Comments for Who Says Penguins Can't Fly?

Comment on Dvorak – Two years later, was it worth it? by Hans

Hans — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:15:27 +0000

Thanks for sharing your experiences Joel and Ross!

Comment on Dvorak – Two years later, was it worth it? by Ross

Ross — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:52:11 +0000

Excellent article. I began my “Project Dvorak” a few months ago to see if I could become proficient with two layouts and have been using Typing Instructor Platinum to learn Dvorak with an average of about 15 minutes per day. It has extended the learning time, but I felt the repetitive sequences would help build a strong foundation as had been the case when I began teaching myself to touch-type in the late 70s or early 80s.

Using a mixture of cases, characters, numbers, and symbols, I type about 80 wpm with the QWERTY layout. My goal this year is to achieve at least 3/4 of that speed in Dvorak and I hope to surpass it next year. I now know the layout with the exception of about half a dozen symbols (which I know placement of, but am not yet practiced and speedy). The threshold I have used in the typing software for advancement is 35 wpm. (Originally, I tried 45 but quickly realized this was not realistic at the outset and throttled it down.) In most cases, I could hit 30 wpm after learning a few more keys in just one session, but those next 5 wpm sometimes took several days or longer providing the repetition and practice needed. With letters only, I’m now averaging over 40 wpm, again with only about 15 minutes a day.

I am just now beginning the next phase of learning as I become practiced in the final few symbols (that differ in layout from qwerty), and am starting to type an hour or two for general purpose using dvorak for some applications and qwerty for other applications. For example, I might type a chat in a window mapped to dvorak and enter search terms on the browser using the conventional layout. As I am only two days into this phase, I do often find I’ll get confused between layouts…I’ll try to hit “r” in qwerty and I keep tapping its dvorak location…then a few nearby locations as I question, “Where’d the qwerty R go?” I’ll also often hit j for h and h for j (more commonly mistaken on qwerty). It’s rather fascinating, actually, as I can feel my brain reprogramming for the two layouts and learning how to switch between them.

With this next phase, I would expect my speed to begin to pick up more quickly over the next few weeks, so I’ll leave a follow-up in the near future. I am very curious to see if and when I get to the point of matching or exceeding my qwerty speed…hoping to reach 90 – 100 eventually but it will certainly take time for the brain to fully transition.

Other than occasional qwerty confusion (which I believe has more to do with the threshold of learning I am currently crossing), my qwerty speed appears not to be impacted, either favorably or adversely.

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by Hans

Hans — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:45:51 +0000

@kholis: You can try this: in ~/.kde4/share/config/oxygenrc (or ~/.kde/... depending on your distro), under the [Style] section, set

MnemonicsMode=MN_AUTO

MnemonicsMode=MN_NEVER

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by kholis

kholis — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:36:14 +0000

How to do this on non KDE desktop without installing systemsettings? Is there any text configuration or command to do this?

Thanks

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by maroony

maroony — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:50:47 +0000

That’s awesome! I love KDE!

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by Hans

Hans — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:08:17 +0000

@renoX:
So you are saying that keyboard accelerators are discoverable because some letters are underlined? If that’s the case, I disagree – it’s quite a far step from “some letters are underlined” to “I can press Alt+ to activate that element!”.

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by renoX

renoX — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:43:21 +0000

I disagree that this should be the default as it is not discoverable unless the user press the “Alt” key randomly which is quite rare.

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by K

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:36:29 +0000

This should definitely be default. A user who does not know about the shortcuts won’t understand why some letters are underlined. It just adds clutter to the interface. Once you actively decide to use shortcuts, you can switch the feature on.

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 « Who Says Penguins … | Linux Blog

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:28:09 +0000

[...] this article: One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 « Who Says Penguins … This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged appear-more, awesome, awesome-feature, default, [...]

Comment on One of my favorite features in KDE SC 4.8 by Hans

Hans — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:10:52 +0000

@.bla and .alb:
Not sure what you mean, do you find it annoying when keyboard accelerators are shown or hidden? In the newer Windows versions I know that they are hidden unless you hold down the Alt key.

@Sven:
And it’s not only in KDE applications, keyboard accelerators is a common feature in software user interfaces (they’re also called mnemonics).

Don’t worry though, you’re not alone in not knowing about them; actually, I think the majority of computer users don’t.

@Konstantinos Smanis:
Nice to know! I’m glad I stumbled upon it now instead of, say, in KDE SC 5.4.

@elpinguinotolkiano:
Cool, QtCurve is a very nice up-to-date style with many configuration options so I’m not surprised.

@BartOtten:
Agreed. Actually I don’t know what the default is since I, like most people probably, have kept my configuration since the first 4.x version I used. But it’s likely that the default is to always show them.