There’s a discussion going on over on the Colemak forums at the moment, where user Phynnboi has said that he’s not impressed with it:
“Hype” may be a bit strong of a word, but basically, all the praise and attention the layout was getting (from here, hi-games, keybr, that DDvorak site, etc.), and how it was supposed to be so much more comfortable and elegant to type on than QWERTY, and how it was superior even to Dvorak, and how it had so many “finger rolls,” and heck, even a Slashdot story. This all lead me to believe switching to Colemak was going to be some kind of transcendent experience–that every word would flow sweetly from my fingers like honey and I’d immediately refuse to ever go back to QWERTY because Colemak was just OMG so much better. What I actually experienced was a layout that was better thought-out than QWERTY, but that still had considerable awkwardness about it. Common trigraphs like YOU, THE, AND, AST, ION, and ING were all rather awkward to type. The right pinky finger was hammered (seriously, QWERTY got it wrong by putting A on the left pinky–why compound that by also putting O on the right pinky? We’re talking the 3rd and 4th most common letters on the two weakest fingers, here! There’s more to keyboard optimization than minimizing same-finger!)
Saying one should spend a whole year with something they’re unimpressed with after 40 hours sounds like a common trick I’ve seen employed by fans of certain book, movie, and television series. The argument is, dissenters don’t appreciate the series simply because haven’t spent as much time with it as the fans have. The end goal is either to dismiss all dissenters (thus increasing the series’s positive mindshare), or to get the dissenter to invest as much time into the series as the fan has (thus increasing that series’s total mindshare). Most recently, all the tween girls are using this argument with the Twilight series. “Don’t judge the series by the first book/movie! You have to read all four books several times to really get it.” Yeah, right–let’s all go through the motions of being fans of something we’re not fans of. *eye roll*
User keyboard samurai, who seems to be something of an Evangelist-In-Chief of the Colemak Religion, then proceeds to do exactly what Phynnboi is complaining about:
It really doesn’t come down to anything other than desire and attitude. Just admit your desire to learn was so low that the first sign that it was NOT going to be like getting an instant download, you quit. Consider you may simply have read some enthusiasts who had a much higher desire to learn and therefore perceived the inevitable frustrations as relatively insignificant.
Er, just a minute, Mr Samurai — the whole point that Phynnboi is making is that “easy to learn” is one of Colemak’s biggest selling points. If it really lives up to all the marketing hype surrounding it, there are no frustrations, and it should most certainly be possible to come to a conclusion about it after forty hours of use.
Either Colemak is easy to learn, or you need at least a year to learn it properly. But not both.
Categories: Uncategorized
One of the motivations for learning an alternative keyboard layout is to attempt to cure repetitive strain injury. But will it really? This post on the Colemak forums seems to indicate that it won’t. Apparently, some people find Colemak less comfortable than QWERTY, not more.
Really, if you are experiencing pain of that nature, your first port of call needs to be a doctor, not some unproven snake oil off the Internet.
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The home page for the Colemak keyboard layout has this to say about it. Obviously they’re keen to get into the record books:
Colemak is now the 3rd most popular keyboard layout for touch typing in English, after QWERTY and Dvorak.
Hmmm, if this is the case, then surely the great, illustrious, all-embracing fount of all knowledge that is Wikipedia should have something to say about it? Let’s take a look:
This page has been deleted. The deletion log for the page is provided below for reference.
- 00:51, 12 August 2008 Iridescent (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 03:49, 10 August 2008 SatyrTN (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 04:27, 21 May 2008 Jonny-mt (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 17:16, 3 September 2007 Android79 (Talk | contribs) restored “Colemak”
- 01:03, 2 September 2007 Android79 (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 20:52, 18 April 2007 Cbrown1023 (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 16:35, 5 March 2007 Sasquatch (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 14:58, 4 February 2007 Steel (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 22:17, 28 November 2006 Nakon (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
- 08:42, 23 November 2006 Cryptic (Talk | contribs) deleted “Colemak”
Well it certainly looks like Colemak is heading for one record at least. Greatest number of times an article has been deleted from Wikipedia, anybody?
Categories: Uncategorized
Our dearly beloved QWERTY layout, that we have all come to love, is under attack as never before. There are some people who claim that it is slow and inefficient, and that we need to switch to another layout, such as Dvorak.
Really? How many people do you know who have actually tried to learn Dvorak? If you’re anything like me, you can probably count them on one hand. How many people do you know have actually succeeded? If you’re anything like me, you can count them on one finger.
Then there are the plethora of other wannabe layouts that bored teenagers knock together on a wet weekend using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. You get ones with names such as Colemak, or Asset, or Capewell Evolved, or Arensito, or Maltron, or Qwerf, or Asetion, or Enti-Key, or Woozy Wombat, or Typing Tribbles, or something like that. Chances are, you can probably count the number of people who have heard of any of them on one finger.
But is QWERTY really as inefficient and slow as any of these characters make it out to be? And do these alternative layouts actually make any difference? Well, take a look at the high scores on this typing game. The top ten scores — up to a whopping 155 words per minute — are all by QWERTY typists. Go figure.
Categories: Uncategorized
