On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 19:35, Anthony Campbell <a...@acampbell.org.uk> wrote: > My question: is it really worth the trouble of learning a new way of > typing, if you are already a moderately competent touch typist on the > QWERTY keyboard? >
Probably not. Some people cite speed, others comfort as a reason. I'll tell you mine. I type fast. Real fast. I haven't done a wpm test but let's just say that I type faster than most. Often, this speed comes with increased finger pressure on the keys (I bang them) and rapid wrist movement. Both those factors cause me pain now. Switching to Colemak slowed me down considerably, as such I could relearn how I press the keys and avoid bottoming out (mechanical keyboards do not need to bottom out to register a keypress). Furthermore, the reduced wrist movement (because of the better layout) and the slower movement (due to my unfamiliarity with the layout) have reduced my wrist pain. I am actually typing this in qwerty now, and I see that my fingers are all over the keyboard. My pinky hurts! Note that I decided to do something different for Colemak. Instead of putting my index fingers in the 'correct' position (F and J in Qwerty) I put them further out (D and K in Qwerty). This gives me a bit more room between them, for a more natural typing position, and it reduces the load on the pinkies. The extra load is moved to the index fingers, which are stronger and more agile. I am trying to configure my own keyboard layout, but I am having trouble remapping the modifier keys: Noah Ergonomic Keyboard Layout http://dotancohen.com/eng/noah_ergonomic_keyboard_layout.html That layout moves the hands as far apart as possible and moves as much load off the pinkies as possible. It is very comfortable, but I am having trouble writing an xkb layout for it. -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cakdxfkn6b7qceqtk+anjfdkck_nlx8sk-+vxu2y+6h7e2xn...@mail.gmail.com
