Answering @knightjp:
Stress, keyboards and layouts:
Regarding switching to Colemak to cure my ills, I'd think it would be more trouble than it's worth personally for me. Relearning I think would actually stress me, now that I'm familiar with Dvorak. If Colemak was proved to be a far superior layout and was as accessible as Dvorak I may have considered it. It's hard to say if Dvorak has any bearing on my shoulder and if Colemak would be better, perhaps lightening the load on the right hand would help - who knows. I don't really want to bore people on the forum with my woes, as I've moaned enough. But I had problems that drove me to trying out an alternative layout. I had a period of time where I couldn't use the computer at all. I don't think touch typing and Dvorak are a miracle cure, but they've helped somewhat. The initial stress was very hard to get through. RSI and computer related stress is I believe a very real and complex issue. When I was young, I could lounge about on the computer in any old fashion, for hours, at all hours and it barely made a dent. It insidiously catches up with you. So be warned. I'd have thought that getting into good habits when young would be a great way to avoid future stresses.
Right handed shortcuts:
I don't really get @pafkata's comments about shortcuts. I haven't remapped any shortcuts. But I use shortcuts heavily. What I was suggesting is that there is a layout agnostic alternative to the XCV + CTRL key combos (these though are not the only shortcuts that I use) with ins and del. Those shortcuts are just a subset of all that you use so I don't really get what all the fuss is about. I guess it's just that those shortcuts are ingrained in motor memory. Under Dvorak I could use right CTRL with ZXCVTNSL etc, to get shortcuts onto one hand. I don't use the right control currently, it seems to vary in placement and is a little awkward for me. But I can use it with my thumb quite comfortably - which could work with the del and ins method. I dare say though that you might be able to get used to it.
There's another issue of placing chords onto one hand, some people don't mind this, and it depends how you do it. But I find I bend my wrist to do so. Which I don't think is that nice. I've learnt to shift with alternate hands, which I like. Perhaps I should do the same with CTRL. However under Dvorak not many shortcuts require me to do so. The exception being CTRL + Q (Q is on Qwerty's X spot.) I don't like that shortcut, I find it awkward. Which is odd because everyone seems to rave about CTRL + X (Qwerty/Colemak)! Actually CTRL + X (Qwerty's B) is a bit of a reach on Dvorak.
Relieving the right hand under Dvorak:
You could employ caps lock as backspace. And try mousing with the left hand. Or move the punctuation off of the pinky perhaps with a wide mod, or using something like programmer's Dvorak.
Sticky keys:
I find I'm a little hard on the shift and ctrl key combos, and that using sticky keys frees up my hands a lot. It takes out twists and turns of the wrists. But it's another thing to get used to and operating system support varies. The other thing to consider is putting CTRL onto the capslock (or switching it with alt, to get it under the thumb). I used to like chords, but like them less and less.
I actually quite like employing my right pinky when typing. I quite like rocking my hand. I'm not the biggest fan of same finger key presses, but I can't say they come up that often. Having the switch/hyphen on my pinky is far better than having it on the top row any day of the week, and negates the slight inconvenience of ls -al.
Last edited by pinkyache (11-Jan-2013 12:35:37)
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