Nobody can use my machines. My girlfriend already knows to Ctrl-Shift to change keyboard layouts, but that's on my PC where Windows is in English. On my laptop with Windows in Spanish it's Alt-Shift. Even I get confused sometimes.
Most games I play don't recognize layouts, so WASD doesn't work. I have to Ctrl-Shift before launching a game. And that's on Windows 8 that has per-session layout. Windows 7 is per window layout so if Ctrl-Shift doesn't work inside the game I have to manually configure keyboard.
Copy Cut Paste become Ctrl I, Ctrl B and Ctrl . I think this is not a problem in Colemak.
My first language is Spanish. After learning Dvorak I no longer use accents or ñ (just Alt-164'd that one) so it's a pain when I type something more or less official that can't have spelling errors.
After that rant, I'm still relatively happy with Dvorak. At least I have something to say on job interviews.
This could easily been added to dvorak in much the same way. The hard part is getting the different drivers to support it.
As for nobody using my machines, I see that as a plus :)
That being said, I can never apply to grad school anymore because I can no longer type in qwerty and won't be able to take the way portion of those electronic tests very well. (And that would affect my performance in other sections)
So I've just started getting used to using the same keybindings just in a different spot. So far it's not too bad. Like anything, you get used to it.
Other than that, I did not configure any other vim keys.
Overall, I love colemak and couldn't imagine going back to qwerty. I've internalised it and find it natural to type with and I'm still often amazed at how much I can type with the home row and I love how common key combos just roll off the fingers (ie they use keys that are right next to each other or otherwise really really easy to type in combination).
I dunno if I'm really much faster. Probably not, but my accuracy has improved and I find it much more comfortable for long periods of typing.
hjkl is awkward: only h stays the same, j moves down but is on the upper row, k moves up but is on the lower row, l is on the upper row (though you still have space)
You can't use 'jj' for entering normal mode from insert mode anymore. 'nn' (what is at the same position as qwerty 'jj') is quite common when typing stuff, similar for all other keys you have your fingers on (maybe not 'ii'). So I settled for 'hh'
The other stuff isn't really an issue in vim.
I don't have problems with anything else really. Most standard gui shortcuts remain unchanged
http://plover.stenoknight.com/
Here's a video by the stenographer half of the duo that started the project:
EDIT: Also, most people would probably be better served doing something about the time they spend moving their right hand between keyboard and mouse than increasing their typing speed.
I'm even using Colemak on Android.
http://colemak.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#Is_Colemak_suita...
The biggest thing I notice when going back to qwerty is how horrendously uncomfortable it is. I feel like I'm doing contortionist exercises with my fingers, and my wrists start aching very quickly. Going back to dvorak after that is like switching to the "walk" section of a walk/run interval training session.
I agree with kingmanaz that words just roll off your fingers. Dvorak is like cooking in a kitchen where everything you need is in just the right spot and you can grab it without moving, versus qwerty where everything is over the place and the spices are opposite the stove. You can still cook, and even do it quickly if you know where everything is, but you wind up expending so much more energy moving around.
I did have problems at work when co-workers needed to use my keyboard to do something on my machine. The universal reaction is "what's wrong with your keyboard", sometimes with gratuitous profanity thrown in. Maybe 10% of people realise that it's dvorak without me having to explain. A handful try to hunt-and-peck before giving up and making me do it. One person surprised me by knowing dvorak as well. So, I had work buy me a hardware-switchable dvorak keyboard that has double-labelled keycaps (qwerty in small blue letters). That's solved the problem.
Gaining dvorak fluency in the first place took me about 3 weeks of inability to type, which was hell on a shy geeky 16-year-old whose main social interaction was IRC channels.
The one place I still use qwerty is on my phone. Dvorak is very poorly suited to thumb typing because it breaks autocorrect. Most of the time when you mistype a word, it's still a valid English word, because all the common letters are next to each other.
For heavy vim/emacs (I use evil/emacs) making sure your esc/meta/control keys are large and cleanly accessible is probably a better investment. I resisted even remapping capslock for years but now I'm even working on using control-[ instead of esc (it's universal but may not be the optimum trade for the esc).
Thanks though, I'll put this away for later.
My first impression when revisiting qwerty is a revulsion at the placement of the "t". What a horrible location for such an oft used key. However, most qwerty users will have a similar response when typing "ls -l" on dvorak. Actually, a lot of unix commands were clearly written with qwerty in mind, their letters centering on qwerty's home row. The unix monikers get easier with repetition for dvorak typists, but dvorak's true power comes in writing English, which in my case is most of my typing. Vim works well with either layout, luckily. Most of the programming languages I use - SQL, golang, python, and c# - seem about the same in either layout.
Once you become fluent with dvorak it "rolls" off your fingers. You'll know what I mean once you're there. "The", "another", "masticate", "friend", and most other words with vowels and common consonants spend most of their typed lives on the home row. Both hands share evenly in typing. The common punctuation and quotes are right where you need them.
If you use RDP for most of your remote work the transition is surprisingly easy. Switching between layouts is simple in Windows and Unix. Hell, even my copy of Amiga 3.1 supports dvorak out of the box.
Some here seem to switch their keycaps to a dvorak arrangement. I did this in the past with my Model M but eventually set it back to querty. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I need to look at the keyboard now to type qwerty, thus having the keycaps set to querty serves as a convenient reminder. When typing dvorak I never look down.
"Want to help someone out? She will probably use a Qwerty layout."
I'm not perfect and guilty as well mistakenly defaulting to a user on the internet as a male. Let's try to welcome both genders equally :)
> After little more than a week, I got to a point where I started to make lots of mistakes typing Qwerty, but I could not type proper Colemak either. This was something I had not anticipated: I expected to learn Colemak in addition to Qwerty, not instead of it!
I felt the same way! Eventually I was 85% proficient at both. Finally, I left for a job where my machine is mine, so I’m 100% Dvorak and my WPM and accuracy has dramatically increased. Unfortunately, those times I -have- had to type in QWERTY, I find myself looking at the keyboard. (I wish there was some form of Dvorak + Kana keyboards for JP).
One upshot to this is that I learned Vim AFTER Dvorak. I’ve never had to worry about hjkl not being on the home row; they never have been for me! Big plus.
Also, I’ve found that most games don’t care about your input language, they tend to key off of the key signal so traditional wasd keys still function as expected.
One thing I noticed since then is that as a programmer typing speed or touch typing is not so important. On the command line I have tab completion, and in my IDE I also have the equivalent. It rarely takes more than three keyboard strokes before I can get a sensible list to choose from. Its a lot more efficient than tying top learn to touch type.
