I’m really enjoying learning it so far. Semimak sounds really interesting. I think what I take away from reading about alt layouts is, beyond a certain point, you need to start to understand the dexterity and capability of your own fingers because metrics won’t tell you much more than the very basics of what a layout can do.
Yeah, while semimak isn’t necessarily as general purpose as colemak is designed to be, I think I’m just gonna learn it and stick to it. I’m not sure I have the patience to learn another alt layout. I just wanted to move to something better than Dvorak
It’s fine. I use mod DH, but it’s only a marginal improvement compared to getting an ergo keyboard (with thumb keys, key wells, split, columns stagger, etc.).
What’s really annoying me right now is that I’m learning on a row staggered keyboard and I know fine well that the V and K should not be there, but, for the purposes of the exercise they are and I have to kind of bear with it and hope that my new muscle memory will correct when my little Ferris Sweep arrives.
I’d recommend you to only practice a new layout on a column stagger keyboard if you have to use a row-stagger keyboard occasionally (type on someone else’s computer, laptop, etc.). For me at least it was much easier to retain QWERTY muscle memory doing that, because they are completely separate for me now QWERTY-row stagger, Colemak-DH-column stagger.
(Though I am planning to move away from Colemak-DH, so my column stagger memory is going to be a bloody mess for a while.)
Ech what a nightmare. I figure I have one shot at an alt layout before my brain plasticity finally gives out so Colemak DH it is.
I hear you re: row stagger. I actually just realised in terms of touch typing the keys on the bottom row are shifted one column/one finger compared to a column staggered keyboard. Just as well I caught that before CDVK got too engrained.
Hey just anecdotal, but I find the first alt layout to be the most difficult (I went from long time dvorak to semimak if that matters). My brain started adapting to the fact that it has to adapt to new layouts once I started experimenting more alt layouts. Point is, don’t get stuck on colemak 😅.
True that. I’m definitely not promoting “layout of the month” type of thing :D
My first foray into alt layout provided some intuition of what aspects of a layout are important to me personally and how they translate to various metrics. After that I make use of analyzers to evaluate different layouts without physically trying them out. I only transitioned to my current layout after becoming relatively sure – through the analyzers – it’s something I’d stick to. I was mainly talking about this second transition being easier than learning the first one.
It is not so much about relative distance to the home position. The more important measure is if there are lots of bigrams to be pressed by the middle finger on the same hand – it is believed that a lateral stretch, meaning having to press a key on the central index columns, right next to another key on the same hand middle finger column (e.g., a qwerty ‘gd’), is more uncomfortable than if the index key is on the home column (a qwerty ‘vd’). This is the logic behind the dh mod.
Personally I think both ‘d’ and ‘h’ are of too high a frequency to be placed on the index finger non-home position, so neither the vanilla nor the dh variant of colemak is good in that regard.
d is the 11th most frequent letter [1], so there are many other letters vying for the 8 main home row positions. However h is 9th, it’s a good candidate for a better position, since it occurs in the two most frequent bigrams (th and he).
Since backspace is used far less than frequent letters by competent typists and enter is also relatively infrequent, it is probably best to put something like e on the thumb cluster, so that h can be on the home row.
Agree on both accounts. I have ‘d’ on top row mid finger, right above ‘h’ on home row mid finger. ‘e’ on vowel hand thumb.
The point about frequency of ‘d’ being too high is with respect to having it on the index bottom row (as in the dh variant), because of the curling gesture it incurs. The index finger is tricky because being a long finger, it is comparatively better to extend up than to curl down (assuming your wrist is neutral or slightly raised), but top row index position will usually find bigrams with mid finger home row, making it a scissor (qwerty ‘dr’) and uncomfortable. Given it’s reign over 6 keys, it is better suited for less-frequent letters on the non-home positions. ‘d’ would be borderline acceptable in terms of frequency, and for reducing incessant curling, inner column center row (qwerty ‘g’) is a better placement – this is what dvorak, maltron, and rsthd opted for (but keep in mind this makes it more prone to the lateral stretch problem). But the better choices are from the ‘mfpgwybv’ pack, and perhaps ‘c’ to a lesser degree due to its frequency.
The index finger is tricky because being a long finger, it is comparatively better to extend up than to curl down (assuming your wrist is neutral or slightly raised)
Ah, thanks, that makes sense. I guess I have that issue less, since I use a contoured keyboard and curling the index/middle fingers is pretty comfortable.
Interesting, I find that curling the index finger is the most comfortable way to reach any key that isn’t on the home row. I guess it comes down to how you have your hands positioned. I use a standard column staggered layout and have a wrist rest that sits about 1.5cm below the keys, what do you use?
I come from Microsoft sculpt where the wrist rest is built to raise your wrist higher than the finger tips (reverse tilting). If you bend your wrist down (i.e. toward the desk), then your fingers naturally curl down, whereas if you raise your wrist up (like on the MS natural), then your fingers are naturally more extended. From an ergonomics perspective, it is better to have your wrist neutral or slightly raised than to have them bent down. In that case, the top row typically requires less effort than the bottom row (particularly when reverse tilted). Now whether or not that’s more comfortable also depends on how often do you encounter bigrams like ‘dr’ – or worse, ‘cr’ – on qwerty, where you have to extend index on rows above the middle finger (these are the ‘half’ and ‘full’ scissors, respectively, in layout analyzers). The discomfort of top row index often comes from these type of scissor bigrams and is alleviated when it’s possible to also extend the middle finger slightly at the same time. Curling index finger is a move more independent of middle finger placement (but that doesn’t mean less effort/stress on the tendon, particularly for wrist up folks). In other words it’s possible for a key to both be more comfortable and incur more effort/stress at the same time.
I’m not sure, from the description of your wrist rest arrangement, if you are in the ‘wrist up’ or ‘wrist down’ camp. But certainly for wrist down folks, I can imagine the bottom row being more comfortable for the index.
Colemak mod-DH puts D and H right below the home row so they are easy to reach with your index fingers. I’d say that’s the most reasonable way to go about it without going full custom.
For me it doesn’t matter much. Since I have a contoured keyboard nearly all alpha keys are easy to reach with my hand on the palm rest (not hovering). But I’d rather have h on the home row as well, since it reduces finger movement for frequent bigrams like th. I have backspace on one of my thumb keys, but I don’t use it frequently, to it’d be more optimal to put a letter like e there, so that h can move to the home row. So even though I use Colemak-DH, I am experimenting a bit with other layouts like Maltron since I don’t believe Colemak it necessary among the best layouts, it just gained quite a lot of popularity. Well and it’s fun to rewire parts of your brain :).
It’s a bit of a shame that layouts are high effort. Given a large enough budget, you can try multiple ergo keyboards. But the cost of learning a layout is so high that people experiment only little with it (if at all), so people continue to use QWERTY or if they learn something else it would be Colemak now or Dvorak 20 years ago. Of course Colemak and Dvorak are large improvements over QWERTY, but they may also be local optima.
I’m really loving it. Something clicked when I started adding the top row to my drills and now its actually fun. I’m deliberately taking my time so I don’t pick up any bad habits. My QWERTY typing is fast but atrocious in terms of form.
I honestly think that touch typing on QWERTY is a bad idea, those contortions you need to go fast will just give you RSI sooner or later.
I also learned touch typing with colemak mod-DH and that kind of works, but now I’m running into the fact that standard keyboards are very asymmetrical. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a split board with an F row.
I almost feel like my piano training has kicked in with my QWERTY technique. I almost move my left hand above my right sometimes to hit certain keys. It’s definitely a lost cause and you are totally right: we know so much more about ergonomics now that if you are going to learn to touch type at this point, you might as well learn an alternative layout.
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