Programmer Norman ?

[ghost]

Hi,

Thanks for creating this layout! I'm really tempted by it but I'm facing the same issue as colemak in finding a "programmer" alternative that inverts the number row so symbols are easier to reach.

I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on this, or if there is anyway that I could help, even though I've never done anything that low-level.

Thanks,
Alvin

[danielcompton]

See #12.

[deekayen]

https://github.com/stephenkeep/norman/tree/master/mac has a Norman-P layout, but no description on what exactly it is and no pull request back here.

[handcoding]

Thanks for creating this layout! I'm really tempted by it but I'm facing the same issue as colemak in finding a “programmer” alternative that inverts the number row so symbols are easier to reach.

@alvinsight: If it may help, you can do this with Karabiner Elements, which is a free keyboard-remapping utility for macOS. It so happens that inverting the number row is one of the pre-made presets in Karabiner Elements, so there’s no programming involved either. (Karabiner Elements works on top of whichever keyboard layout you may be using, whether that may be Norman or Colemak or Qwerty.)

If you had wanted to give that a go with Karabiner Elements, here’re the basic steps:

1. First, download and install Karabiner Elements.
2. With Karabiner Elements running, click on its menubar icon and choose “Preferences.”

3. From the tabs across the top of the preferences window, choose the “Complex Modifications” tab, and then choose “Add rule.”
   

4. That will bring up a dialog with a button at the top that says, “Import more rules from the Internet”—click that.
   

5. That’ll open up the webpage for the Karabiner Elements’ pre-built ”Complex Modifications.”

6. In the “Key Specific” section of that page, you’ll see an entry for “Exchange numbers and symbols”. Click the “Import” button next to that item, which will automatically import that pre-made setting into Karabiner Elements.

And that’s it—that should be able to take care of swapping your numbers and symbols. And if you might have any questions about this along the way, feel free to tweet me at @handcoding—I’d be happy to help.

[ghost]

Woaw, thanks a lot for the detailed instructions @handcoding !
That's really nicely explained, I'll give a go later, in the end I might stick with colemak because of the broader support, and the "the" issue doesn't bother me that much at the moment.
But, I still need my number row inverted, so this is super helpful!

[handcoding]

@alvinsight: Anytime—I’m happy to help!

[deekayen]

I started working on a norman-p bundle for mac tonight based on the work from @stephenkeep.

[deekayen]

Please review 28fdc7f

[deekayen]

I tried to make it extra-easy: https://github.com/deekayen/norman/releases/tag/2.2.0

[deekayen]

I actually need feedback on the Norman-P I added for Mac in 2.2.0. @stephenkeep's proposal swaps the location of ' and ; so I want to have the discussion about how "P" that is.

[deekayen]

[yubaoquan]

I don'k think moving the ; down is a good idea, because single quota button is also a frequently used button. So after shifting to norman-p, People made more mistakes on declaring string variables. Swapping ; and ' doesn't bring much convenience

[pavloconuve]

The square brackets not being swapped for curly brackets is a surprising disappointment (they are swapped in Workman-P). So many popular programming languages use curly brackets to create blocks (C, C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, Ruby).

Edit: on the other hand, this breaks Cmd+[, Cmd+] shortcuts. 🙁

[deekayen]

@growtofill Great, that's exactly the sort of feedback I was looking for.

[deekayen]

@growtofill so are you saying in your comment revision that the [ should remain the base key to not break the shortcuts and NOT match the workman-p swap?

[pavloconuve]

For my typical use case, I'd say keep it as is (no swap, [ ] by default).