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?"

Comments

Same Old Problem

[keithmo]

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.

Re:Same Old Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Same Old Problem

[Ashtead]

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.

I think...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

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.

What's the point?

[Threni]

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.

Not really multilingual

[W2k]

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.

Re:Not really multilingual

[dtfinch]

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.

I have enough trouble with keyboards already

[Kymermosst]

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!

passwd

[DavidLeeRoth]

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