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What Do You Think of the COLEMAK Keyboard?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the where-are-my-parens? dept.

dafuchs asks: "Colemak, a new keyboard layout claims to be better then QWERTY and Dvorak. While i'm not certain if I should switch, it looks neat. It is better for hacking then Dvorak, and best of all, the 'l' is not in the right top corner. What do you think? Is it worth a try?"

2 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point? by Threni · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Are we still looking for a keyboard which is somehow quicker to type on than Qwerty? Why? What characteristics are we after, exactly? How would you measure how much better it is? Keep finding 1000 people to start from scratch with it, time them learning it, then time them using it at a reasonable level of competence? Where are you going to find people who haven't been "tainted" with Qwerty?

    Give up, or at least, stop posting about it to Slashdot. Please.

  2. Re:I have two questions by kurosawdust · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What a stupid reply. Thanks for taking the time to lower my IQ. Keyboard layout and programming languages. Yeah, totally the same thing. Oh wait, you must be one of the guys that's trying to sell one of these pieces of crap. My bad.

    If you had put in the same amount of effort to read my post as you did in crafting your oh-so-eloquent response, you'd realize that the analogy answers both of your questions. People keep coming up with new keyboard layouts for the same reason they come up with new programming languages - because it's a project they want to accomplish in an area that they find interesting (see the fellow who set up an evolutionary algorithm to determine the best layout). This also answers the second question, although that could have been answered by looking at, oh, I don't know, just about every single post on slashdot about some guy making a rocketship out of old toast or putting his G3 mac into a Commodore 64 case and the inevitable dozen "but why on earth would someone do this?" replies.

    By the way, if you had RTFA, you'd realize that nobody is selling anything - it's a free software keyboard layout. Keyboard and keyboard layout. Yeah, totally the same thing. Oh wait, you must be one of those guys who is so interested in posting a reply that you think is clever that you don't bother to read either the article or the post to which you are replying. My bad.

    No offense, but my posts aside, I think you're doing just fine lowering your IQ on your own :).