geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: hojberg on Tue, 19 June 2012, 15:27:15
-
Sorry im sure this has been debated heavily :)
I really want to ditch qwerty, but not sure which of the 2 to choose.
I type mostly code (if that narrows anything down).
I have no affection of qwerty, so switching to colemak because of similar key placement
shouldn't be the reason.
Mainly looking at efficiency and removing rsi load!
Thank you! ( sorry im new here <3 )
-
Colemak brings in some advantages. Better shortcuts, less learning time, and a slight slight improvement of the repartition.
If you care about those points. go colemak.
If those points are moot to you, go dvorak as it is more widespread and known.
Also, maybe there are specific variants for your own country, as I just saw you are not from england/USA.
-
For touch typing, I recommend Colemak. Dvorak is nice too but I think Colemak is slightly better.
If you don't touch type though like me (I used to but now working on a new keyboard/layout) then it doesn't really matter.
-
Fan of Colemak here too. Much easier to learn, I tried learning Dvorak, but it's very difficult in my opinion.
-
Colemak!
I dabbled with Dvorak years ago, and gave up in frustration before I got very far. I stayed qwerty for years until discovering Colemak, and I'm currently a few weeks into my switch. I think it is WAY easier to learn than Dvorak. Because there are so many of the same keys as qwerty, and because the punctuation doesn't change, and because the layout feels intuitive (common letters in easy to reach places), I learned the layout almost right away.
After 2-3 weeks I'm at 20wpm (I'm 60 in qwerty), but it still takes some concentration (I can't write anything that takes much brain power because I need to anticipate each key press), and I still have some problem keys.
I code too, and re-learning things like 'ls -l' and 'cd' and 'pwd' seems to take another effort at retraining my brain, as my practice with typing text in Colemak doesn't seem to have helped my command line muscle memory!
All in all, I'm happy with Colemak. Take note that some coders reject Dvorak purely on the basis of the awkward placement of the 'l' and difficulty in typing 'ls -l', and I think they might have a point.
-
I made a similar decision as the OP, and I went with Dvorak. Colemak isn't a massive improvement over Dvorak, and I liked a layout that was ideologically different from QWERTY. I think having the ZXCV keys in the same spot is a terrible decision (though it doesn't affect the outcome that much), and I like the punctuation of Dvorak better.
If you're just learning, you may want to consider the U - I swap and moving "L" to a different key.
That said, you may want to go with one of the carpalx layouts instead, as they are better than Dvoark, and not based on qwerty (well some aren't). One issue is that no computer would come with keyboard support installed by default.
-
Both Dvorak and Colemak are excellent alternatives for Qwerty.
Colemak is a bit better:
- It has more balanced workload splitting between hands (6% more workload to the right hand). Dvorak use the right hand too much (14% more to the right hand). For comparison, Qwerty is even more imbalanced with 15% more to the left hand.
Source: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?colemak
- It keeps ZXCVQWABHM in the same place, so editing hotkeys (copy, paste, cut, undo, select all) remain unchanged. Learning is also faster since you only have to learn the rest 17 keys
- Check this Alternative Layout review by a geekhacker who have tried both Dvorak and Colemak with speed around ~100wpm
http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:10018
My Colemak switching experience
http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=970
-
I'm happy with dvorak, but when I went with it, Colemak did not exist, so dvorak was a no brainer, and one of the things that made me leave QWERTY was that the Kinesis Classic (now Advantage) keyboard I got at the time had Dvorak built-in.
Dvorak is also built-in in all major OS's (including many mobile devices) if your keyboard isn't switchable...
Colemak is lagging in that department, although both the SlideIT and Swiftkey android keyboards have Colemak now :-)
It's a tough choice for sure!
The biggest thing I dislike about Colemak is the Caps Lock to Backspace thing. It makes it harder to remap that key because there's 2 backspaces in the keyboard... in my opinion they should have left Caps Lock alone, and let the user decide what to do with it (make it Control, Backspace, or leave it as Caps Lock). The typing champion Sean Wrona strongly advocates Caps Lock even for single capital letters, read this thread, (http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1309) especially post #8.
-
now writing to you from colemak. I agree about the backspace thing, I had that key as ctrl already, and will stick with that.
-
The Colemak installer do not remove Capslock, so you can use Capslock for your own need.
-
The typing champion Sean Wrona strongly advocates Caps Lock even for single capital letters, read this thread, (http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1309) especially post #8.
I've been considering doing this as I've started to run into problems with timing and holding down a shift key when typing quickly (holding shift too long or not long enough). I would serious miss backspace being there though because unlike him I don't type with 100% accuracy yet, which is probably a good reason to keep it close at hand until I can.
I tried to learn Dvorak last year but it was definitely slow going. I ended up going with Colemak and I'm quite fond of it.