geekhack Community > Ergonomics

Help me to choose between this awesome layouts. Dvorak or Colemak

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knightjp:
@mawgul
I'm not sure that our discussions have brought you an answer already. IMO, I think that you will be happy with Dvorak. I know that it seems that Dvorak is only biased for the right hand, but that is not the case when you factor in the punctuation; which you would be using a lot of when you program.
Another benefit is that if you are moving from one machine to another, it will make it easier for you to use stock Dvorak because it is installed on every machine and ever OS by default. From what most users say, vim on Dvorak is not that bad and shortcuts, there is a work around.
The way that you can use shortcuts on dvorak is by pressing the right CTRL button with the thumb of your left hand and use the left pinky for the copy and left ring for the paste. It will take some getting used to and there will be some frustration because V and W are next to each other.

dusan:
@mawgul,

The difficulty with the P key (the L key in Dvorak), while there are no difficulties with the semicolon, slash, A, Q or Z key (the S, Z, A, apostrophe, semicolon key in Dvorak, respectively), indicates an issue with the typing technique. Layouts are not responsible for it. Dvorak, in particular, is just responsible for detecting it soon before it can cause a sharp pain. RSI, CTS, whatever.

Certain jobs, programmers included, are more likely to be affected. For heavy use of symbols around the P key (the equal sign key, the backslash key and bracket keys, for example.)

A proper technique can prevent it and maybe, heal. See my post in Split and ortholinear did nothing for my RSI for details.

EDIT: BTW, I think that we choose layout for our natural language(s), not for job or environment. I don't think C++/SQL/whatever, Linux, Ctrl+Z X C V, vim etc are relevant.

rebus:
I tried Colemak before reading that Dvorak is better suited for Italian (my native language), so I switched to Dvorak and I actually found it to be more comfortable to me. I guess Spanish is someway similar, anyway both are good layouts, far better than QWERTY.

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