I must be about the only person thinking of switching to QWERTY once I receive my Model 01.
I’ve been a colemak user for something like 7 years. Initially, I switched mainly because I wasn’t touch-typing and found colemak after some research into typing.
The main reason I plan to re-learn QWERTY is that it’s too much work to remap everything everywhere, especially in games. I would also like to try vim-style editing in Emacs, which is hard enough to set up with QWERTY shortcuts already.
Also, being able to use other people’s computers and share mine easily would be a nice benefit.
tbh, I find that it isn’t really super-necessary to remap things for vim. I use Dvorak and still have the default vim/evil movement keys - in practice, I try to avoid HJKL movement in favour of incremental search & jump-to-character movements.
Games can be annoying…but when there are games that I can’t remap or can’t be bothered to, I usually change the layout to QWERTY for the game (previously in software, for the Model 01 I’ve set up a mapping to switch between Dvorak and QWERTY, for when others want to try it out).
haha. Its funny you say this because I’m considering staying with QWERTY. A lot of things are (already) mapped for QWERTY. Being able to use other people’s computers and them being able to use yours is nice. I was thinking about Colemak or Workman but the M01 kinda solves issues of RSI. + I don’t know when the second set of key caps are gonna ship.
There is an argument for pooling discussions and info that apply across the same class of split-column keyboards that the Model01 represents - i.e. the M01, ergodox, kinesis, maltron and anything else based on (2 hands of 6+ staggered columns of 4+ keys). It is notable that the keyboard-hacker community has gravitated towards this particular basic design.
Colemak-DH is extremely tempting to me, a Colemak typist of over 2 years. Hey, if I’m going to retrain to type on the keyboardio, this is probably the best time to do the switch, right? And it’s not like a standard Colemak keyboard is that popular in the wild; I’ll more than likely be stuck typing slowly on a standard QWERTY than being confused on a standard Colemak.
…The ergodox is, itself, ‘just’ a flattened Kinesis. And the Kinesis is a tweaked Maltron
The Dactyl is, in my not terribly humble opinion, a nicer design than the Ergodox. It’d be frustrating to mass produce, but if you dig keybowls you could do a lot worse. (It’s also parametric, so the design itself is very, very tweakable.
I’m seeking reassurance. I have begun learning Colemak and whilst I find it more efficient than QWERTY my deeply ingrained muscle memory is making the transition difficult. I keep making mistakes, especially once I stop thinking about typing and automatically reach for the next letter where it would be on QWERTY.
My question: How long did the crippled stage of the transition last for you and are you happy now that you have transitioned away from QWERTY? Would you do it again? Are the benefits worth the inconvenience of transitioning from one layout to another?
My current frustration is making me question the point of this but that’s just the frustration speaking. I’m pushing on regardless but some insight on your experiences will serve nicely as some much needed emotional support.
I learned to touch type in Dvorak. I never touch-typed properly in QWERTY, but I was pretty fast due to many many hours at the keyboard. Learning the basics took me a long, intensive weekend. The first week is HARD. Getting comfortable took me a few weeks, but there’s no magic point where you can say it’s done. There is however a point that does come where you stop being conscious of it; YMMV.
The key to building up (and overwriting) muscle memory is repetition and consistency. If you haven’t tried a typing tutor, it’s worth looking into one as they make you repeat and repeat. I used ABCD, which is just written instructions - you don’t need to pay money. I don’t know if something similar exists for Colemak (but surely it must). Above all, don’t fall off the wagon. If you go back to QWERTY even for a little bit, you can undo a lot of work because you have broken consistency.
I don’t regret it. Subjectively, I do believe the Dvorak layout is superior. Colemak may be better optimised for modern computer usage (Dvorak was invented in the mechanical-typewriter era, when it didn’t matter that ZXCV weren’t adjacent). Other novel designs (Norman, Workman) I think are suffering from diminishing returns. I would never go back to QWERTY.
One inconvenience never goes away, and that’s having to change layouts on strange computers. This can be hard for a sysadmin, especially when using RDP, which drives me up the wall. RDP is one of those programs that ignores the local keymap - it passes raw scancodes to the remote computer, which applies its own keymap -meaning you need to reconfigure remote machines as well as local ones. This contrasts with terminal-based or X window systems that pass cooked keyboard events.
Thanks for detailing your experience. I’ve been at it for a few months but from the sounds of it, where I went wrong was reverting to QWERTY for a few weeks when work got busy. It got a whole lot more confusing after that.
I’ve been using cat tutor, key.br, amphetype and epistory, but after going back to QWERTY I find I need to concentrate a lot more in order to avoid automatic muscle memory mistakes, to the point where it gets exhausting very quickly.
Edit: doesn’t help that I’m forced to use QWERTY on work pcs. I have Colemak for my android keyboard but my windows work phone only has QWERTY so there’s a lot of back and forth.
I have given up my Norman layout for a tweaked Dvorak layout: swapping pairs u/i, r/h, l/c.
But I am finding the following things.
Colemak focuses on rolls but it does this blindly, not all rolls are comfortable on the hand. And I say this because I think some of my swaps on Dvorak are wrong. T/h is good in the normal Dvorak because that is such a common pair to hit. Sure r is more common than h (not by much) but putting “th” so comfortably is pretty great. The same logic goes for the placement of “u”. “I” is way more common than “u” but it’s used in more rolls on the left hand so it makes send to put it on the index finger. Although in my early Non modified Dvorak I did dislike the reach for “I”.
Dvorak seems to be base on practical usage and not on some “metric” and I think this is where colemak and Norman fail (maybe Workman but I haven’t tried it). No matter what weights you give to keys or things you measure based on some input text, it doesn’t directly relate to how it works in everyday life.
I used to think alternating was dumb (ok less accurate) but in my opinion, I would like as much time between pushing keys with a finger before the same hand needs to hit a key again and that is why I am feeling very optimistic going back to Dvorak.
It’s also feeling like the top row is more comfortable than the bottoms row. I.e, curling my hand down is less comfortable than reaching up. I also think this is a nicety of Dvorak. I don’t care about shortcut keys.
I can say with my Dvorak mods I do AT LEAST as good as colemak dh on the keyboard analyzer for distance travelled. But I don’t think that measurement is necessarily the right one not is everything being measured by the analyzer.
