I think I’ve changed all the ways that I use for writing.
I initially learned to write in cursive, with calligraphy and all that. Was it beautiful? No. Actually, I realized a few years that I couldn’t read or even remember some things I had written. It was litterally illegible.
I saw classmates writing in print style, so I tried to change my “font”. It’s not beautiful, but it’s legible.
When I used to write in Qwerty, it was like a chicken feeding on corn. A two-headed chicken, because I used two fingers greedily catching the first correct key and sometimes crossing each other. When I was in university and I had to type a lot more, I noticed it wasn’t sustainable.
So, did I choose to learn touch typing? Not exactly, I first looked into deciding on another keyboard layout to then learn how to touch type. The Dvořak one. I printed a sheet with the layout and stuck it behind my monitor, so I would look up (in both senses) when typing. This was during a time in the term where I had less homework to submit. For like 3 months I was slower both in Dvořak and in Qwerty. But as time passed by, I got used to it.
Today, when I press a key, I think: finger and position. There was a time when I used an ortholinear keyboard. I liked it, but I had to return it eventually.
I didn’t measure to know if I actually typed faster. But it’s way more comfortable, so it was worth it in my personal opinion.
I find it crazy that today we can draw countless gestures in a touchscreen but for typing we have to pretend it’s a typewriter from long ago. Gladly, not only I think that, but the developers of NovaKey and Thumb-Key also think that. And they developed keyboards that make use of this functionality.
This is the idea: the user puts the finger in one of the keyboard regions and glides into one of the directions. Depending both on the starting region and the direction, the keyboard outputs the desired key. As directions give information, less regions are needed and therefore they can be larger in the screen.
For me, someone without any good aim, it’s easier to type. Sometimes I type even without looking.
This blog post was inspired in @rafael-frs-a@github.com’s post and @chunshek@prettyaweso.me’s post.