Talk:Dvorak keyboard layout/Archive 1

message: Suppose there were a poll for voting for which keyboard is more logical, QWERTY or DVORAK. Approximately what percentage would vote for QWERTY?? (Assume the voters are United States citizens 16+ years of age.) 66.245.102.102 00:57, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't the point of taking a poll to find out something that you don't know and cannot predict?  See Slashdot poll and MacPolls? – Lee J Haywood 07:42, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poll: which keyboard makes more sense?? 

message: FYI, I created a Wikipedian category and user box for those Dvorak typists out there.
: See: :Category:Dvorak keyboard users and :template:User dvrk
I am not claiming it looks great, but it works, and is a start. — Eoghanacht talk 21:24, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, telepathy. I suddenly had the thought a minute ago that it would be good to make a template for that and lo and behold, you've made it. Mithridates 12:03, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks :) *replaces his old manually-done Dvorak box* --Pentasyllabic 03:03, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

text: FYI:  There is a move to delete the Dvorak user category.  If you have an opinion on the matter, you may voice it at: Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:Dvorak keyboard users — Eoghanacht talk 14:15, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dvorak user category / user box

message: :In academic circles their version of the QWERTY story is generally accepted since no one has successfully attacked it.
Has Liebowitz and Margolis's article been at least published in a peer-reviewed journal ? Taw 18:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Liebowitz and Margolis's article 

message: I am going to remove the sentence about badly designed software from the second paragraph in section Resistance to change:
:In addition to the time required for a QWERTY typist to learn the Dvorak layout and become efficient when using it, keyboard shortcuts and applications requiring key position layout will be different in the Dvorak layout. Badly designed software assumes a keyboard layout without the ability to remap the keys. For example, the Unix text editor vi use the keys H, J, K, and L to cause movement to the left, down, up, and to the right, respectively. With a QWERTY layout, these keys are all together under the right hand home row, but with Dvorak they are no longer neatly together.
As is stands now the paragraph appears to claim that HJKL cannot remapped under vi, which is wrong (see Vi is a non-issue above). — Tobias Bergemann 09:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I find it annoying that my text explaining that J and K stay together keeps being removed.  I don't know why anyone would bother remapping, given how easy it is to move around – e.g. with J/K and H/space – but we have to accept that everyone works differently.  I think that the best thing to do is mention that some applications assume a QWERTY layout but get rid of the examples, and keep them out in future rather than continually re-writing this section.  Thanks.   — Lee J Haywood 20:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Badly designed software"

message: I was first introduced to the Dvorak arrangement through a Reader's Digest side article in the Book "Stories Behind Everyday Things" in the mid to late 1980's, soon after learning to type on a QWERTY Keyboard.  Soon after, I got a little practice on an early version of "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" (later versions do not train Dvorak typing--I think I read that ver.5.0 was the dividing point), and vowed to myself that when the time was right, I would convert.  After twenty years of typing, I made the change on 4/1/05.  Now, fully five months later, I am still not fully back up to my former speed of roughly 65-70 WPM, and constantly re-evaluate this decision.
There are times when it does flow, but not as sweetly as the tutorials would have me to believe.  For the first few months, I took to heart the testimony of an MIT student and tried to type Dvorak at work and QWERTY at home.  This led to headaches and reduced efficiency, so in that MIT never accepted me, I opted to go at it much simpler: use Dvorak exclusively.  This has its limitations in a QWERTY world.  From time to time I have to help those on QWERTY keyboards.  This becomes needlessly arduous.  I hear those around me patter away wildly on their QWERTY keyboards and wonder why my superior keyboarding skills now sound so dull, whichever keyboard.
I increasingly find comfort in the words meant as a warning, "If you must, you can go back to QWERTY within a fairly short time (possibly days, probably hours, maybe seconds), but you will curse every keystroke you have to type in QWERTY, once you've tried Dvorak!"   Curse every word?  Have I not come as close with Dvorak, despite my own interest in it?  
Consider the keyboard layouts;
QWERTY (Sholes) Layout
q w e r t  y u i o p  
a s d f g  h j k l ;  <<--(Home Row)
z x c v b  n m , . /
Dvorak Layout
' , . p y  f g c r l 
a o e u i  d h t n s  <<--(Home Row)
; q j k x  b m w v z 
Dvorak's placement of I, F,  and Y , to be more popular letters than U, G, and P, suffer from curious exiles from more favorable locales.  Additionally, Y is also sometimes considered a vowel, which Dvorak pretended to favor.  I looked at one man's computer simulations & analyses, and like some of the improvements, but wonder what chance a third keyboard would have in an already decided format war.  That would be like introducing BetaMax as a clear choice in the DVD - VHS war.  Or maybe it would have been like introducing DVD to the VHS - BetaMax war.  Well, that was pretty much what happened with the laser disc, and it failed, too.  Thus, about the same time I went exclusively Dvorak, I sucked up my objections, went "full speed" into Dvorak, and actually never got past my objections after all.  Under this microscope, the letters I, F, and Y; U, G, and P come out on various forms, few of them pleasant, but let's just say Dvorak's superiority is "IFFY".
Through my readings about Dvorak, I have learned that it was not true that QWERTY was purposely jumbled to slow down typists, but was rearranged rather to separate two-letter combinations to opposite hands to eliminate carriage jams on manual typewriters.  It is also true that the word TYPEWRITER is on the top row of QWERTY, Grollier Encyclopedia claims this was a demonstration help for traveling salesmen.  Now, with touch-typing, carriage jams are a thing of the past, but Dvorak was designed with a same intention, to separate two letter combinations to separate hands to better enable a steady typing rhythm (Note: Dvorak was also designed to put the most common characters in the best places--grubbmeister 20:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried Dvorak for about a year-and-a-half.  I was determined to make it work for me.  Unfortunately, I not only couldn't type faster than I did with Qwerty, I wasn't able to equal my Qwerty speed.  Maybe I was training too hard, or maybe it had to do with having been a fairly good typist already - Qwerty may have been too ingrained.  (I've heard that someone people can use both, but I thought that would be too confusing, and figured I might end up being so-so at both instead of excelling at one.)  Because I switched over completely to Dvorak, I found it hard to use other computers, which can't be avoided.  I was reduced to the hunt-and-peck system I see so many people using.  So I switched back.  I don't know whether there is any evidence that Dvorak really is better, but it didn't work for me.  I'm still not likely to win any typing contests, but then that was never my goal anyway.  I do use one of those ergonomic split keyboards, and that really seems to help.  Typing on the standard straight keyboard really kills my hands after a while.  I was able to significantly improve my speed, while maintaining an average 98% accuracy, using the split keyboard.  67.71.140.254 20:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Quitting Dvorak?: A 6-month personal testimony typed on Dvorak

message: Well, it is now 12/1/2005, an "avid" Dvorak user 8 mos., still soon to be a victim of downsizing, as far as I can forsee, but let's face it, the slow pace at work was one reason I opted "start a training period" and take the leap to the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.  
One problem I was facing with the above frustration come from the fact that a 100% break had not been made from QWERTY.  In the meantime, I have 
* effectively swallowed my objections to a few Dvorak assignments,
* achieved a breakaway period to use Dvorak 100% exclusively, 
* picked up intuitive flow on the Dvorak, and now I am 
* successfully integrating QWERTY back into my life, while 
* keeping relatively the same performance on Dvorak.  
At each switch, it has initially required much conscious attention to keymaps and finger placement, but finally I am getting to a point where I can type on either keyboard without thinking about it (and where it comes out better if I don't think about it').
Like the above-mentioned testimony of an MIT student, I am now acquiring speed on both keyboards, though the 8 months of torture that I have endured to get to this degree of flexibility are not easily or lightly recommended to anyone.  I started out at Qwerty 65-70 wpm, I would imagine I am now at about 45-50 wpm average on both (untested). 
I think these are the reasons most enthusiasts recommend making the break completely, but that is not very possible in a world filled with so many QWERTY keyboards.  Perhaps Dvorak's best chance for survival & ulimate dominance is a teaching program designed to help users learn both keyboards with minimal frustration and maximum benefit.  Just as exercise machines alternate intensity levels for a better workout, one could theorize that an alternating program like the MIT student's (or one similar) would be the solution for a world trained almost exclusively on the Qwerty keyboard.  Just as the superior mobility of various cordless phones are making payphones and other landline phones increasingly obsolete (even though landlines were far more numerous than the first mobile phones to come out), in the same way Dvorak could win out, if properly marketed, trained, and promoted.  It's a utopian scenario, but one that could work.--grubbmeister 20:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Even if Dvorak is better, most people can achieve very good speeds using Qwerty.  I would rather have a high speed on one, than to have so-so speeds of 45-50 wpm on both.  With a split keyboard, the hand strain of the Qwerty system is removed (at least this has been my own experience), and I have achieved an average speed of 120 wpm, with 98% accuracy, this way.  I tried Dvorak, but I couldn't equal my speed on Qwerty before switching, plus there's the fact that so few people use Dvorak.  I don't see any real point in switching.  67.71.140.254 21:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Integrating Dvorak with Qwerty: An 8-month personal testimony

message: So why not make this into a featured article? I worked on the Ido article for a long time, submitted it and it was accepted to appear on the front page Christmas last month, and this article is another subject that I think deserves to be shown the light of day. I see there are almost 30 users on the Dvorak keyboard user category and some of them might be interested in helping out. An article on the main page gets viewed by around a million people during the course of the day, and that could only help increase awareness. Mithridates 07:02, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article 

message: How about a keyboard that bridges with International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)? That way there won't be a million keyboards for each language. There will be one alphabet for all languages/pinyin. That way one huge switch revolution will result, so the whole world can relearn typing together! 70.111.224.85 19:37, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Something like going back in time, "un-building The Tower of Keybel"! lol --ADTC 21:39, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Such a keyboard would be extremely large. Just to give an example, Danish has a ton of different vowels. Such a keyboard would have to include all sounds / variations / tones from all languages and that will be virtually impossible. Valentinian (talk) 11:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That also wouldn't work for eastern languages, where there are many inflections (such as in Chinese), which would clutter up the keyboard for us who don't speak Chinese or whatever other language. —Mets501talk 13:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA and Keyboards 

message: I have added some paragraphs to the section relating to 'benefits'.  My point is that none of the studies done so far (as I can see) involve 'scientific' testing against defined criteria using reasonably large groups operating in a controlled environment.  Frankly I can't see anyone bothering. Dvorak seems to exist happily enough as 'something known to the few' (or to those that 'care to look').  Perhaps the rest deserve Qwerty, until such time as speech recognition becomes cheap enough for the masses.  In that case I tend to agree, make it a featured article so that folks who pay attention can be aware and make the choice.  But the days when it was still worthwhile to argue 'against' Qwerty seem (or ought to be)long past. Tban.
:Why was the Benefits section completely removed? Yes, I agree that more than 75% of it is junk, but still... Somebody please write a new Benefits section from scratch. Thanks! --ADTC 21:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proper Studies 

message: The link on Barbara Blackburn's name redirects the reader to the "Typewriter" page, rather than a page about Ms. Blackburn.
:Look at the history of the Barbara Blackburn article. There was a vote for deletion and a merge of content with the Typewriter article. If there were significant biographical content about Ms Blackburn then it would justify a separate page, but at the moment it seems to be fine to me. reetep 12:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  suspect link