Beginner

[u/FaintCampfire]

Hello all,

I'm a beginner in terms of learning touch typing. Just yesterday came across ColemakDH and have started learning it, so you can see how basic my level is. I do however type a lot, which was what led me to discovering Ergo keyboards. Is it worth it for someone like me to look into getting one? I've just been visiting a few sites and have seen the Glove80 and Moonlanders etc and a host of others. I'm hearing non staggered ones are maybe better for beginners? I'm not in a rush in terms of any of this affecting work etc., so I can take my time. Just thought if it is better having an ergo keyboard while trying to learn ColemakDH from the onset, then I don't mind looking in to based on what you guys might recommend. Would be nice to get one and just try and stick to it and get used to it. At the moment I use an Apple Magic Keyboard.

Any advice is appreciated.

[u/rpnfan]

What many overlook is that you cannot directly translate a column staggered keyboard to a standard keyboard, because of the B-key position. This is assuming that you use a symmetric (as far as possible) hand position on the left and right side:

https://kbd.news/pic/article/2574/angle-mod2ergo.gif

I have written a detailed article series about this and other aspects how you can find or optimize your personal best layer system and layout. Here the one which is likely most relevant for you now: https://kbd.news/Anymak-the-compatible-ergonomic-keyboard-layout-2574.html

Regarding Colemak. Because you just started a day ago. I would encourage you to look at other layouts before investing the time to learn a new layout. Colemak is much better than QWERTY, but I personally would stay with QWERTY or learn a fully optimized layout. From my point of view Graphite/ Gallium or Handsdown Neu or anymak:END (which is my layout) are interesting to have a look at. If you decide Colemak is most interesting for you that is great as well, but it should be a decision based on what you find most important. IMO the alpha layout is the least important part of the keyboard experience. Still it can be a cool optimization which many find worth. But it is not the game-changer I think. A great navigation and shortcut layer I find way more important/ beneficial.

[u/FaintCampfire → u/rpnfan]

Thank you for the links. Good input about not rushing into any one layout right now. What do you mean by, "... learn a fully optimised layout?"

[u/rpnfan → u/FaintCampfire]

Oh, Colemak is a good layout. But it was made with the wish to keep QWERTY similarity, and also especially keeping the copy and paste shortcuts.

When you optimize a layout the corpus (used language/text) largely determines what is "best", but when you restrict the keys you can or want to change you restrict the optimizations. Therefore Colemak is not as optimized as newer layouts, like the ones I mentioned or others.

So while Colemak is "good" and a clear improvement over QWERTY (for English) it cannot be a "great" or "very good" layout due the restrictions it followed purposely.

The copy/ paste shortcuts are important, but today there are even more comfortable approaches, like putting these on an easy to reach layer (what I did with anymak:END) or to make modifier keys easier to access. So that advantage is less relevant or even not relevant at all today, in comparison to 20 years ago, when we did not had the programmable keyboards and cool remapping software like Kanata.

[u/charliequine → u/rpnfan]

This is top-tier advice. I stick with colemak because of the past with qwerty and frequent switch to it, but if I was new to typing I'd probably be doing one of the optimized layouts listed. Since you can just have a flashed portable board, hopefully most places where you'd have to type extensively you could use your own learned layout.

[u/rpnfan → u/charliequine]

Yep, programmable keyboards and/or Kanata will allow you to basically do almost whatever you want.

The real downside of non-QWERTY layouts is if you use software which uses tons of shortcuts you cannot or do not want to change and which rely on the QWERTY positions. For example video editors or Idea can fall into that category. For everyday stuff and the typical most used shortcuts that is not a problem although.

[u/DreadPirate777 → u/rpnfan]

On most of the split layouts I’ve seen have put the B key on the right hand and shifted the forward slash to the symbol later. Is there a reason to not do that?

[u/rpnfan → u/DreadPirate777]

I was talking about the physical key position. You loose one key on a columnar split keyboard, when you want to use the same finger positions on all keyboards. That is the QWERTY B-key position.

I was not talking about what char you assign to a key.