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    Polish Dvorak.

    • Started by Nrbi Xrbi.
    • 1 Replies:
    • Reputation: 0
    • Registered: 22-May-2010
    • Posts: 1

    Hello to all of you, people!

    I've been using Dvorak keyboard for about two years now and I'm very happy with it. It's great for typing English. However, when it comes to typing in Polish it becomes troublesome. In particular, placing letter Z (the most common consonant in Polish!) on the bottom row + on the pinky is something that I find really annoying. There are some other issues: the left index and right pinky fingers are way overused (~20%, ~16% respectively), there is high same finger ratio (~4%). Colemak doesn't do any better. And here comes the question: what should I do? Should I roll a national Dvorak variation? I played a bit with the layout, but it's very hard to get something comfortable with minimum amount of keys swaps. I analysed letter frequency and I noticed that it's far more balanced than the English one. Comfortable layouts start from about 10 keys swaps, which I find a lot. I want to be able to type on both layouts so I really want to avoid unnecessary swaps. So I am waiting for your opinions.

    BTW: in this layout I want to use AltGr to get national Polish characters, since it seems to be more comfortable than playing with 9 [!] additional keys.

    Cheers,
    Nrbi Xrbi.

    UPDATE:
    So far I came up with something like this:

    333fwww.jpg

    It seems to work. The layout reduces same finger ratio to ~2% and balances the fingers properly. But won't I be confused with using two layouts that move around so many keys? Compared to original Dvorak, I moved 11 keys. Pending opinions.

    Last edited by Nrbi Xrbi. (23-May-2010 17:00:33)
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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,361

    So you want to discuss a modified DVORAK on a Colemak board?! Well, I can tell you that there is a Polish Colemak and some people seem to be using it. However, it doesn't change the position of the Z key.

    With the proper ergonomic Angle mod however, I find the Z very comfortable to type in its default (QWERTY) position so I don't think it should be a problem actually! I recommend the Angle mod to anyone with an ISO (European) keyboard, not just Colemak users. (There's also a Wide mod that's more optional, but I like that one too and use it daily.)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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