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What Do You Think of the COLEMAK Keyboard?
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?"
I have the same problem with this layout as I have with every other alternative keyboard layout (including Dvorak): I want to be able to sit down at any computer, anywhere, and touch type. If I commit the COLMAK layout to memory, I'll have big problems the next time I go to a friend's house, an internet cafe, whatever.
Not worth the trouble.
That having somehow learned to touch-type on QWERTY some time in the last 30 years, there's zero chance I'm going to switch to a new variation of a conventional keyboard.
... yea great. Typing lessons didn't get me to touch typing on QWERTY, experience did. I have little time for classes, and I tend to devote those to something that's going to make my paycheck larger.
Alternative input, chorded keyboards and the like might have some value.
A "different sequence of letters" would do little but slow down my touch-typing for YEARS and interfere with the interface for any games that I choose to play on the PC.
TFA: "Typing lessons available"
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Two questions:
1 - Why do people keep coming up with new keyboard layouts when there's already only a few hundred million people with QWERTY committed to memory? It's not like they've come up with a new energy supply.
2 - And why does Slashdot keep posting about them? Have any geeks anywhere (other than the makers of these keyboards) actually sat around thinking of all the things they could have, it'd be a new "improved" keyboard layout? If there's a good reason please let me know.
Go ahead and try, and please tell us it looks interesting and if only 2 keys move between hands it should be easy to learn. The only problem I see is that the caps lock acts like a backspace, this could cause AOL 12 PRETENDING TO BE 14 YR OLD YELLING SYNDROM. It keeps the short cuts for cut/copy/paste in the same spot, this is very good.
Without actually using it I say it sounds neat and I might try it also, if someone makes a keyboard for it, right now it seems that you have to relabel/not look at, your keyboard.
Anyone else feel like they steped into a wikipedia article when they used the link?
I don't preview or spellcheck.
Any improvement in efficiency is ultimately worth it.
Also, 'We've always done it this way' is a terrible excuse for anything.
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.
Their website cites "multilingual" as a major feature of this layout. Reading a bit more about this however, they've just made up lots of key combos for various "multilingual" characters. So? Anyone can pull a bunch of key combos out of their $ORIFICE and list them on a web page, or even write a custom keyboard map. And speaking as someone who does a lot of typing in my native language, I'd rather have my Ås, Äs and Ös as first-class letters, thankyouverymuch. Putting either under a (non-initiutive) key combo like [AltGr][f] is, principally, the same to me as putting "Q" under [AltGr][O]...
Btw, according to TFA, it's "Colemak" not "COLMAK". The website is even Colemak.com ffs...
I'll stick to QWERTY for the time being.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
I have a Sun system with a Sun keyboard, and I work with Sun servers at work. I also deal with several PCs at home and work. There are no less than five keyboard variations.
I have problems switching between the Sun keyboard and the PC keyboard due to the row change of the backspace key. It takes 10-15 minutes before I am confident I won't make mistakes. Depending on which PC keyboard I was using last, a mistake may mean hitting enter or '\' instead of backspace. That can be a fatal error when you are root. At work, I always use a PC keyboard to ssh to the Sun systems, that way I don't make mistakes.
Then there are keyboards that have ESC where I prefer '`'.
The worst is that there are no less than three ways to position the '\' key on PC keyboards. Sometimes, the placement affects either the size of the backspace key or the shape of the enter key.
I prefer the enter key to be a rectangle (none of that backwards-L shaped crap), the backspace key to be at least as big as two normal keys, and the '\' key to be in between them.
So, you're asking me if I want to change a dozen or more keys around?
Hell no!
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
What could be more convenient then lugging a keyboard with you everywhere you go?
Where in heck are you going to get a hardware implementation of COLEMAK????
These days you can just carry a USB DVORAK (or COLEMAK) keyboard around with you and plug it in wherever youre using it.
Sounds great! So where do I order the ergonomic USB COLEMAK keyboard?
Oh, wait, lemme guess - from the same store that carries the COLEMAK laptops, right? Got it. It's filed right here under my stack of pamphlets for functioning perpetual motion machines.
What's your damage, Heather?
I think i will have to change all my passwords from qwerty to colmak.
Think of it this way: Nobody else will use your computer. They'll take one look at the keyboard and decide it isn't worth the effort.
One of my friends just recently sanded all the letters/punctuation off his keyboard and airbrushed everything black.
There is 0 (Zero) chance that I will ever really try to use his computer if I'm at his place. It just isn't worth the guesswork to browse a website.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
In the FAQ, he says that "It's not possible to use Ctrl-Z/X/C/V shortcuts with the left hand while holding the mouse with the right hand." This is certainly not the case for me; I do this all the time, frequently without looking. With my left hand, I hit Ctrl with my pinky and hold it, while with my index finger I hit X, C, or V as needed. I've been doing this since the Windows 3.1 days.
At least, that was the case the last time I looked into it.
Look into it some more then.
I actually don't know about admin rights to install. As we all have admin on our own computers at work. Adding a Dvorak layout to my XP computer took about 30 seconds.
But changing the settings takes about a Left SHIFT + ALT press to change. You can also have different keyboard settings and change them by simply clicking.
Takes all of 5 seconds.
Learning to use it, well, that's a different story.
xmodmap
I'm 21-years-old and typed in QWERTY for seven years starting at age 12, ultimately reaching 130+ words per minute. Rather than study for a test at uni two years ago, I decided to start learning DVORAK. For the rest of the semester lab reports were hard to write and after a week, I was a steady 40 wpm on Dvorak but my QWERTY speed dropped to about 50 wpm--after such a loss, there was no turning back! After four months exclusively on Dvorak I was at 90 wpm and by the half-year mark I was at 120 wpm. As for people who compare switching back-and-forth between keylayouts to bilingualism, they either (a) do not speak from experience or (b) do not type fast on either layout. Occasionally switching back to QWERTY is a REAL PAIN. The only words I can type fast on QWERTY include the URL to my uni's webmail page, my first and last name (email login), and email password. I've found that I only reach tolerable QWERTY speeds if I'm going back to QWERTY on a daily basis. I also think it helps to use the EXACT SAME KEYBOARD IN THE EXACT SAME LOCATION to really rev up QWERTY rates quickly. Of course, the latter statement sounds like psychobabble, but my muscle memory seems to benefit from these constants. If you haven't garnered these from DVORAK fan sites, here are some little tidbits: * 'a' and 'm' are the only keys that are not moved between QWERTY and ANSI Dvorak (more on ANSI later...) * the Dvorak home row includes aoeu ih htns - (spaces insert for readibilty) * as an OS X user, I find Dvorak much more amenable to common keyboard shortucts. Quit is cmd+Q and Close Window is cmd+w, which makes for easy muscle-memorisation on a Powerbook keyboard with the keys physically rearranged for Dvorak (http://www.geocities.com/rjpoling/MacOS/dvorak/dv orak_powerbook.jpg [geocities.com])
As for ANSI mentioned above, here's the real doozey: August Dvorak initially proposed an alternate number-row layout in his book Typewriting Behavior (1936, I think?). Rather than 12345 67890, Dvorak liked 75319 02468 (again, spaces inserted for readability). In theory, I don't know how much this helps. In practice, it's kinda useful these days since the '@' character is easily accessed with the index finger. This alternate number layout was NOT included in the standard ANSI Dvorak layout, but keymap files may be easily modified by true fanatics. On OS X, I highly recommend Ukelele (http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_softwar e.asp?id=94 [sil.org]). I'm two-weeks into learning the alternate layout and am finally getting good at it.
In sum, the Dvorak layout markedly reduces finger movement for standard English text (http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/comparePag e.html [vt.edu]); it seems to not be so helpful to developers. If you type fast on QWERTY now, you'll lose a lot of it after learning Dvorak. You may be able to get good enough at QWERTY but it won't be soon after learning Dvorak and it won't be fast and your boss will look at you funny when you're hunting and pecking.
Hope this helps.
Jon
In fact, I type so fast that I have to step away from my keyboard before I submit one-line comments on Slashdot due to the "idiot filter" that some idiot put in (and which I don't appreciate).
In short, I don't need a better keyboard. Even keyboards that move the backslash from above [ENTER] to beside [SHIFT] drive me insane. It's not that I don't want to commit to a new keyboard layout, it's that I don't need to bother. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the one that is in use now, and no amount of self-serving BS from would-be layout designers can convince me otherwise.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on