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Does anyone do this and type in multiple languages regularly? I could see myself getting into it if I only had to bother with a single layout, but since I deal

Does anyone do this and type in multiple languages regularly? I could see myself getting into it if I only had to bother with a single layout, but since I deal with three different layouts on a daily basis, no way.

dheera 3y ago
I use Dvorak and regularly type in both English and Chinese (Pinyin). On Linux and Mac it's no issue to input both using Dvorak. On Android, however, none of the Chinese input methods support Dvorak so I had to decompile and modify Google Pinyin's APK and rearrange the XML layout files to Dvorak. https://github.com/dheera/android-googlepinyin-dvorak https://github.com/dheera/android-googlepinyin-dvorak I never learned QWERTY, so I'm extremely bad at typing with it even on a phone, regardless of language.
- terr-dav 3y ago
  I recently switched to Dvorak for iOS, which I was delighted to find as an option. While I can still function on a full-size QWERTY keyboard on account of using them regularly, I almost never pick up someone else's phone, so my thumbs have forgotten it entirely.
antoinebalaine 3y ago
I use the French bepo layout for everything, but all my languages are Roman languages.
silverpepsi 3y ago
I type in Chinese regularly It is annoying that Windows keeps Qwerty for it while Mac uses Dvorak. If it was just consistent (I constantly switch machines) it would be easy to handle and entirely subconscious by now... But I start typing the wrong layout every time and lose a few seconds mentally reorienting myself.
- dheera 3y ago
  I don't use Windows so I don't have an definitive answer for you but it seems possible to have Dvorak+Pinyin. This is 6 years old so I don't know if the latest versions of Windows work the same way https://medium.com/@jiayu./how-to-set-your-pinyin-ime-keyboard-layout-to-dvorak-on-windows-8165ae0de6b5 https://medium.com/@jiayu./how-to-set-your-pinyin-ime-keyboa...
fsiefken 3y ago
Yes, I type in Dutch, English and sometimes German. You have to check if the distance advantage also goes for the three languages, for me they all are more efficient and more comfortable in Dvorak with the I and U reversed. It's not that much more comfortable, but definitely noticeable. When you have had RSI anything that makes typing more comfortable helps. Of course if you want the most efficient (you first have to decide on the factors, and the most efficient combination) layout for each language of the most efficient for the average of each language you can have a nice hobby for a year. I was afraid I'd end up with an esoteric layout and then after a few years find out that there was a better layout and I would learn that one all over again. Instead I decided to stick with DVORAK with an improvement tweak so it would be also more or less be usable on Android en iOS.
flyax 3y ago
Yes. I'm also using my own layout on ErgoDox EZ, my languages are Czech (příšerně žlouťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy) and English. I'm also a (neo)vim user. I found it hard to switch layouts, I'm using only one with layers. On first layer there are english letters, second layer there are accents (a → á) and some symbols where accent is missing (m → +). On third layer there are arrows on home row and functional keys. Shift without other key is `(`, on second layer `{`. There are some additional keys at the bottom and middle, they cover the rest of symbols. Outliers are mapped to start editor, browser, ctrl+c, ctrl+z, volume, mute, … I really like having a single layout. I don't like that I'm no longer able to type on QWERTY without looking at keys. On my desktop, I'm 10 % faster, on any other computer I'm 90 % slower. Would I do it again? Probably yes.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  I'm a native English speaker (with a lot of study of Frènch) and I am deeply grateful that English, while we have many dire critics, does not have diacritic accents. But it makes me curious. Could Czech (and the Scandi languages) do away with their diacritics and just stop using them? DONT INTERRUPT LET ME FINISH the question. I understand that you're used to it, and it's "nice", but is all that decoration absolutely necessary? SHUSH I'm not done. Let's look at Hebrew and Arabic: they don't indicate any vowels. Sounds crazy, sounds intolerable, but they get along just fine. Because English and simple ASCII made such a nice team, just wondering, not trying to say anything diabolically odious or even ďábelské ódy (I was making a macaronic joke, didn't look up the translation of that till after, but it was perfect! "devilish odes")
  - flyax 3y ago
    The difference between `s` and `š` is similar to `s` and `sh`. Can you omit `h` in Englis? Well, tecnically yes, but you canged the language. Same on you!
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      yes, I agree, that's the point I'm making: it's doable like abjads and their vowels. And by coincidence, only does Hebrew not have vowels, it also does not distinguish between s and sh, they are both that W-looking character! That's the spirit in which I was asking the question, they don't distinguish, but they still have no trouble reading and writing.
numpad0 3y ago
Why would anyone switch layouts, unless they're more than bilingual in non-English and layouts somehow comes with mutually offending differences? ASCII is subset to everything. Your national keyboard should be able to handle it.
- lawn 3y ago
  Because of comfort and possibly because of strange characters (depending on the languages you switch between).
footy 3y ago
I type English, Spanish, and French on a regular basis, and German occasionally. For me, moving to a programmable keyboard and using a non-QWERTY keyboard has 100% been worth it
- fsckboy 3y ago
  AZERTY (french) keyboards made some unimportant choices which just turned out horribly over time. I can't remember exactly but in the age of MSWindows and the internet, characters like \\ and @ (I think) were just buried away so deeply. I have a number of French friends who can't deal, they just use QWERTY keyboards.
  - dadoum 3y ago
    It has one clever design choice that nobody followed though: the fact that numbers are not wasting a full row of your keyboard without modifiers. Like, if I want to type a number I can start by pressing shift then typing the number, while all the braces I want to use are separated, and on a lot of layouts this implies using Shift which is annoying. (Or use the numpad, one more reason to not give them that much importance on the keyboard)
bradrn 3y ago
I made my own crossplatform multilingual layout [0]. Although it’s based on QWERTY, it shouldn’t be hard to remap the Linux and Mac versions to any other base layout, since they’re autogenerated from the Windows version. [0] https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey
lawn 3y ago
That was one of the reasons I made my own, because I wanted to type English and Swedish.

dheera 3y ago

I use Dvorak and regularly type in both English and Chinese (Pinyin). On Linux and Mac it's no issue to input both using Dvorak. On Android, however, none of the Chinese input methods support Dvorak so I had to decompile and modify Google Pinyin's APK and rearrange the XML layout files to Dvorak. https://github.com/dheera/android-googlepinyin-dvorak https://github.com/dheera/android-googlepinyin-dvorak I never learned QWERTY, so I'm extremely bad at typing with it even on a phone, regardless of language.

terr-dav 3y ago
I recently switched to Dvorak for iOS, which I was delighted to find as an option. While I can still function on a full-size QWERTY keyboard on account of using them regularly, I almost never pick up someone else's phone, so my thumbs have forgotten it entirely.

antoinebalaine 3y ago

I use the French bepo layout for everything, but all my languages are Roman languages.

silverpepsi 3y ago

I type in Chinese regularly It is annoying that Windows keeps Qwerty for it while Mac uses Dvorak. If it was just consistent (I constantly switch machines) it would be easy to handle and entirely subconscious by now... But I start typing the wrong layout every time and lose a few seconds mentally reorienting myself.

dheera 3y ago
I don't use Windows so I don't have an definitive answer for you but it seems possible to have Dvorak+Pinyin. This is 6 years old so I don't know if the latest versions of Windows work the same way https://medium.com/@jiayu./how-to-set-your-pinyin-ime-keyboard-layout-to-dvorak-on-windows-8165ae0de6b5 https://medium.com/@jiayu./how-to-set-your-pinyin-ime-keyboa...

fsiefken 3y ago

Yes, I type in Dutch, English and sometimes German. You have to check if the distance advantage also goes for the three languages, for me they all are more efficient and more comfortable in Dvorak with the I and U reversed. It's not that much more comfortable, but definitely noticeable. When you have had RSI anything that makes typing more comfortable helps. Of course if you want the most efficient (you first have to decide on the factors, and the most efficient combination) layout for each language of the most efficient for the average of each language you can have a nice hobby for a year. I was afraid I'd end up with an esoteric layout and then after a few years find out that there was a better layout and I would learn that one all over again. Instead I decided to stick with DVORAK with an improvement tweak so it would be also more or less be usable on Android en iOS.

flyax 3y ago

Yes. I'm also using my own layout on ErgoDox EZ, my languages are Czech (příšerně žlouťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy) and English. I'm also a (neo)vim user. I found it hard to switch layouts, I'm using only one with layers. On first layer there are english letters, second layer there are accents (a → á) and some symbols where accent is missing (m → +). On third layer there are arrows on home row and functional keys. Shift without other key is `(`, on second layer `{`. There are some additional keys at the bottom and middle, they cover the rest of symbols. Outliers are mapped to start editor, browser, ctrl+c, ctrl+z, volume, mute, … I really like having a single layout. I don't like that I'm no longer able to type on QWERTY without looking at keys. On my desktop, I'm 10 % faster, on any other computer I'm 90 % slower. Would I do it again? Probably yes.

fsckboy 3y ago
I'm a native English speaker (with a lot of study of Frènch) and I am deeply grateful that English, while we have many dire critics, does not have diacritic accents. But it makes me curious. Could Czech (and the Scandi languages) do away with their diacritics and just stop using them? DONT INTERRUPT LET ME FINISH the question. I understand that you're used to it, and it's "nice", but is all that decoration absolutely necessary? SHUSH I'm not done. Let's look at Hebrew and Arabic: they don't indicate any vowels. Sounds crazy, sounds intolerable, but they get along just fine. Because English and simple ASCII made such a nice team, just wondering, not trying to say anything diabolically odious or even ďábelské ódy (I was making a macaronic joke, didn't look up the translation of that till after, but it was perfect! "devilish odes")
- flyax 3y ago
  The difference between `s` and `š` is similar to `s` and `sh`. Can you omit `h` in Englis? Well, tecnically yes, but you canged the language. Same on you!
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    yes, I agree, that's the point I'm making: it's doable like abjads and their vowels. And by coincidence, only does Hebrew not have vowels, it also does not distinguish between s and sh, they are both that W-looking character! That's the spirit in which I was asking the question, they don't distinguish, but they still have no trouble reading and writing.

numpad0 3y ago

Why would anyone switch layouts, unless they're more than bilingual in non-English and layouts somehow comes with mutually offending differences? ASCII is subset to everything. Your national keyboard should be able to handle it.

lawn 3y ago
Because of comfort and possibly because of strange characters (depending on the languages you switch between).

footy 3y ago

I type English, Spanish, and French on a regular basis, and German occasionally. For me, moving to a programmable keyboard and using a non-QWERTY keyboard has 100% been worth it

fsckboy 3y ago
AZERTY (french) keyboards made some unimportant choices which just turned out horribly over time. I can't remember exactly but in the age of MSWindows and the internet, characters like \\ and @ (I think) were just buried away so deeply. I have a number of French friends who can't deal, they just use QWERTY keyboards.
- dadoum 3y ago
  It has one clever design choice that nobody followed though: the fact that numbers are not wasting a full row of your keyboard without modifiers. Like, if I want to type a number I can start by pressing shift then typing the number, while all the braces I want to use are separated, and on a lot of layouts this implies using Shift which is annoying. (Or use the numpad, one more reason to not give them that much importance on the keyboard)

bradrn 3y ago

I made my own crossplatform multilingual layout [0]. Although it’s based on QWERTY, it shouldn’t be hard to remap the Linux and Mac versions to any other base layout, since they’re autogenerated from the Windows version. [0] https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey

lawn 3y ago

That was one of the reasons I made my own, because I wanted to type English and Swedish.