What are /r/Colemak's favorite Products & Services?

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Good to here. Yeah I think the best bet for Japanese would be to hop online and buy a japanese keycap set and use operating system multi-language support. This is what I used for Colemak before I had a programmable keyboard where I could have a hardware implementation of my keysets.

On Windows, you can add a language and it will let you quickswap with Win + spacebar. It wouldn't be as fast as a layer switch with a decent programmable keyboard but it would get the job done. The OS would be in qwerty but the keyboard could be set to a Colemak layout. The keycaps could be put on in a Colemak layout as well so you could just look down when needed. Something like that might work.

If you workout a solution make sure to share it here ya?

This makes since. If you're using the two keyboard layouts in different ways, they are probably stored in different parts of the brain. For example, I use MessageEase on my phone, and that obviously hasn't hampered my ability to type on qwerty keyboards.

It's probably a bit pricer than you want, but a simple solution if you're not a mechanical keyboard enthusiast is the $169 Kinesis Freestyle Pro. It's pretty easy to use, the software is decent, and the brown switches are run-of-the-mill good enough for most people. Make sure you get the Pro or Edge, as the other cheaper Kinesis keyboards aren't programmable. If you want a nicer programmable keyboard, you will absolutely find one for just a bit more $$ than that - but this one is pretty easy for newbies to get started with, and doesn't change the whole world on you by going full ortho-linear. If you want to take your chances with long shipping times, cheap parts, and getting caught up in customs - you can go cheaper by searching for "QMK Programmable Keyboards", but I don't recommend it.

One other simple avenue is you can try to see if you can get away with dropping the AutoHotKey standalone executable on your box. AHK with a colemak script is how I run Colemak on my servers without running afoul of corporate IT.

I'm hoping that I'll be decently comfortable with Colemak by delivery of the ergo so I won't be fighting two platform shifts.

I'll look further into home-row mods but I might be able to get away with just the thumb cluster on the ergo.

Nail polish I can't imagine lasting more than a month. I might get some purpose built dots(amazon link). Or an entire keycap set if I'm not satisfied with the locator dots (or want a pretty design).

I second those who say it's not worth changing on your phone: the muscle memory is different and it doesn't affect your learning ability.

If you want to connect a physical keyboard to your phone and use Colemak-DH, you need this app.

i3, since you mentioned, has the option of binding to keycodes instead of keysyms, for this exact same reason (docs).

>A keyboard binding makes i3 execute a command (see below) upon pressing a specific key. i3 allows you to bind either on keycodes or on keysyms (you can also mix your bindings, though i3 will not protect you from overlapping ones).
A keysym (key symbol) is a description for a specific symbol, like "a" or "b", but also more strange ones like "underscore" instead of "_". These are the ones you use in Xmodmap to remap your keys. To get the current mapping of your keys, use xmodmap -pke. To interactively enter a key and see what keysym it is configured to, use xev.
Keycodes do not need to have a symbol assigned (handy for custom vendor hotkeys on some notebooks) and they will not change their meaning as you switch to a different keyboard layout (when using xmodmap).
My recommendation is: If you often switch keyboard layouts but you want to keep your bindings in the same physical location on the keyboard, use keycodes. If you don’t switch layouts, and want a clean and simple config file, use keysyms.

It was some DSA set from Amazon. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08JHS2VNJ/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_1XR51NTQF4DC0CC42SN6

Nothing fancy outside the Japanese characters, which I ended up really liking while typing. I don't know why.

A programmable SK68 is all of £66 with hotswappable optical switches.
Or £77 for the spilt spacebar and traditional hotswappable mechanical switches.

Oh, yeah, I know how that feels. I live in Europe. You don't want to guess how much I spent on customs and taxes for my keycaps.

If you are generally happy with the OEM profile, with something like this https://www.amazon.com/Profile-Keycaps-Switches-Mechanical-Keyboard/dp/B06XKFPYZB/ you could replace all the alphas, or even all of your keys. I don't think it'll get much cheaper than that.

Give messagease a try. It is a completely different approach to typing on touch screen mobile devices. There is a really neat game you can get to help learn it as well. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/messagease-keyboard/id990325092 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exideas.mekb&hl=en_US

I was able to pollute my office with these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076Q7SYC3/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_TBhXCb40PR2D8

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Pretty cheap in $80-$100 range (the prices vary and change from time to time).

The layouts are pre-programmed and switchable with a simple key combo, cheat sheet with shortcuts is included.

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Trackman-Marble-Four-Button-Programmable/dp/B001F42MKG

My favorite. I've been using them forever, plonk one down on the left and use whatever feels good at that point in time.

COLEMAK STICKER FOR KEYBOARD WITH YELLOW LETTERING TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND

But I would recommend to learn touch typing and do not attach Colemak legend to the keyboard. Colemak is designed for touch typing, when hunt and peck it is not better than qwerty.

> Massdrop has an online configurator which will serve most of your purposes, but if you want to do anything fancy with layering or whatever, you will need to know enough about programming to hack the firmware yourself.

How have you hacked the firmware? I've considered making a simplified layer control scheme -- I think the layer stack is confusing for extremely little benefit, and a more "television channel-like" control scheme would be better.

And I agree with you about the SMD diodes being a pain. I wouldn't say they require "extreme dexterity" -- if you get a head-mounted magnifier (with an LED -- it's key for seeing the lines on the diodes), and some tweezers, it's just painstaking work, not impossible.