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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?"

14 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Same Old Problem by keithmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Same Old Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I have the same problem with Spanish as I have with every other foreign language (including French): I want to be able to sit down next to someone and communicate. If I commit Spanish 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.

    2. Re:Same Old Problem by Ashtead · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Actually, the keyboard remapping is not on the same level as using different languages. They are more on the level of having to use the same old alphabet in a new sequence. Imagine a country or province where all signs, newspapers etc. had been printed with a specific transposition of letters, (say, rot13 as an example, but any of the other possible 26!-2 combinations would have been the same) and then having to quickly switch back and forth between them? You can probably do it with some practice, but in the meantime it has slowed you way down, for no reasonable purpose at all.

      I find even the punctuation moving around between Norwegian and US standard keyboards to be bad enough when having to type the simplest of texts (text with only letters, digits, period, comma, and exclamation marks; the rest of the punctuation has moved around). It isn't like I cannot use it, but once I get to a point where there should be a question mark and i get an underscore instead, or a left parentheses and not the right one, I have to slow way down from the "typing while looking at the screen"-mode, where the thoughts, the fingers, the keyboard and associated circuitry run like a smooth-flowing pipeline, about as easy as talking, to "hunt-and-peck" mode, where the flow is more like the stop-and-go traffic of a city street grid.

      This has nothing to do with language, but all to do with the path from brain to machine.

      --
      SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
  2. I think... by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    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" ... 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.

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  3. 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.

  4. Not really multilingual by W2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Not really multilingual by dtfinch · · Score: 4, Funny

      It might be a good way to discourage others from using your system if your keys were not only unlabeled, but they were not even QWERTY.

  5. I have enough trouble with keyboards already by Kymermosst · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:I have enough trouble with keyboards already by blincoln · · Score: 3, Funny

      One of the great mysteries of the universe: who at Sun though it was a good idea to put the caps lock key below the caps lock key?

      So... Sun keyboards have dual caps lock keys? For twice the caps locking capability?

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
  6. Re:As with all layouts that aren't QWERTY. . . by countach · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Where in heck are you going to get a hardware implementation of COLEMAK????

  7. 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 :).

  8. passwd by DavidLeeRoth · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think i will have to change all my passwords from qwerty to colmak.

  9. Re:As with all layouts that aren't QWERTY. . . by cortana · · Score: 3, Insightful

    xmodmap

  10. My related Dvorak story by jbreidbord · · Score: 3, Informative

    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