I use Workman.
EDIT (2024-08-10T19:23Z): I should clarify that I am referring to the layout that you use for a physical computer keyboard, not a mobile/virtual keyboard.
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ANSI QWERTY.
It’s the standard layout in my part of the world, and my ability to walk up to any PC in the land and comfortably type outweigh any advantages other layouts would have.
QWERTY. Jealous?
Programmers Dvorak
My keyboard lays out flat on my desk. I don’t unfold the little legs underneath.
As nature intended.
Pet theory: most Dvorak users were, in their pre-enlightenment lives, messy freestyle 3-finger typists. If you ever went to the trouble of formally learning to touch-type Qwerty, moving to another layout just seems impossibly foreboding. No way.
Pet theory: most Dvorak users were, in their pre-enlightenment lives, messy freestyle 3-finger typists.
Given that Dvorak tries to maximize alternating hands when typing consecutive characters [1], that theory definitely feels plausible given that the “hunt-and-peck” style for typing naturally seems to work with alternating hands. I think the same idea could also be applied to mobile typing as you only have two thumbs — perhaps Dvorak would lend itself well to mobile typing?
References
- “Dvorak keyboard layout”. Wikipedia. Accessed: 2024-08-10T23:00Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard_layout#Overview
Letters should be typed by alternating between hands (which makes typing more rhythmic, increases speed, reduces error, and reduces fatigue).
If you ever went to the trouble of formally learning to touch-type Qwerty, moving to another layout just seems impossibly foreboding.
It’s not that bad. By my experience, having gone from QWERTY to Dvorak to Colemak to Workman, it takes maybe an hour to memorize the keys, then it’s just a matter of practicing by using it. You will progressively get faster and faster as it becomes second nature. To get to full typing speed and for it to feel completely natural, however, it will likely take a month, depending on how often and how much one types.
Something interesting that I noticed, though, is that it seems that the brain is only to be able to know one keyboard layout well at a time. If I learn a new layout, I don’t maintain my skill with the previous layout minus the skill lost due to lack of practice. It almost feels entirely zero-sum. As I gain skill in one keyboard layout, I seem to equally lose skill in the previously known keyboard layout. I do try and maintain some level of proficiency with QWERTY, given that it is still the standard and is the most common, but it takes considerably more effort. It seems to be less acquiring a new skill and more rewiring the brain.
I use semimak mainly but use qwerty often and I feel like there’s no problem with using both at all. This is just my experience though. When I first learned Dvorak and dropped qwerty I completely lost qwerty but it came back really easily later when I started using it more
You become multilingual. It doesn’t transfer the same way you think. I type dvorak at home, qwerty at work, and qwerty on mobile. My brain somehow knows when to switch. The most common slip up I run into is that my brain gets confused with a laptop and sometimes I mix the two.
QWERTY. i work on multiple environments that can’t always be accessed remotely, so that means I’m physically moving to different computers daily. It’s better for me to use the most common layout so that there’s as much consistency between systems as possible
Why does workman have a different layout for Linux? That’s a headache for people who dual boot
What do you mean? It’s just a layout. How would it vary depending on the OS?
Under pros and cons:
Capslock is Backspace (Linux only) Shift+Capslock is Escape (Linux only)
Under pros and cons
Ah, okay! I didn’t see that. Good to know.
Quite funny that, assumedly, Windows prevents those things from being remapped. I personally love that the Capslock key got changed to the Backspace key. It’s so much more comfortable.
ANSI QWERTY TKL. Despite living in Germany, where we usually use ISO. I got used to it when I spent a year in the states and realized how useful it is for writing code. Now I have the differences to the German layout memorized pretty well so I just switch in software whenever I need German characters like ä or ß.
Querty with a 55 key ortholinear split keyboard aligned at almost a 90 degree angle.
Most of the complaints I hear about keyboard setups could be solved by either completely remapping the keys or, if you really need to not move your hands around, investing in one of these.
QWERTY on a cheap Dell keyboard I’ve had for 12 years.
I’m sure some of the alternatives are objectively superior, but with all due respect to enthusiasts, I’m simply not passionate about it and have yet to be convinced that the time and pain spent on getting used to a new layout would actually be worth it in the long run.
I’ve been using Dvorak since the late 90’s. When I type on a qwerty keyboard, it feels like my fingers have to fly all over the place to hit all the keys.
With that said, Dvorak has a few gremlins. The most annoying are the y/f keys where I have to shift my hands slightly to hit those keys. The copy/paste ctrl-c and ctrl-v keyboard shortcuts are also a lot less convenient but I just deal with it. It’s also annoying having to rebind keys in pretty much every keyboard-heavy game.
I’ve never really thought of Colemak as a big enough improvement over Dvorak to relearn how to type on that layout, though if you’re looking to switch from qwerty it may be worth considering. The Workman layout seems interesting.
The copy/paste ctrl-c and ctrl-v keyboard shortcuts are also a lot less convenient but I just deal with it.
Thankfully, these were only shifted one to the right in Workman.
It’s also annoying having to rebind keys in pretty much every keyboard-heavy game.
Yeah I’ve gotten used to that. I sometimes will do a software switch in the OS back to QWERTY if I’m playing games (my layout is determined by the OS setting rather than hardware) so that I don’t have to rebind, but it doesn’t always seem to work. At the very least, I don’t think you can do a layout switch while the game is running. Some games also appear to intercept raw keyboard codes rather than what’s being sent by the OS so they ignore the software keyboard layout anyways.
Dvorak. Have been for years. Way less work to type the same speed as QWERTY.
Dvorak with some custom bindings for German diacritics and the Euro symbol, e.g. AltGr+a gives me ä.
Furthermore, my layout behaves like QWERTY when I told down Ctrl, so that shortcuts like Ctrl+C are still easy to press.
Switching to Dvorak immediately removed any pain I had started experiencing more and more often typing with QWERTY. In the long run it also improved my typing speed. I can usually achieve between 130 and 140.
Nice there is a great keyboard layout creator for windows.
If you use linux do you mind sharing your custom layout and how you did it?
On Windows it’s pretty easy. On Linux I found some shady kernel monkey patch for the Ctrl feature, but I don’t remember where.
Unfortunate :/
And the custom Dvorak layout with the umlauts on linux?
I live in a qwertz ISO layout country, but I use qwerty ANSI layout keyboards because I find that text editing is better with them. Makes finding a laptop pretty hard though.
If you have the layout memorized, then what’s physically shown on the keys doesn’t really matter — usually switching the keyboard layout in the OS is pretty easy.
I got lucky that an american friend who brought a Thinkpad from the states gifted that to me. But in general it’s not a bad option to buy used thinkpads and just replacing the keyboard. Still a bit more expensive than if that was a common option, though, of course.
