When you are drilling new keys but you absolutely do not want to look at the layout map that shows the keys you are supposed to know already.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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It is not so much about relative distance to the home position. The more important measure is if there are lots of bigrams to be pressed by the middle finger on the same hand right next to the index key -- it is believed that a lateral stretch, meaning having to press a key on the central index columns, right next to another key on the same hand middle finger column (e.g., a qwerty 'gd'), is more uncomfortable than if the index key is on the home column (a qwerty 'vd'). This is the logic behind the dh mod.
Personally I think both 'd' and 'h' are of too high a frequency to be placed on the index finger non-home position, so neither the vanilla nor the dh variant of colemak is good in that regard.
d is the 11th most frequent letter [1], so there are many other letters vying for the 8 main home row positions. However h is 9th, it's a good candidate for a better position, since it occurs in the two most frequent bigrams (th and he).
Since backspace is used far less than frequent letters by competent typists and enter is also relatively infrequent, it is probably best to put something like e on the thumb cluster, so that h can be on the home row.
[1] http://norvig.com/mayzner.html
Agree on both accounts. I have 'd' on top row mid finger, right above 'h' on home row mid finger. 'e' on vowel hand thumb.
The point about frequency of 'd' being too high is with respect to having it on the index bottom row (as in the dh variant), because of the curling gesture it incurs. The index finger is tricky because being a long finger, it is comparatively better to extend up than to curl down (assuming your wrist is neutral or slightly raised), but top row index position will usually find bigrams with mid finger home row, making it a scissor (qwerty 'dr') and uncomfortable. Given it's reign over 6 keys, it is better suited for less-frequent letters on the non-home positions. 'd' would be borderline acceptable in terms of frequency, and for reducing incessant curling, inner column center row (qwerty 'g') is a better placement -- this is what dvorak, maltron, and rsthd opted for (but keep in mind this makes it more prone to the lateral stretch problem). But the better choices are from the 'mfpgwybv' pack, and perhaps 'c' to a lesser degree due to its frequency.
Ah, thanks, that makes sense. I guess I have that issue less, since I use a contoured keyboard and curling the index/middle fingers is pretty comfortable.
Contour definitely helps! I've also seen people resting not exactly on the home row but slightly shifted upward/downward depending on the layout.