Everyone has a different use case, programmers use special characters more than non-programmers, Vim users use different shortcuts than Photoshop users, C programmers use the semicolon while Ruby programmers don't, American writers use the letter y more than German ones and so on. Claiming 46% less effort than qwerty needs further clarification.
Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, otherwise the constant mental switch from one to another keyboard layout won't bring you any speed and flow improvement. My writing speed goes down to zero when I have to write on a British layout (which is already super close to the US layout compared to other countries).
> you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, otherwise the constant mental switch from one to another keyboard layout won't bring you any speed and flow improvement. My writing speed goes down to zero when I have to write on a British layout (which is already super close to the US layout compared to other countries).
That doesn't align with my personal experience at all. I do switch between English and Polish keyboard layout on a regular basis (and I mean proper Polish layout, the semi-forgotten PN-87; it's QWERTZ-based, but much more distant from vanilla QWERTY than so-called Polish Programmer's, especially when it comes to special characters). I'm really quick with both and I don't find switching inconvenient in the slightest.
So it's really individual thing and sweeping generalizations like "constant mental switch won't bring you any improvement" seem dubious to me. The truth is that YMMV.
> Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping,
Desktop and laptop, sure. Mobile (which I assumed meant a palmtop such as a smartphone), not so much. If you change the layout of your keyboard, you will touch type. This is a very different kind of memory than the typical hunt&peck. Phone virtual keyboards are even more different.
In practice, my dekstop and laptop use the Bépo layout (a Dvorak-like for French), and I kept Azerty (French Qwerty derivative) on my phone. The discrepancy never caused me any problem.
>Norman is a fully optimized alternative keyboard layout to QWERTY for touch typing in English. It maintains keyboard shortcuts for the letters QWASZXCV and keeps 22/26 letters in the normal use pattern of their QWERTY finger, if not the original QWERTY location.
I started in high school by switching to Dvorak, missed keyboard shortcuts, switched to Colemak. Didn't like it, switched to Workman. Didn't like it, found Norman. Haven't looked back. I also use Plover for stenography. I like typing.
What makes a person switch to a non-default keyboard layout?
How much of a pain in the ass is it to deal with other people's keyboards (which presumably are still QWERTY)?
Does it work for a split layout? (ex: Microsfot Natural Keyboard)
Any noticeable speed increase or decrease of wrist pain? I've all but eliminated it via a split keyboard but always on the lookout for something better.
What tools did you use to make the switch each time?
I tried switching from qwerty to colemak, went all in and bought new keycaps for my keyboard. Practiced a few hours every day for a week and went from qwerty 60-100wpm depending on what I'm working on, to about 15wpm on colemak and couldn't break beyond that threshold. I honestly couldn't get any work done with it so I bailed.
I did feel it was more convenient, but I never got up to my typing speed with regular QWERTY (~130wpm), I peaked at about 60 or 80, can't remember. Surely I would get there with time, but it would take time and be limited to English anyway, which isn't my first language.
The website itself is very interesting though: the guy developed an algorithm for assessing the quality of keyboard layouts, and another - based on simulated annealing - to create his own. The theory behind this was more interesting to me than the layout itself.
I played with Dvorak and Colemak too, but neither felt as comfy.
One great idea I adopted from Colemak though is setting that useless caps lock key to backspace. That feels really great, especially the ability of deleting the last word with only left hand; ctrl + backspace requires both hands on normal keyboard layout, ctrl + capslock doesn't and feels very natural. It's about the first thing I set up on every new machine I lay my hands on.
It's weird, as this is mostly a programmer-related community, I am a programmer and I never found that typing is the bottleneck. Mostly the thinking part is the bottleneck.
User of bépo (more or less a French dvorak), I am frustrated by the locations of x, c and v for cut, copy, paste. It's not easy to change those shortcuts in software.
Norman took care of that by keeping those keys in place as in qwerty, which is good.
I type on Colemak — it already has many keyboard shortcuts same as QWERTY, most common letters on the home row, and it's old and popular enough to be included in many places out of the box (FreeBSD console, Xorg, macOS, iOS, Android). I don't see the how Norman is better.
At least anecdotally, you learn to touch type better if the keys on your keyboard don't match the layout you are learning. Almost better to just unlabel all the keys.
And there are keycaps for nicer keyboards. They probably won't get any traction to speak of period, since no major manufacturers mass produce and sell keyboards in these layouts.
Very interesting question. I think programming is so suboptimal from what we could do, just by clinging onto the ASCII-based textfiles paradigm.
Actually, autocompletion really slows me down sometimes too. For example, sometimes I type faster than I can watch what happens, and I press the up button to go up a line. Sometimes autocompletion decided to give me some options, and decides that the up button press is meant for that list, and refuses to let me go up. So I have to press left or right until my cursor is no longer in the token that is being autocompleted, and THEN I can finally go up/down a line. Very bothersome.
Also, sometimes space works to select a autocompletion option, for other editors it has to be enter.
Same thing with braces: I will type both of them eventually, but a lot of IDE's put one there immediately, which is very annoying if you don't anticipate.
The whole thing makes coding inconsistent among multiple different editors; a bad case. IMO features should only be triggered by keys which do not have an essential function already.
Pro-tip: if you can get a gamer keyboard, often times they come with plenty of additional, customizable keys. Then, you just assign whatever character you are using a lot to them.
I'm genuinely curious about people who have actually switched typing layout for day-to-day use. I've played with Dvorak for awhile, but I already type at over 100 wpm with QWERTY, and I know whatever keyboard I'm likely to come into contact with that is not my own is likely to be QWERTY. Add to that, the changing of shortcuts, vim commands, etc. (which Norman attempts to address somewhat) and I'm not strongly motivated to try.
Has anyone found it valuable to switch and if so, why?
I actually learned Norman a number of months ago to a pretty reasonable level (90WPM) with http://type-fu.com/.
However, I couldn't get over the hump to use it day to day. It's hard to unlearn vim commands and all.
Strangely, I'm able to switch pretty effectively between qwerty and norman. Also strange is if I think about typing in my mind, it's in the norman layout.
I found that it was possible to retain two layouts when switching, but at the expense of efficiency. I could not make significant progress until I abandoned any effort to retain my former layout. Having switched three times now, I found this to be the case every time. I'm up in the 120s at this point.
Seems like the best way to quantify such claims is a small daemon that listens to your keystrokes. Which would use a config file to configure which finger hits which key. Then with the logs you could record top typing speed, and total finger distance.
Then users could contribute their speeds, accuracy (number of backspaces), and finger distance for whatever mapping pleases them.
Even sidestepping the 46% less "For Whom" :
Qwerty/dvorak/whatever .. No one is really worried about cranking out Words per minute anymore.
Nor is it going to significantly change RSI injuries where one wasn't already going to happen.
I've always wonder why Norman, Dvorak etc. preform so much better than qwerty by most metrics, but real-world studies showing that much of a difference are rather lacking.
I can imagine it must be hard to design a good study comparing them when almost everyone uses qwerty.
There is no speed advantage. The anecdotal evidence saying otherwise has nothing to do with the layout, but with the effort put into learning to type properly. The rest is confirmation bias.
I'll stick to Dvorak until I get around to getting a stenosaurus/stenoboard/opensteno or some other form of stenograph system. The primary problem I've had with Dvorak over the years was learning a new layout when I started French!
For those of you who type with a non-QWERTY layout and use either Emacs or Vim bindings for your text editor, how have you adapted? You would think you'd have to retool your muscle memory for the new bindings, is this the case?
I've been typing in Dvorak for over 10 years. I kept the same shortcut / vim command as standard and I got used to the different physical position. For some shortcut, it is indeed sub-optimal (ctrl+c / v in particular) but it works without any additional configuration on any system / software.
That's also one of my reason of choosing US-Dvorak as an alternative to Qwerty rather than more modern / efficient alternatives : it is available in most operating systems out of the box.
For me, the hardest was learning where hjkl is in dvorak. I think I remapped them at first, so htns were hjkl. That caused other problems, so I eventually just forced myself to get used to the fact the movement keys were no longer on the home row.
[+] [-] greenspot|9 years ago|reply
For whom?
For programmers?
For Vim users?
For Emacs users?
For Photoshop users?
For writers?
For English writers?
For Non-English writers?
For Mathematica users?
For LaTex users?
For my mother browsing the net on her iPad?
Everyone has a different use case, programmers use special characters more than non-programmers, Vim users use different shortcuts than Photoshop users, C programmers use the semicolon while Ruby programmers don't, American writers use the letter y more than German ones and so on. Claiming 46% less effort than qwerty needs further clarification.
Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, otherwise the constant mental switch from one to another keyboard layout won't bring you any speed and flow improvement. My writing speed goes down to zero when I have to write on a British layout (which is already super close to the US layout compared to other countries).
[+] [-] V-2|9 years ago|reply
That doesn't align with my personal experience at all. I do switch between English and Polish keyboard layout on a regular basis (and I mean proper Polish layout, the semi-forgotten PN-87; it's QWERTZ-based, but much more distant from vanilla QWERTY than so-called Polish Programmer's, especially when it comes to special characters). I'm really quick with both and I don't find switching inconvenient in the slightest.
So it's really individual thing and sweeping generalizations like "constant mental switch won't bring you any improvement" seem dubious to me. The truth is that YMMV.
[+] [-] loup-vaillant|9 years ago|reply
Desktop and laptop, sure. Mobile (which I assumed meant a palmtop such as a smartphone), not so much. If you change the layout of your keyboard, you will touch type. This is a very different kind of memory than the typical hunt&peck. Phone virtual keyboards are even more different.
In practice, my dekstop and laptop use the Bépo layout (a Dvorak-like for French), and I kept Azerty (French Qwerty derivative) on my phone. The discrepancy never caused me any problem.
[+] [-] Daviey|9 years ago|reply
Ie, log and then paste the contents into something like: https://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/heatmap-keyboard/
[+] [-] basch|9 years ago|reply
>Norman is a fully optimized alternative keyboard layout to QWERTY for touch typing in English. It maintains keyboard shortcuts for the letters QWASZXCV and keeps 22/26 letters in the normal use pattern of their QWERTY finger, if not the original QWERTY location.
[+] [-] Walf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morinted|9 years ago|reply
I started in high school by switching to Dvorak, missed keyboard shortcuts, switched to Colemak. Didn't like it, switched to Workman. Didn't like it, found Norman. Haven't looked back. I also use Plover for stenography. I like typing.
[+] [-] koolba|9 years ago|reply
How much of a pain in the ass is it to deal with other people's keyboards (which presumably are still QWERTY)?
Does it work for a split layout? (ex: Microsfot Natural Keyboard)
Any noticeable speed increase or decrease of wrist pain? I've all but eliminated it via a split keyboard but always on the lookout for something better.
[+] [-] 91bananas|9 years ago|reply
I tried switching from qwerty to colemak, went all in and bought new keycaps for my keyboard. Practiced a few hours every day for a week and went from qwerty 60-100wpm depending on what I'm working on, to about 15wpm on colemak and couldn't break beyond that threshold. I honestly couldn't get any work done with it so I bailed.
[+] [-] nkantar|9 years ago|reply
2. Do you write a significant amount of English prose? If so, is any if it in a markup language like Markdown or rST?
3. How do you find life on multiple devices (computers, smartphones, tablets) to be, especially if you jump between layouts?
Thanks in advance!
[+] [-] agumonkey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] V-2|9 years ago|reply
I did feel it was more convenient, but I never got up to my typing speed with regular QWERTY (~130wpm), I peaked at about 60 or 80, can't remember. Surely I would get there with time, but it would take time and be limited to English anyway, which isn't my first language.
The website itself is very interesting though: the guy developed an algorithm for assessing the quality of keyboard layouts, and another - based on simulated annealing - to create his own. The theory behind this was more interesting to me than the layout itself.
I played with Dvorak and Colemak too, but neither felt as comfy.
One great idea I adopted from Colemak though is setting that useless caps lock key to backspace. That feels really great, especially the ability of deleting the last word with only left hand; ctrl + backspace requires both hands on normal keyboard layout, ctrl + capslock doesn't and feels very natural. It's about the first thing I set up on every new machine I lay my hands on.
[+] [-] gamache|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thealistra|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwbrandsma|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dest|9 years ago|reply
Norman took care of that by keeping those keys in place as in qwerty, which is good.
[+] [-] floatboth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WorldMaker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pattisapu|9 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Simplified-Keyboard-Lettering-Transpa...
I can't imagine that not having backlit keys would be a dealbreaker for the kind of person willing to learn a new layout.
[+] [-] 91bananas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teach|9 years ago|reply
If you're using a laptop then I have no sympathy. You have chosen that life.
[+] [-] painted|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kutkloon7|9 years ago|reply
Actually, autocompletion really slows me down sometimes too. For example, sometimes I type faster than I can watch what happens, and I press the up button to go up a line. Sometimes autocompletion decided to give me some options, and decides that the up button press is meant for that list, and refuses to let me go up. So I have to press left or right until my cursor is no longer in the token that is being autocompleted, and THEN I can finally go up/down a line. Very bothersome.
Also, sometimes space works to select a autocompletion option, for other editors it has to be enter.
Same thing with braces: I will type both of them eventually, but a lot of IDE's put one there immediately, which is very annoying if you don't anticipate.
The whole thing makes coding inconsistent among multiple different editors; a bad case. IMO features should only be triggered by keys which do not have an essential function already.
[+] [-] floatboth|9 years ago|reply
I have them set up in Xorg: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324...
And Windows: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/2a3008b27997b6324...
[+] [-] iagooar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chinathrow|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgriswald|9 years ago|reply
Has anyone found it valuable to switch and if so, why?
[+] [-] anotheryou|9 years ago|reply
hover the layers here: http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html
layer 4 is numpad, arrow keys, backspace, del escape. the layer above I don't use, maybe handy for mathematicians.
Some hidden bonuses too: [caps]+[tab],[U],[C],[1],[+],[2],[=] produces: 1+2=3
[+] [-] adovenmuehle|9 years ago|reply
However, I couldn't get over the hump to use it day to day. It's hard to unlearn vim commands and all.
Strangely, I'm able to switch pretty effectively between qwerty and norman. Also strange is if I think about typing in my mind, it's in the norman layout.
[+] [-] teilo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dimman|9 years ago|reply
For instance I use xmodmap to remap ALTGR + [ for å, ALTGR + ; for ö (+ SHIFT produces capital letters of the same)
Example: xmodmap -e "keycode 108 = Mode_switch" && xmodmap -e "keycode 48 = apostrophe quotedbl adiaeresis Adiaeresis"
This can of course be used for any kind of remapping in case your unhappy with some key locations.
[+] [-] sliken|9 years ago|reply
Then users could contribute their speeds, accuracy (number of backspaces), and finger distance for whatever mapping pleases them.
[+] [-] jerdavis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] libdong|9 years ago|reply
I can imagine it must be hard to design a good study comparing them when almost everyone uses qwerty.
[+] [-] hashhar|9 years ago|reply
[1]: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main
[+] [-] teilo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nbanks|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twoquestions|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lelag|9 years ago|reply
That's also one of my reason of choosing US-Dvorak as an alternative to Qwerty rather than more modern / efficient alternatives : it is available in most operating systems out of the box.
[+] [-] lj3|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wkearney99|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkkollaw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] red2awn|9 years ago|reply