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by underyx 2213 days ago
> Also, most common problems were caused by placement of special keys (shift, ctrl, backspace, enter) and that's not something colemak, dvorak or their friends seem to be addressing.

You're still mostly right, but Colemak does actually move Backspace to the Caps Lock key, which is a change I'd recommend to every single person who types on a computer keyboard.
3 comments
nvarsj 2213 days ago
I'm not convinced by that. I use thumb clusters now, but on a normal keyboard I would always move my whole hand and hit backspace with my right ring finger. Similarly with modifiers I would either karate chop or move my hand. Using pinky should be avoided if possible. Similarly the common recommendation to bind caps lock to control is the worst possible thing for RSI.
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WorldMaker 2212 days ago
> I would always move my whole hand and hit backspace with my right ring finger.

My understanding is that (maybe non-intuitively) whole hand movements are more likely to cause wrist-related RSI than single finger travels. (Single finger travels are more likely to create knuckle RSIs, certainly.) The missing letter in RSI is sometimes "movement" as it is stress from repetitive movements.

Anecdotally, the biggest mistake and the source of most of my pain from the way I had learned QWERTY was a lot of whole hand movements, and reducing those was a very clear and specific goal for me when I relearned touch typing (on Colemak).

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chupasaurus 2212 days ago
I'm fine using pinky because I'm a guitar player who struggled with that and fixed it by training for more than a year.
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gindely 2212 days ago
Hm, as a vi user i have escape there. so if i want to delete something without stretching too much, it's left thumb stretch back one left index stretch down out one (i'm on dvorak too). But since i'm also a kinesis user, i have backspace under my (right) thumb.
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V-2 2213 days ago
This. This idea is exactly something I picked up from Colemak (while didn't really enjoy the entire layout). The ability to just press ctrl + capslock (remapped to backspace now) to delete the whole last word with a single hand is by itself a great perk.
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