple keystrokes. Ironically, numbers are bad candidates for the number row, because the numbers that are on the good spots (2, 3, 4, and 7, 8, 9) are rarely typed by themselves. At some point I think I'll try moving some symbols up there probably (, ), !, @, ?, and *, but I'm not sure. No rush. The current layout is more than workable.

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