The Workman keyboard layout (2010)
workmanlayout.com
workmanlayout.com
I wrote about Dvorak a while ago on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705543
Calling it hopeless, well, our opinions differ, that's for sure!
Also, so many things are built with QWERTY in mind. Games default to WASD and some don't even have the option to switch. Shortcuts are created with QWERTY and are sometimes awkward to change (vim) to match the design goals of the shortcuts.
All in all, it was a fun experiment. But seeing as I don't have any RSI/other hand reasons to switch, it's not worth the extra effort to use.
I found this to be the biggest issue with using Colemak or any other alternative layout. I use my own computers exclusively so I had complete control over using my layout, but it just got so tedious having to rebind everything all the time and I would often run into games and programs where you couldn't rebind keys at all. Trying to rebind keys to work in a sane way in Emacs was an uphill battle that never ended.
For a Linux alternative you can give IronAHK a shot. https://github.com/polyethene/IronAHK
Being lazy, meh, I'm also lazy. I just noticed that the brain continues to teach itself the dvorak layout after you stop practicing (for the day/week). That made it feel like I was just feeding it the right instructions, and that took almost all of the stress from my experience and it made me patient.
15 years later I can say, it was worth the frustration those first three weeks. :)
In fact, it's more like learning yourself to write with your other hand. Say, you try this with your left hand -- you don't forget how to write with your right hand -- you can do both, but after a while you'll realise you got better with your left hand than your right!
Usually, when I am pressing backspace, I am taking a mental break anyways (even if only a tiny one), so I am ok with having a bit of travel to press it.
setxkbmap -layout us -variant dvorak -option ctrl:swapcaps,compose:rctrl
(You can leave -variant dvorak out; the -option stuff will still work.)
The compose key, used to compose all kinds of characters from æ to ż, is one of those smart and fantastic options, and it works really intuitive. Just hit that key, then guess two characters (like a and e, or z and .) and voila.
It's also pretty neat that it supports stuff like ™ and ©.
Yeah, the other setting switches ctrl and capslock. My left pinky just really doesn't like the original place of ctrl, and caps is something I use only rarely.
The only time it really comes up is if I'm typing out constants in code. Yet, I have to type each only once and then autocomplete deals with it from there on out.
Because you use it that often. Or at least, I do. Maybe you're a much better typer than I am, and for that matter, much better at correctly typing what I want in the first place, but I consider it an important key.
One issue with using statistics to layout your keyboard is that you if you analyze your layout via text corpus, you'll come up with a usage of 0 on the backspace key. This is inaccurate. You really ought to do an analysis based on actual key usage, but that data is much harder to come by. (You'll probably just have to take your lumps on the possibility that changing the layout would itself change key usage.)
Oh, and per other comments on the difficulty of trying out new keyboard layouts... rewriting how you do all the letters is very challenging. But if you are interested merely in trading Caps Lock for backspace, you can literally try this at any time; adjustment will take on the order of 5 minutes, tops, as long as you unmap the original backspace key. And it's about a minute to switch back if you don't like it. Professional keyboard users really ought to be people who have tweaked at least a key or two, if not tried entire layout switches. It's so fast and easy to run the experiments.
I do like that all of your fingers are used on the home row, but ultimately all the other changes are much less important than the backspace thing.
If you're on the fence about changing your keyboard layout, just make that one change.
Capslock takes up very valuable keyboard real estate but is essentially unused. I move my hands much less because of that change. It also seems more logical.
If you're a vim user that uses it as an escape key, well... at least you already kinda understand the uselessness of capslock.
http://xahlee.info/kbd/dvorak_and_all_keyboard_layouts.html
I keep a bunch of .org file notes for keyboards, etc. I don' t have much on alternate keyboards: http://thespanishsite.com/org/ergo/keyboards.html
So, I'd love to hear other people's experiences.
I'm crazy about that keyboard, love it very much. Usually I switch between that one, and my TypeMatrix 2030 USB. Cause they're both so nice. :-)
Switching to Colemak was very good for me but it also was a big time investment since the loss of productivity when learning a new keyboard layout is not negligible. I had wrist problems which stopped after switching to Colemak so I really had an extra incentive to slog through the tranaition.
A better optimization is getting a great ergonomic keyboard, like the the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop keyboard. It's really fantastic and can be had for like $70 if you shop around.
For US users, with the fat 1-row Return key, this probably isn't too much of a bother, but I found it rather uncomfortable with the European-style inverted-L Return key. The Left Shift key is also a bit on the small side. I'd definitely advise a test drive before purchase.
(Shame, because the chiclet keys are pretty nice, it feels nice and solid, and it's nice to have a removable number pad.)
Because, obviously, Dvorak was optimized in 1930 for typing things like ls -ltar on a typewriter.
(Heh. I just realised that I never even bothered to change the 'hjkl' keys, in vim, as navigation keys, on the dvorak layout. It took about no time at all to get it into my system. I just stopped thinking about it.)
In my experience Norman is a bit faster and easier because Norman preserves C/Copy and V/Paste shortcut keys in the same positions.
Computers are now used everywhere: defense, business, entertainment, you name it. I don't think anyone's gonna bother changing the layout everywhere.
The good, old IBM Model M keyboards made switching the keycaps to your preferred layout trivial.
http://www.howtogeek.com/189270/alternative-keyboard-layouts...
I'm don't think going mainstream is important as long as you can get support:
If you want to encourage adoption, why would you move a commonly used letter less than an inch from it's original position?
On library computers and such I'm reduced to hunt and peck. It's really hard to switch between dvorak and querty and type both well. I like dvorak enough that it's worth not being able to type full speed on random computers.
On my phone everything goes well, but on other computers or on my iPad's Zagg keyboard... It's a mess.
The only technical problem I've had, I think, is that at one point if you were the first person to sign in to a remote system over Remote Desktop, you'd imbue that session with your locale and keyboard layout. No good when I happened to be the first person to log in.
I haven't even found my QWERTY skills atrophying that much; on a non-split or laptop keyboard I can type QWERTY without looking at 75wpm, without too many slips. On a split keyboard, like the ones I prefer to use, if I have to type QWERTY then I do have to look at my hands as I type.
I can still type QWERTY if I need to, even though I have barely used it in the past 13 years or so, but it takes me a few minutes to adjust and get up to speed. This happens if I need to use someone else's machine, which doesn't happen a lot. They wonder why I'm suddenly typing like an orangutan. But it goes away after maybe 10 minutes, then I'm up to maybe 70% of my Dvorak speed which is good enough for most short-term purposes. It still feels awkward to type QWERTY, so I try not to do it for more than a couple minutes.
(Interestingly, most of the problem when switching comes from punctuation, the muscle memory for typing punctuation seems to be separate in the brain. I noticed this when I was first learning Dvorak. I'd type 'v' instead of periods all the time, even when I was reasonably fluent with typing letters. Now the same thing happens in reverse, where I'll type 'e' or 'w' instead of periods or commas if I'm typing QWERTY.)
Overall, the fact that I'm using a different keyboard layout isn't something that I think about much. I'd be surprised if I'd even thought about it more than twice in the last six months.
It was a huge boon for my wrists when I switched, as they were starting to hurt but switching gave them a "break" as I learned the new layout, and then the new layout was more comfortable so the wrists stayed comfortable.