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Don’t swap to a new layout, it’s too much work to learn. Instead, swap your K and E keys. E being common but not being in your home row is responsible for a sig

by fwlr 4y ago

Don’t swap to a new layout, it’s too much work to learn. Instead, swap your K and E keys. E being common but not being in your home row is responsible for a significant chunk of the inefficiency of the QWERTY layout and even if you stop here you’ve already made a huge improvement. You’ll make typos involving K and E for a few days but you’ll adapt very quickly without ever having to go through the “learning a layout” process. (Once you’re comfortable and not mixing them them up, if you still want more, swap J and O, then F and T, then D and A, then G and N. At that point it’s probably not worth making any more swaps, but if you want to continue you can read the article I got this information from: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?partial_optimization http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?partial_optimization)

ijlx 4y ago
This reminds me of the Tarmak transitional layouts for learning Colemak. Tarmak has four intermediary layouts between QWERTY and Colemak, each changing a few (3-4) keys at a time. Tarmak #1 gets the N and E keys in the home row, for instance. I ended up going cold turkey Colemak, but for those who are interested in learning a new layout Tarmak seems like an interesting way to make gradual progress without totally decimating your typing speed. Plus, it leads into a well-established layout instead of resulting in a bespoke layout you have to work on yourself.
sabellito 4y ago
Also semicolon and P, minimal change, big gains.
- fwlr 4y ago
  Another type of change to consider is flipping shift for an individual key: semicolon/colon (if your language isn’t semicolon terminated, you probably type colon way more) hyphen/underscore (if your language doesn’t have arrow functions or kebab casing, you probably type underscore a lot more) singlequote/doublequote (the preeminent style guide for your language probably has an opinion on which quote character to use; that should be your non-shift character) pipe/backslash (pipe operators are heavily used in some languages, but escaping characters is common too) The first shift swap I tried was actually tilde/backtick, but I didn’t like it - turns out I use string templating in JS more often than I need to reference the home directory. Outside of direct swaps, one related change I have made recently is using Karabiner to set up custom commands for “modifier key pressed and released alone”. Tap left shift by itself for an opening parenthesis, right shift for closing parenthesis. Command does bracket and option does braces in a similar fashion. I’m liking it so far, once I get familiar enough that I’m not using the old way I’ll remap the original [/{ and ]/} keys to some other symbols - whichever of %^*#!@$& I use most often, probably. In general though I would highly encourage anyone who types for a living to consider making incremental key swaps instead of changing keyboard layouts. For Mac there is Ukelele (GUI, generates new layout file your OS uses) or Karabiner (config file, daemon intercepts keystrokes and carries out substitutions - more power but you have to be okay with “intercepts keystrokes”). For Linux the functionality is there with localectl and loadkeys, and there’s probably many utilities built on top of that. For Windows there is SharpKeys, PowerToys, and AutoHotKeys. (I don’t use Linux or Windows day to day, there may be better options here).

by fwlr 4y ago

ijlx 4y ago

This reminds me of the Tarmak transitional layouts for learning Colemak. Tarmak has four intermediary layouts between QWERTY and Colemak, each changing a few (3-4) keys at a time. Tarmak #1 gets the N and E keys in the home row, for instance. I ended up going cold turkey Colemak, but for those who are interested in learning a new layout Tarmak seems like an interesting way to make gradual progress without totally decimating your typing speed. Plus, it leads into a well-established layout instead of resulting in a bespoke layout you have to work on yourself.

sabellito 4y ago

Also semicolon and P, minimal change, big gains.

fwlr 4y ago
Another type of change to consider is flipping shift for an individual key: semicolon/colon (if your language isn’t semicolon terminated, you probably type colon way more) hyphen/underscore (if your language doesn’t have arrow functions or kebab casing, you probably type underscore a lot more) singlequote/doublequote (the preeminent style guide for your language probably has an opinion on which quote character to use; that should be your non-shift character) pipe/backslash (pipe operators are heavily used in some languages, but escaping characters is common too) The first shift swap I tried was actually tilde/backtick, but I didn’t like it - turns out I use string templating in JS more often than I need to reference the home directory. Outside of direct swaps, one related change I have made recently is using Karabiner to set up custom commands for “modifier key pressed and released alone”. Tap left shift by itself for an opening parenthesis, right shift for closing parenthesis. Command does bracket and option does braces in a similar fashion. I’m liking it so far, once I get familiar enough that I’m not using the old way I’ll remap the original [/{ and ]/} keys to some other symbols - whichever of %^*#!@$& I use most often, probably. In general though I would highly encourage anyone who types for a living to consider making incremental key swaps instead of changing keyboard layouts. For Mac there is Ukelele (GUI, generates new layout file your OS uses) or Karabiner (config file, daemon intercepts keystrokes and carries out substitutions - more power but you have to be okay with “intercepts keystrokes”). For Linux the functionality is there with localectl and loadkeys, and there’s probably many utilities built on top of that. For Windows there is SharpKeys, PowerToys, and AutoHotKeys. (I don’t use Linux or Windows day to day, there may be better options here).