Colemak keyboard

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Aaron Doucette <instantkamera-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| Cherry browns are good switches, but it's not as though the mech options
| end there. What didn't you like about them specifically?

I think that I don't need "clicky" sound but do want the feel of a
keystroke registering ("tactile").  So, going through the Cherry MX
line, brown and clear seem to be it.  I've not seen a clear.

When I tried a brown keyboard in NCIX, I didn't have time to "live"
with it.  That's why it really isn't a fair test.  The tactile
feedback seemed a bit light and I wasn't sure that it directly
corresponded with signalling (the diagrams suggest that it does not).

My current ordinary PC keyboard seems fine / good enough.  It is a
Compaq, at least a decade old, selected as best among ~20 old
keyboards I had laying about when my previous keyboard broke a few
years ago.

My typing habits are old.  I learned on a mechanical keyboard, part of
a mechanical typewriter (Underwood, I think).  I touch type
ideosyncratically.  For example, I almost never use the right shift
key since that was "alpha" shift on the IBM 026 and 029 (punchchard)
keypunches that I spent a formative decade using.

There are only a few mainstream keyboards that I strongly dislike.
One is on my Acer One 522 netbook -- the keys wobble laterally,
tipping slightly!  (On paper, it is an outstanding netbook but it also
has a noisy fan that runs too often and the battery life isn't good
enough.  Still, it's cute.)

| I have everything
| from buckling spring to topre and they all have their strengths and
| weaknesses. The only switches I personally can't stand are linear, like
| cherry blacks (bigger with the gaming crowd).

The first linear keyboard that I had was a Hall Effect keyboard that
I bought from Active Surplus in the 1970's.  It was considered a
high-end wonder of technology (no electrical/electronic mechanism
subjected to wear).  But it didn't feel good to me.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists