Learning new keys
Learning new keys
When you are drilling new keys but you absolutely do not want to look at the layout map that shows the keys you are supposed to know already.
mod-DH is the best invention ever.
3I have never understood it. Reaching one key left or right is such a small movement to me. What I hate is reaching for g or j in colemak
1It is not so much about relative distance to the home position. The more important measure is if there are lots of bigrams to be pressed by the middle finger on the same hand right next to the index key -- it is believed that a lateral stretch, meaning having to press a key on the central index columns, right next to another key on the same hand middle finger column (e.g., a qwerty 'gd'), is more uncomfortable than if the index key is on the home column (a qwerty 'vd'). This is the logic behind the dh mod.
Personally I think both 'd' and 'h' are of too high a frequency to be placed on the index finger non-home position, so neither the vanilla nor the dh variant of colemak is good in that regard.
1What's really annoying me right now is that I'm learning on a row staggered keyboard and I know fine well that the V and K should not be there, but, for the purposes of the exercise they are and I have to kind of bear with it and hope that my new muscle memory will correct when my little Ferris Sweep arrives.
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I'm really loving it. Something clicked when I started adding the top row to my drills and now its actually fun. I'm deliberately taking my time so I don't pick up any bad habits. My QWERTY typing is fast but atrocious in terms of form.
1I honestly think that touch typing on QWERTY is a bad idea, those contortions you need to go fast will just give you RSI sooner or later.
I also learned touch typing with colemak mod-DH and that kind of works, but now I'm running into the fact that standard keyboards are very asymmetrical. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a split board with an F row.
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It’s fine. I use mod DH, but it’s only a marginal improvement compared to getting an ergo keyboard (with thumb keys, key wells, split, columns stagger, etc.).
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Good luck with colemak Dh. I'm switching layouts rn to semimak and it's definitely hurting the brain lol
1I'm really enjoying learning it so far. Semimak sounds really interesting. I think what I take away from reading about alt layouts is, beyond a certain point, you need to start to understand the dexterity and capability of your own fingers because metrics won't tell you much more than the very basics of what a layout can do.
2Yeah, while semimak isn't necessarily as general purpose as colemak is designed to be, I think I'm just gonna learn it and stick to it. I'm not sure I have the patience to learn another alt layout. I just wanted to move to something better than Dvorak
1