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Dullsters @dullsters.net

DominusOfMegadeus @sh.itjust.works

7d ago

My monstrosity of a Colemak learner board

34 comments

Is that a second upside down "F"?
- I didn't have a second B from this set 🫠

Another Colemak user!
- Well. Aspiring user, anyway.
  
  We all have to start somewhere. My first attempt lasted four months, when I was at uni. My second attempt was after I obtained employment, and then dedicated Colemak to my home machines so as to retain my 120 WPM with QWERTY when at work. And I've been going since.
  I did try to use Colemak on mobile, but with Swype-style input, the accuracy rate drops to almost nothing. Funny how Colemak being so efficient with the home row means that predictive text can't be as effective.

Keychron alice?
- Indeed. Q13 Pro

That layout looks comfy as hell

What keycaps are the alphas? I see plenty of Keychron (KSA?) elsewhere.
- Signature Plastics UnAlice. I’m planning to get the rest of the set soon.

Why Colemak? What about it makes it learning a new layout worth it?
- It puts the most used letters closer to where your fingers are more often. It already feels more intuitive, and I’ve barely begun. It’s still stupidly difficult retraining my brain, but I found some great courses online
  
  Like Dvorak?

Yo, I have the same wrist support and mousepad.
You have great taste! Unsurprisingly, I love your keyboard too.
- I cannot find any faults with your argument here

long tidepod for a wrist rest, i like it
- Don’t let its tasty appearance fool you; it’s crap. I’ll get around to replacing it at some point.

Kinda cool, gives me real IMSAI 8080 vibes with all the colours

Yay for Colemak!

Out of curiosity, why did you go with Colemak over colemak-dh or other layouts?
I totally see people not choosing the lessor used layouts just for convenience sake, but DH is quite common, well supported, and fixes some fundamental issues.
- Not familiar, please explain
  
  The DH mod addresses the d and h issues that Colemak has. Long story short, if you type primarily in English the DH mod means you will need to stretch your fingers to hit those keys way less often. More information is here.
  https://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/#colemak-problems
  As for other layouts, the advice that has treated me well is to focus on post covid layouts. Due to a sudden availability of free time a lot of research was done during COVID on keyboard layouts. Resultantly, post Covid layouts tend to be substantially better than pre COVID. I am a fan of Engram, Graphire, and The Hands Down Family personally.
  This all being said these are harder to learn because they completely separate themselves from qwerty/qwertz.
- idk why I skipped colemak-dh long ago when I found out about it. and idk if I want to change now after more than a decade using colemak lol
  
  It makes sense to stick with something that’s good. I think the small gain going from Colemak to Colemak-DH wouldn’t be worth the struggle.
  I use Engram and don’t plan on changing even though I suspect better layouts do exist. The effort is too high for a 1% gain. Lol.

There are half a dozen of us!

34 comments