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Comment by markbnj | Hacker News Reader

I love to see attempts at new keyboard layouts because they are at the same time wonderfully optimistic and utterly hopeless. Good post for a Friday.

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Have you ever tried an alternative layout, like Dvorak?

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!

I used the Colemak layout for a little over a year and eventually switched back to QWERTY. I had the same problem that many other people had with alternate keyboards - it's great if only you use only your own computer(s). Whenever you have someone else use your keyboard or you use theirs, you have to remember to switch physically (for them) or mentally (for you). You can argue for maintaining both layout proficiency, but what's the point of an alternate layout if you have to continue to practice the old one. I also never really had a health problem typing in QWERTY and Colemak didn't solve that (non-existing) problem.

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.

> so many things are built with QWERTY in mind

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.

I'm a Dvorak typist and I use AutoHotkey for rebinding. It works like a charm and you can configure program-specific bindings.

For a Linux alternative you can give IronAHK a shot. https://github.com/polyethene/IronAHK

Why not just buy a keyboard with a layout switch button. No program will force you to use qwerty if your keyboard manages layouts. But seems like no such a keyboard is out there. Couldnt find it on Google or Amazon.

The TypeMatrix has such a button (Dvorak Key). It remaps the keys at the hardware level. It's accessed with Fn+F1 and has a LED indicator on the left side.

http://typematrix.com/2030/features.php

Colemak actually puts Backspace where Caps Lock is. I've always swapped Ctrl and Caps Locks though and did it with Colemak as well.

You're right, it's been a while since I used it.

Ha, well calling it hopeless was not meant to be a qualitative assessment, merely a concession to reality. And no, I never tried the Dvorak. I'm way too lazy and set in my thirty year-old ways.

Ah, gotcha. Ok, in that case, I'll admit - when I was busy learning it, I felt hopeless quite often! It was not until I got visuals in my mind (see my post on that, linked in my previous comment) that my curiosity was piqued.

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. :)

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