I’ve decided to jump back into learning a new layout, specifically semimak JQ, from Dvorak. I’ve heard that as long as I practice both I should be able to maintain Dvorak while I learn semimak.
I was wondering if people here had any experience learning new layouts could share some insight for that?
Any other tips would be very appreciated. I’m sitting at somewhere around 26wpm on semimak atm, and 130-140 on Dvorak
I use many layouts and am totally comfortable switching between them. I primarily use Colemak-dh and QWERTY and each of my boards have a slightly different layers keymap.
You’d be surprised how flexible the brain is. I was able to do this after 25+ years of only QWERTY.
That’s excellent news for me! :)
Do you mind me asking what your typing speed is on your two main layouts?
I learned Dvorak for a while but wasn’t always at my home keyboard so spent a lot of time with qwerty still. My typing speed was comparable on the two after a month or two… around 80wpm transcribing unfamiliar English language content or 100wpm if I know the text well enough to avoid getting crossed up periodically. The main drawback to switching around was that sometimes I’d sit down at a new keyboard and bang my way halfway through a sentence in the wrong layout and have to start over after resetting my brain.
Fwiw, I ended up dropping Dvorak after a year or three, though. It wasn’t any better than qwerty for code with lots of special characters and I realized that I type enough different kinds of content that I wasn’t interested in chasing ever more exotic layouts that optimize for a particular distribution of keys.
Makes sense that you would accidentally default the wrong one. Happens with speaking multiple languages too :P
I actually like Dvorak for programming but at this point I’m on a small board so all the special characters are in weird spota compared to default Dvorak. I also love doing typing tests where a good layout is more noticeable. Plus like I said in another reply, it’s mostly just for fun
Honestly, I don’t do typing tests (I have RSI so I think it’s a waste of precious finger energy). I can confidently say that I can type faster than I think in both layouts. I am a software developer so I really only need to type as fast as I can code.
I find it easier to maintain two layouts (QWERTY and Colemak DH) if I use them on physically different keyboards. QWERTY on standard row-staggered, Colemak on ergo keyboards. When I was mixing both layouts on standard keyboards, I found it harder to switch and made more mistakes.
That makes sense. I’m only working on 1 keyboard so I don’t have an option to physically differentiate them sadly
I went from ~70wpm on a QWERTY Model M to ~30wpm standard Planck in about 1 month. It’s been over one year now, and I switch between the two seemlessly, average 80-90wpm on a good day.
I know you asked layout (keymap) and not layout (key position/count) but it’s very similar to relearn muscle memory.
I never really did typing games/practice. My job is on a computer so… 7ish hours a day? That’s my only insight, just stick to it.
Thanks for the input! I actually just switched from a 60% row stagger board to a split ortho. So definitely some getting used to to be had there.
I’ll be sure to stick to it and get good practice in
from there you should be fine, just need to practice more for speed. i have had a few layouts learned to about 40-90wpm on a regular keyboard, two on a characorder to 40-60wpm, and can fingerspell 20-25wpm w/ steno. learning a new layout is not that bad, it just feels weird for about a week, and you need to put in 15-20 hours on a typing site/app, practice everyday, and sleep on it. it one of those things where you don’t see the gains until the next day or two. the charachorder took a little longer at first, but that was because you also have to learn the charachorder too. at 25 wpm you would be mostly building speed which is layout independent.
That’s good insight. Thank you. Also had me look up the characorder. It looks like it would be fun to use! Never heard of it before
I assume you learned Dvorak from some other layout in the past. How did you do that?
When I learned Colemak from QWERTY I just practiced on a typing website every day for 30 minutes a day. I’d say I was comfortable after about a month of practicing.
I learned from qwerty but I went cold turkey and didn’t touch qwerty at all when learning Dvorak. Plus I’ve only done one switch, so I’m sure there are some things I hadn’t thought to do.
Did you bother keeping up with qwerty or did you drop it after the month of using colemak?
Thanks for your response btw
I’ve dropped qwerty from my regular use after learning colemak but I can still type just fine on qwerty.
After learning Dvorak, why are you switching to another? Just for fun?
Mostly just for fun. Dvorak also has some issues, as any layout will, but some of them are a little unfun to deal with. If I end up not liking semimak I’ll probbaly just drop the whole idea. Just wanna see if something else is out there that works a bit better for me, and if not then I’ll be happy to just stick with Dvorak
I typed dvorak at about the same speed as you, and got up to 110~120 on semimak when I tested it, before moving on. I have no doubt I could have gone faster by keeping at it (my problem was with the stuffy feeling of the 3-finger vowel cluster), so I think you’ll have no problem exceeding your dvorak speed. During my test drive, I was able to switch back to fluent dvorak typing after perhaps an hour or two of acclimatization (fwiw, I mirrored the left/right hands on semimak, which eased the learning, but may have made frequent switch more difficult.) A different physical keyboard may help: I did find it easier to switch back on my Microsoft Natural, which is what I used for years with dvorak.
Wow that’s very good news for me lol. I appreciate your feedback. I’ve been doing a bit of practice daily and I’ve gotten up to 30wpm semimak while roughly maintaining Dvorak. I can see how the vowel cluster could feel a bit bad to use but I’m liking it so far. Too early to tell for sure though whether I will want to stick with it indefinitely.
Are you still using Dvorak now? If not what layout are you using that you like? Semimak seemed appealing for the extremely low movement but there are of course a bunch of layouts out there so I would love to hear what you’re using as a former (present?) Dvorak user
Nowadays I’m mostly using a layout that I made based on the original Maltron layout as designed by Lillian Malt (where you put ‘e’ on a thumb key, and ‘s’ on the vowel hand index home position) and only fall back to dvorak as a last resort (travel on a laptop etc.) It’s more about reducing the use of bottom row mid/ring/pinkies than speed or other related statistics (the theory is that by restricting them to the top two rows, they stay longer in their more natural curvature, thereby reducing tendon stress). With ‘e’ on a thumb, you avoid the double stacking of the vowel cluster of most modern layouts, but still have the vowel hand index finger freed up for consonants, which then makes it easier to only have infrequent letters on non-index bottom row.
Oh interesting. I’ve seen some layouts with keys on thumbs but I’m not really super into the idea for portability reasons, even though realistically it’s not like I’ll be able to use semimak on someone else’s computer anyway.
Maybe it’s something I’ll give a shot later down the road, but I’ll do semimak for now at least
Semimak is an excellent layout, have fun switching!
It’s been a challenge so far. I’m on day 4 sitting at 30-35 wpm lol. Big downgrade in speed so far