Colemak

Colemak (pronounced /'ko:lmæk/) is a computer keyboard layout designed by Shai Coleman as an alternative to the standard QWERTY layout. It is designed to be more ergonomic than other layouts and easier to learn than the Dvorak layout for a typist accustomed to QWERTY. Colemak was first announced on the Slashdot tech news website on 18 December 2005 and subsequently released to the public on 1 January 2006.

Colemak is distributed with the reference implementation of the latest version of the X11 windowing system.

The name "Colemak" is a portmanteau of the names Coleman and Dvorak.

Overview
Colemak is the successor to a previous layout called Asetion. Its design goals were that it should be easy to learn for an existing QWERTY typist and also overcome some problems with the Dvorak layout:

* Colemak has 17 differences from QWERTY while Dvorak has 33.
*Common Ctrl/Command shortcuts are retained, most notably Ctrl+Z/X/C/V.
*Less strain on little fingers. Some fairly common letters were assigned to the little fingers in Dvorak, which created some awkwardness, particularly the digraph ls.
*Colemak was designed with the help of computers and thus had more resources to determine what would be optimal.

Colemak has been released to the public domain. One noteworthy feature of the layout is that it has no Caps Lock key, replacing it instead with Backspace.

Response

The Colemak keyboard layout has gathered a small but dedicated following of enthusiastic users and has an active support forum with 272 registered members as of April 2008. In January 2007, Colemak won the CAPSoff "Million Dollar" keyboard design competition, part of a campaign by Belgian software developer and campaigner Pieter Hintjens that intends to do away with the CapsLock key.

David Piepgrass, the designer of the "Asset" keyboard layout, researched alternatives to QWERTY while a student at the University of Calgary and concluded that, "All things considered, I believe Colemak is better than Dvorak and the best alternative to QWERTY."

Microsoft International Fundamentals technical lead Michael Kaplan stated on 21 November 2006 that Microsoft was not interested in including Colemak with Windows, noting that its article was originally deleted on the grounds of non-notability. He asserted that it is not Microsoft's mission to "re-invent the most intuitive keyboard layout," and pointed to the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator for such tasks. However, Colemak has since been included with the X11 windowing system, and therefore with new versions of all major Linux distributions, making it, along with Dvorak, one of only two English language alternatives to QWERTY to be bundled with any widely used desktop operating system.

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