#Alternate keyboard layout how to
#Alternate keyboard layout free

Improvement was noticeable in both languages, English and Polish. All of it is made by placing the most common letter on middle row – home row, where our fingers should be placed at starting position. QWERTY vs Colemak: VerdictĮxperiment which we just made clearly show that alternate layout like Colemak significantly reduces finger travel distance during typing in comparison to QWERTY.

All of this reduces travel distance which our fingers needs to make during typing. On second one, all apart from 2 letters marked with bright colors is placed on middle row. Nevertheless, when we put QWERTY and Colemak side by side, the difference is being enormous. It shouldn’t be surprise because as it was mentioned, these layouts wasn’t designed for Polish. Unfortunately, heat map for Colemak in Polish is not so ideal like it was in English language. Only one letter – A, is placed on home row. Most of the letters marked with bright colors is placed on upper and bottom row. Heat map for QWERTY in case of Polish language like for English we can see big difference. Text: Przełączniki mechaniczne - Czerwony, niebieski, brązowy.It’s time for second round, with text translated into Polish. Tu’s sum up… All most used letters are placed on middle row – home row. When it comes to Colemak you can have the feeling that data was prepared especially for this test to prove something, but it isn’t. To sum up it quickly, most used keys are placed all over the keyboard. In QWERTY 4 most used letters are placed on upper row, 2 on middle and one on bottom one. Text: Mechanical switches - Red, blue, brown.Apart from that, I translated it into Polish, so we can make comparison of the same text (as good as translation is) in two languages. Why? This is random text, so it wasn’t prepared for any test.

As given text I choose my blog post Mechanical switches - Red, blue, brown. Second round will be focused on Polish language. Tool can be found at Īt first, round, let’s test these keyboard layouts in the language for which they were designed – English. Test will be done using specialised tool which generates heat map based on given text and keyboard layout. This is the same idea as with a thermal imaging camera, if the image is more red than more hot it is. The idea of this map is to mark with much brighter red color if key is more used. To compare QWERTY and Colemak we visualise these layouts with so-called heat maps. It this test should bring some values, it’s needed to make some assumptions. So let’s check Colemak vs QWERTY in real life example. Sometimes, theory goes in one direction and reality in another. What in your opinion is more comfortable, 27.17% or 55% on home row? Colemak vs QWERTY: Comparison in real life What means that in average during writing only each four letter is placed on home row. When count this percentage values together, we get 27.17%. With blue color are marked letters from QWERTY home row.

#Alternate keyboard layout how to

How to check performance of keyboard layout for Polish language? I have one idea, so please read carefully the rest of the article. QWERTY and PolishĪs I mentioned in previous paragraph, QWERTY was created for English, how it will go with my native language, which is Polish? The answer is, unfortunately, we do not know… Polish bigrams diffs from English ones – that’s obvious. One more thing, you need to be aware that QWERTY was designed for English language, where most popular bigrams which should be handled by QWERTY are: th, he, in, en, nt, re, er, an, ti, es. Solution is based on delay next press of a key by assigning it to the same finger or moving away from nearby of just pressed key. QWERTY should fix drawbacks of typewriters, which used to stuck when two letters one next to another were quickly pressed. What’s more important, it was designed with limits of that times. A keyboard layout called QWERTY was designed in 1873 to be used on typewriters. However, I would like to write most important things once again.

#Alternate keyboard layout free

About QWERTY layout itself, how and why it was invented I wrote at blog post: Why your standard Qwerty keyboard might not be right for you, feel free to read it.