Funny enough I use Colemak with my ergonomic (split, columnar stagger) keyboards only, and qwerty on mobile (and on my laptop since it has qwerty keyboard labels).
I recommend, in order of increasing effort:
- briefly learn touch typing but then develop your own style with a more relaxed wrist position that de-emphasizes excessive hand movement, uncomfortable movements and crazy pinky stretches
- get a columnar stagger, split keyboard
- learn colemak (I like Colemak DH)
What made you pick Colemak over Dvorak? I am not criticizing your choice, just curious. I chose Dvorak because I found the vowels on the home row cut my hand movement a lot. I fully agree with you on the pinky stretches, that’s my worst movement, which I triage by turning on KDE’s “Caps Lock is another backspace” option.
Dvorak was designed a long time ago for typewriters, i.e. it tries to alternate hand movements, which some people like but many find it makes them slower.
Colemak is meant to be closer to qwerty and was designed for computer keyboards.
Then again I’m sure Dvorak is already miles better than qwerty and the differencesneith Colemak are minor. I think the reason I chose it originally was because of some youtube video but I don’t remember what it was called.
Also I really like the Colemal DH mod.
