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Colemak keyboard layout

colemak.com

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I'm not sure how relevant this is to anyone, but this post is as good excuse as any to talk about my transition to Colemak.

In January I moved from Qwerty to Colemak, and also from a staggered to a columnar keyboard layout (on a Kinesis keyboard[1]). My Qwerty speed was only 75 wpm and my accuracy was terrible. Also I couldn't touch type - I never learnt to type properly with Qwerty; I just started typing when I was young and developed lots of bad habits. By the time someone tried to teach me how to type properly my habits were too ingrained to change. (Or maybe I was too stubborn -- I also have a strange way of holding a pen.)

Anyway, I decided to change to Colemak, and to learn to touch type properly. I also liked the idea of a columnar layout so I changed to a Kinesis. What's interesting is that because of the physically different keyboards, I actually cannot type in Qwerty on my Kinesis, and I also cannot type in Colemak on my laptop keyboard. This means I have maintained my Qwerty skills.

My current maximum speed is roughly 70 wpm in Colemak, so I am almost at my Qwerty speed after 6 months, although now I can touch type so it's more useful. When I type with Qwerty now, it feels like my hands are flying all over the place. I also feel like I have a lot of room to get faster than I currently am with Colemak.

So even though I have maintained my Qwerty skills, the only reason I need them is because I can't get a laptop with a columnar keyboard. I may end up just biting the bullet and switching to Colemak on that laptop keyboard anyway, though missing the thumb cluster is killer.

One other interesting thing I learnt is that using Colemak on a smartphone completely sucks. Having commonly used keys on the home row on a small touchscreen means that it's much more error prone, as you're hitting the same area on the screen consecutively.

[1]: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm

Fascinating about the phone. iOS only supports colemak on an external keyboard (or in a custom app) so I've not tried it there. You make perfect sense.

I made a move fairly similar to yours. I went for the Truly Ergonomic keyboard because laterally staggered keys seem stupid if you're giving up Sholes anyway.

I typed about 5-10 wpm for the first month. No matter what I tried, it was far too slow. Part of this was losing faith and moving keycaps (on mac keyboards) and putting letters on the TE. That gave me a crutch for a while that kept me slow, although I was careful to maintain hand position.

Then suddenly, it clicked, and I went from 15wpm to 50, then up to about 90. I'm still slower than I was with Sholes after 1.5-2 years now, but I can type on any keyboard and not have pain or tingling.

That said, I am back to about 5 wpm with Sholes, and I'm perfectly fine with it. Just as when I first switched to colemak, it makes my emails and documents much more brief. I think about dictating The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and choose my words carefully.

(This was obviously typed on colemak. :-))

It took a long time to get used to emacs keybindings. I ended up using arrow keys for a long time. P and F are close enough that I ended up with a lot of confused misses.

What I like about colemak over Dvorak is that Dvorak is a pain for a lot of common unix commands. 'ls' is especially onerous.

Its not "fascinating" about the phone. It's 100% normal. You could say it's a pretty interesting turn of events in the history of keyboards however.

Qwerty was designed for typing machines (typewriters) where you needed enough space between keys so that the machine wouldn't jam. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter)

That's exactly why qwerty is better on the phone as well as fingers, like the metal tyepbar, can't type letters too close to each other. Except its flesh and bones instead of metal.

Actually I find that the hardest part about Colemak on the phone is being unable to distinguish the home row from the rest of the keyboard -- and if you can't touch type with fingers, using what's familiar (QWERTY) is easier. Thumb travel time is shorter than finger travel on full-size keyboards, after all.

That's precisely why I found it fascinating. :)

Interestingly, the home row issue you experienced on the phone is rather similar to the reason qwerty was invented in the first place, to avoid key jamming on mechanical typewriters.

I've also tried Colemak on my Android and iOS devices ... it's only useful for attaching physical keyboards -- at least when on a phone. A tablet might prove different, and I'd confirm with my Surface Pro, except I like its QWERTY touch keyboard better than the Colemak layout which isn't as touch-optimized in on-screen styling. I wish Windows 8.1 had Colemak built in. Apple's had it built-in since Lion.

I am very jealous of you -- my inability to maintain QWERTY after I switched to Colemak was what forced me to grudgingly switch back.

I just couldn't do it; after I became acclimated to Colemak, my QWERTY was just destroyed. I had to think about where the keys were in QWERTY, and I realized I don't even really know, because typing is a doing-without-thinking activity. So I ended up having to look, which is extremely inefficient and finally I abandoned Colemak. (I couldn't avoid QWERTY because part of my job these days entails showing people how to do things on their own computers, which aren't using Colemak.)

The same thing happened when I learned Japanese; I used to be conversant in Spanish, and after I got to roughly the same level in Japanese (from living in Japan) one day I noticed that the Spanish wasn't there anymore -- I would have to think about what I wanted to say in my native English and convert it to Spanish.

Seems like a way different thing, but it felt the same, because it was like an unconscious activity being supplanted by another, and thus becoming something I had to think about. Which broke it.

It made me sad though, because now typing QWERTY feels idiotic. Kludgey and stupid. Colemak didn't make me a significantly faster typist (maybe it would have had I done it for more than 9 months) but it was way more comfortable.

I use Dvorak, and I have almost no problems typing QWERTY. But this only came after I became completely fluent in Dvorak. When I still had to think to type Dvorak, I couldn't switch to thinking about QWERTY without getting all confused. Now I just peek a little at the keyboard with QWERTY, especially for non-alphanumeric symbols, but it's no problem.

Same story here. There was a time during my transition to Dvorak where I kept tripping myself up if I tried to type QWERTY, but once the Dvorak layout went into muscle memory QWERTY came right back without any special effort on my part. I still have to peek, but I had to peek before I learned Dvorak too (that's why I switched to Dvorak).

I had to abandon Dvorak because it killed my ability to do QWERTY. It was also an almost traumatic experience because when I was going through it I felt like I was going crazy or that I was just plain stupid. How could my brain possibly discard 20+ years of QWERTY after just a few weeks of Dvorak.

But having said that I recently learned that other people have had the same experience and so now I don't feel so bad and I want to change again.

/lifestory

That's quite interesting, as I've had an opposite experience (substitutions ahead). Switching to dvorak lifted my speed on it as well as qwerty, and my Japanese has only helped my French. There was certainly a lot of weirdness at the moment the two sides reached the same level– if I froze up for a second, I might start mixing in French words or reaching for Command-Q with my left pinky. The only real obstacle has been slowdowns from going 6+ months without using one or the other which isn't all that hard to work around. For typing, triggers are anything with a 'd' in qwerty including the word 'dvorak' ironically, 'the' in dvorak. With language, the rhythm and intonation are usually a dead giveaway. In your case however, the subjects are quite similar. Colemak is a change from qwerty, but it's not as overtly different from qwerty. That might make the transition easier, but it could be one of the reasons switching between them is hard. Spanish and Japanese is also an interesting combination as the sounds are, at times, quite similar (and not just due to the Portuguese loanwords, a la パン or カステラ). Perhaps your difficulty is in finding distinctive enough triggers.

Same experience for me. I felt bad about myself but I found out other people had the same experience. So buck up. I plan to give Dvorak another swing (that was my layout of choice.)

it took me a year from when i first started trying to learn colemak to actually completing it, had a 6month break in the middle, and many lapses, but after doing the trainer program for 10min for 2 weeks i fully switched and it went OK. I use it on my smartphone too, in the beginning i also had that thought that maybe it's worse on smartphones, but using swiftkey i haven't noticed all that much problems, only for words that look alike and have the same first letter, so usually when i get the first letter right the rest can be all wrong but it will still guess the right word.

I just switched to colemak using SwiftKey and I'm loving it. It's tough to avoid autocomplete.

I use the Bépo layout (dvorak equivalent for French) on a TypeMatrix at work and a TrulyErgonomic at home.

I've had the same experience as you though, I switched to touchtyping, changed the layout, and the keyboard (columnar) at the same time, so I can always switch back to an AZERTY (french QWERTY), but only on a regular standard keyboard (and it's a pain to use BÉPO on a non-columnar keyboard, slow and lots of mistakes).

As for the speed, well, I was around 70wpm on AZERTY, and now (around 4 years later), I'm around 100wpm on BÉPO, so yeah, I'm never going back.

I tried to switch to Colemak once, but it was too big of a change. I did, however, successfully switch to an alternative of the Carpalx QWKRFY layout: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?partial_optimization

Instead of 5 swaps, I only do the first three (K/E, J/O, F/T). According to their scoring function, it gets you most of the way there anyways. (Whatever that's worth).

Their rankings of popular layouts might also be of interest: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?popular_alternatives

I am cautious to change my keyboard layout because I use a lot of different machines. Has anyone tried this or the Programmer Dvorak layout?

Ref: http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/

I use programmer dvorak, though I can't tell if it's much better than QWERTY. It hasn't been too difficult to install it on every machine I use.

It's a valid concern. I spend most of my work day in Emacs, and have caps-lock and ctrl swapped on my primary work machines. Even that small difference is a problem when I need to type on someone else's computer.

I use regular Dvorak and it is not pleasant to switch to a fresh machine.

Another Dvorak user here. I would compare my annoyance at switching keyboard layouts to the annoyance of switching between different physical keyboards (deep 90s style key wells to shallow laptop keys, for example). Actually, switching layouts is slightly less annoying.

I think that if you're really concerned about this, stick with regular Dvorak. It's available pretty much everywhere without installing anything.

For Colemak, it's on every Linux distro and the Android stock keyboard from 4.0+. It's easily installable on Windows. I don't know about the current status on Mac and iOS.

No support on iOS without jail breaking, and I know OS X 10.8 has it by default.

I use the standard Dvorak layout. It hasn't been that big a deal for me.

Things have gone something like this:

1) Learn Dvorak at a time when I only used my own machines. Stay that way for ~3 years.

During this time, after my typing speed and error rate had reached QWERTY levels, the occasional use of QWERTY on someone else's PC was highly annoying.

2) Spend 2-3 years in jobs involving near-daily use of machines I couldn't switch off QWERTY, but still did most of my work on Dvorak.

A few weeks into this, I was able to use QWERTY effectively again, still typing faster than most people ever can (though slower and more error-prone than I was with Dvorak).

3) Go back to exclusively using my own machines for ~2 years.

After a while, annoying to use QWERTY, but not nearly as bad as during period #1.

4) Spend ~9 months in similar situation as #2 again.

After a while, same as 2, a few weeks in things were pretty OK.

5) Now (for ~2 years), using only my own machines.

Occasional QWERTY is annoying, but even better than during #3.

I only speak English, but I suspect switching between Dvorak and QWERTY is kind of similar to switching between a language you use a lot and one you use a little. Degree of fluency in the little-used language goes up and down based on how much practice you're getting.

I switched to Dvorak 11+ years when I was in college and had a lot of time to kill. I think your spoken language fluency analogy is pretty accurate; I imagine I'll always retain a bit of my 'native' qwerty muscle-memory, but the more I practice it, the easier it is to make the mental 'switch' between languages.

That said, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't switch to Dvorak. The efficiency gained on my keyboard layout does not offset the efficiency lost on shared computers.

I definitely wouldn't suggest anyone switch for performance reasons. I switched because of pain. It helped that a lot. Made virtually no long-term difference in typing speed.

(Then again, my typing speed has been 90+ wpm since I was about 9, so I'm an outlier in various ways.)

I have been using regular Dvorak. I took 3 months to reach my Qwerty speed, probably because I kept using Qwerty on the side. After a year my speed is 60 wpm, double that of what I had with Qwerty. The main difference I feel is not the speed, but a marked reduction in fatigue is your fingers. But I am back to hunt-and-peck typing in qwerty.

I've used Colemak for a year and a half now. The common shortcut keys are in the same place still (ctrl-c, ctrl-v, etc.). I use Vim and keep the default bindings and it works fine (though movement is odd.. up and down are inverted). I used to type at around 100 wpm with QWERTY and can reach that or higher now. I can still use QWERTY when I need to although I have to look down a bit.

All in all I like it. It feels good and efficient to type. I initially switched because I wanted to learn to touch type on QWERTY.. Not only was it a struggle to change habits but QWERTY felt just.. Awful and slow. So I wanted to learn a new layout. Colemak seemed less radical than Dvorak and also more efficient (less finger movement). Learning a whole new layout was quite hard (especially in the middle of a semester), but I think it did make learning to touch type easier. The hardest part was 's' being moved a letter to the right.. I confused 'r' and 's' for a while now. So yeah, if anyone is thinking about trying it, go for it. Don't rearrange the keys, just print out the layout and look at that for reference so you learn the locations by feel.

I went from Qwerty to Colemak over a year ago and I'd say that my experience is similar to yours. I'm not sure if I type faster now, but I know that my hands no long hurt after long computer sessions. The movement keys in Vim do seem weird, but it's really just muscle memory. After a few days you don't even think about it.

hjkl are permanently burned into my muscle memory in their positions on the Dvorak keyboard. A few months ago, I was using ssh from a computer with a QWERTY keyboard and I did a double take when I re-discovered that they were right next to each other.

I'm a Vim user as well, and when I tried Colemak for a few months some years back, Vim was what made me go back to QWERTY. It was just too awkward as I would like to be able to work with both layouts.

Creating new bindings didn't work for me at all (especially since I didn't want to lose the ability to use someone else's Vim, or a vanilla Vim). I think the key might be to focus on what shortcut key you're actually pressing instead of where it is on the keyboard. This turned out to be pretty difficult for me with the hjkl keys, which are, as you say, fairly odd.

Interestingly enough though, today I can still write Colemak fluently whenever I accidentally switch to it, and it's a lot of fun! So I might give this whole thing with Colemak a new try, knowing that someone went the same route as I (keeping the default Vim shortcut bindings).

It also helps that I wasn't too proficient with Vim, if at all, when I started using Colemak, so I didn't have to deal with any burned in habits with Vim either.

The author of that site should site stats comparing Colemak with Dvorak because that's really their 'competition' so to speak.

There's a link right on the front page ('Compare') to an applet which compares QWERTY, Dvorak, and Colemak..

Yeah but the author doesn't provide any summary stats or analysis like he/she does vs. qwerty. I would potentially be switching from dvorak - on average is there much difference?

I ended up pasting some posts from this thread into the compare tool. Colemak and dvorak seem pretty similar, with colemak consistently having slightly less same-finger usage (i.e. two keys in a row being pressed by the same finger). Both are about the same improvement over qwerty. Doesn't look like it's worth switching from dvorak.

I observed something quite strange that readers might find interesting. When I first tried to learn Dvorak two years ago I found that it completely destroy ability to type qwerty. I simply couldn't type either layouts! I ended up giving up early and regaining my qwerty powers. But then just last year I tried to learn it again and found that it had genuinely no effect on my qwerty ability. I could switch between them like a fluent multi-linguist. Naturally I gave up again :P until last week when I decided on giving Colemak a proper go. I have been on Colemak for 3 days without changing back until right now when I wrote the second half of this with switching back to qwerty, and observe no difficulty in typing, except for backspace where I keep occidentally hitting the CAPS key which is what I use as backspace for Colemak. Not sure why my brain seems to treat backspace differently such that that happens... I also have no idea how my strange experience happened, but for those concerned about forgetting their qwerty ability, know that you don't need to even if at first your mind turns to spaghetti and you can't even type with any layout

I switched to Colemak in December last year so I'm 6/7 months in. Anecdotes and tips within.

At the same time I picked up KeyboardRemap4Macbook (not just macbooks, but osx) which has some other interesting features. One important one I use daily is using held down spacebar to enable arrow navigation by UNEI, and "return" on O. Related is the terribly named but essential PCKeyboardHack which allows one to remap the CAPSLOCK key to backspace, giving me a more accessible backspace key. I suspect this is a double edge sword though, lowering the cost of an error.

When I started with Colemak I was slow. I forced myself to write even urgent mail in it, else I wouldn't succeed. I ended up writing emails as if English were my 2nd language but after a week I was over it.

Changing my phone to Colemak was a very helpful aid. Avoid writing in Qwerty.

I also learnt for a while on a keyboard without the letters on the right keys. This screwed me up big time at first (i didn't touch type) but I pushed through. Now I work daily on a keyboard with Qwerty layout but don't give it a second thought and it just serves to mess with the minds of my colleagues.

I still have to look for numbers because I just don't type them frequently.

I haven't had a massive speed increase because my speed is limited by my ability to decide what I'm going to write which is dreadfully slow. I make fewer errors.

Going back to qwerty is relatively easy if I free my mind. I typed cowboy Qwerty with my hands flying all over the keyboard for so long that it is possible for me to call it back. I am sure this is made easier in part by the two layouts being typed in completely different styles, Colemak formally and disciplined by correctness and touch, Qwerty as an untempered and free dance of my fingers and hands.

What matters most when programming is all the non alpha numeric symbols.

You likely type symbols such as ', ", (, and ) more often than all numbers, and more often than half the letters.

If these symbols are accessible only by using the shift or alt gr keys, your keyboard layout sucks for programing.

Colemak sucks as a programing layout (just like virtually all keyboard layours actually).

Remapping my AltGr layout has done me wonders. I can press AltGr with my right thumb, and then I get {}[]()_= as the no-motion home row. Colemak has nothing to say about AltGr.

I type about 125 wpm with QWERTY. I've been touch typing since I was 6 though (Dad was a writer and bought me my first typewriter when I was 5).

Interestingly, I get about a 5-10 wpm bump when I smoke marijuana.

I tried switching to DVORAK to see what the hub bub was about. Spent about two weeks with it but never attained the same speeds. I'd try Colemak but I'm not sure what I'd gain.

Keyboard makes a huge difference for me too. Apple's keyboards suck and can put a serious dent in my speed. I've been using the Moshi Luna and it's like playing a piano, though it's more cheaply made then it appears (I've been through two).

I'm fastest on an IBM Selectric typewriter though. When the fingers are blazing there is definitely a rhythm that you fall into that maintains that speed, so long as your brain doesn't jam up.

Great stat on the marijuana. Any other things you've quantified stoned vs not? There is so little research done on marijuana that usually people only think of it as Hollywood has showed it to us. It's like the muchies. I smoke all the time for the ailment my medical card was issued for, yet managed to lose 50 pounds last year. Ganja affects everyone differently and it has yet to be studied the way it needs to be. So good stuff on tracking those stats.

You might like a nice mechanical keyboard. This is a good source: http://www.elitekeyboards.com/

A good starter keyboard is the Leopold with Cherry brown switches. There's a slight feedback bump partway down, and that's as far as you have to press to register the stroke. Your fingers can just float across the keys, very comfortable and, after a little practice, very fast.

I recently bought that one, and another with Cherry red switches, which lack the feedback bump. Now I'm completely hooked. And as a bonus, it costs about the same as your Luna, is rated for 50 million keystrokes, and if you spill something on it you can just soak it in water and let it dry out a couple days.

Lots of good discussion at geekhack.org.

Lefthanders like me need an inverse Colemak to remain effective, given that many of the most used letters are on a QWERTY keyboard on my left hand (while with Colemak e.g. the E has moved to the right). Does an inverse Colemak exist?

I don't think this exists. Using the keyboard layout analyzer [1], it looks like your perceived hand usage might not match up with actual usage. At least for typing out Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Qwerty slightly favors the right hand (52% vs 48%). Colemak is only slightly worse for a lefty (56% vs 44%). Dvorak greatly favors the right hand (65% vs 35%).

[1] http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/

Left-handed Dvorak?

I wonder if switching to a new keyboard layout is easier for people who are already used to switching between layouts (I use both Azerty and Qwerty), like it's easier for someone bilingual to learn a new language.

I'm not sure why every new layout decides to remove the CAPS LOCK KEY. I imagine coders aren't the inventors of these layouts.

May I infer from your post that you use Caps Lock at least semi-regularly?

Myself, I abhor it. I've always just held Shift, even for long runs of capital letters. As far as my usage patterns go, Caps Lock serves only to foil my attempts to type my password. :/

Colemak provides a Capslock-intact version.

Colemak was designed with the aid of a computer, to find the optimal layout.

The FPS shooter fans would be delighted - where previously WASD were used now they read WARS!

Just remap it within the FPS (don't they all have this option?), or press Alt+Shift when you enter the game.

vim config?

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