Writing Rust in Dvorak on an EZ Ergo for a living is next-level techno-paradise to many a nerd. Kudos for that!
Also, if by any chance you feel like sharing details about how, and in which order you made these transitions; things you wish you knew before trying... please don't hesitate :)
I used Colemak (which is similar to Dvorak) and I would really recommend learning it if you don't already touch type. It does involve a little bit of pain at first and you'll feel really tempted to go back but in a week I was already fast enough to do useful work. I'm not a speed demon by any means, I type at the same speed I did before (60 wpm) except now I don't need to look at the keyboard which is very convenient in ways I didn't realize would be possible before. For example now it's much easier for me to take notes in a meeting or class because I can keep my eyes on the subject.
The worst part was having to relearn keyboard shortcuts, so I don't know if I'd recommend it to an emacs or vim user.
Thanks a lot! I've searched a bit based on what you said and sort of found a point of entry into Colemak. It's very enticing. I'm not a touch typist yet (use all fingers but quite inconsistently I suppose, yet 'fast enough' for me and without looking).
Would it be sensible to make such a 'dramatic' layout change at the same time as the switch to a split ortholinear such as the EZ? It seems more straightforward to do it all at once, but also taking quite the tall order at once — ortho + colemak + strict touch typing.
I think it would be sensible to make all the changes together.
If you already type e.g. T with the wrong hand, then it's annoying to start typing it with the correct hand (because it's on the other side of the split), then learn a new location with a new layout.
(Do also consider Dvorak. The difference is not really worth an argument, but at least with a programmable mechanical keyboard one of the main advantages -- that Control Z/X/C/V remain in place -- can be kept with Dvorak with a small adjustment to the layout. I've never tried Colemak, but I do like the hand alternation design of Dvorak, and I think I would miss it.)
Thanks for the advice/perspective; it definitely helped me decide how to proceed.
I'll definitely make all changes at once, then. I'll experiment with both Dvorak and Colemak for the letter keys.
Shorcuts are not much of a problem for me, extensive MMO raid gaming in my teen-20's made sure of that.
I miss AutoHotKey (AHK, windows program) very much, haven't found anything to remap keyboard inputs so extensively and granularly on Linux. KDE helps a lot, but nowhere near enough for my taste. I'm very excited for the EZ Oryx firmware tool in that regard, as it may replace AHK (and whatever it can't do yet, I can probably program, which is sweet).
The one thing I wonder about as a colemak user is should I have opted for a fully optimised layout instead? Having the common keys stay the same as qwerty was convenient while learning colemak but really isn’t necessary after a few weeks. I don’t regret choosing colemak though because it’s got good OS support (cones built in with Linux and OSX) while the fully optimised layouts typically have to be manually installed. I’ve been a happy colemak user for about 8 years now and couldn’t imagine still using qwerty.
I’m an unhappy vim Colemak user. I remapped HJKL to NEIO, which implied some other changes (particularly needing to find new keys for N and I), and now I never know what keys to press because I can’t keep track of whether I’m using a local vim with all my settings. Touch typing on Qwerty and Colemak is no problem, but changing my vim habits is much more difficult, I suppose because I don’t think as much about the letters when I’m not using them to spell out words.
I experimented with changing the config so that the vim keys remain in the same physical qwerty locations and I suppose if you have super strong muscle memory for vim commands it probably makes sense to do that, but I didn’t so ultimately decided not to remap keys. Yes my hjkl are in weird locations, but I actually got used to it quit quickly (and on my kinesis advantage, I just use the cursor keys since their in reach).
Used to map navigation to AltGr+u/n/e/i (for up down left right), so qwerty i/k/j/l which was a suoer comfortable way for me to navigate (left thumb on AltGr and then wasd style cursors) but since I got the kinesis keyboard, I haven’t bothered. I do still use windows key + unei for navigating in i3
Non-Qwerty layouts are probably much better for Emacs users, at least if they know the somewhat dated names for the commands: most of the letters are chosen (if at all) for their initial, rather than their position.
Moving the cursor Forward, Backward, Previous line, Next line is Ctrl+F/B/P/N, which doesn't involve learning anything new when changing layouts. "Paste" is actually "yank", so that's Ctrl+Y.
Also, if by any chance you feel like sharing details about how, and in which order you made these transitions; things you wish you knew before trying... please don't hesitate :)