Re: Dvorak Keyboards.

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 19:35, Anthony Campbell <ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
My question: is it really worth the trouble of learning a new way of
typing, if you are already a moderately competent touch typist on the
QWERTY keyboard?


Probably not. Some people cite speed, others comfort as a reason. I'll
tell you mine.

I type fast. Real fast. I haven't done a wpm test but let's just say
that I type faster than most. Often, this speed comes with increased
finger pressure on the keys (I bang them) and rapid wrist movement.
Both those factors cause me pain now. Switching to Colemak slowed me
down considerably, as such I could relearn how I press the keys and
avoid bottoming out (mechanical keyboards do not need to bottom out to
register a keypress). Furthermore, the reduced wrist movement (because
of the better layout) and the slower movement (due to my unfamiliarity
with the layout) have reduced my wrist pain. I am actually typing this
in qwerty now, and I see that my fingers are all over the keyboard. My
pinky hurts!

Note that I decided to do something different for Colemak. Instead of
putting my index fingers in the 'correct' position (F and J in Qwerty)
I put them further out (D and K in Qwerty). This gives me a bit more
room between them, for a more natural typing position, and it reduces
the load on the pinkies. The extra load is moved to the index fingers,
which are stronger and more agile.

I am trying to configure my own keyboard layout, but I am having
trouble remapping the modifier keys:
Noah Ergonomic Keyboard Layout
http://dotancohen.com/eng/noah_ergonomic_keyboard_layout.html

That layout moves the hands as far apart as possible and moves as much
load off the pinkies as possible. It is very comfortable, but I am
having trouble writing an xkb layout for it.

--
Dotan Cohen

http://gibberish.co.il
http://what-is-what.com


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