Keyboards
<div class="IPBDescription">QWERTY vs DVORAK</div> Seeing how the Discussion Forums is shutdown, I guess this is the place to put this. I cannot imagine a topic like THIS degenerating into a flame festival, unless you REALLY try, (so don't). A brief history courtesy of Tactus Touch Typing Keyboard:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The Non-sensical QWERTY Key Arrangement
When initially introduced, the typewriters were utilized by typing with only two fingers. The development of 10 finger typing is attributed to a Mrs. L. V. Longley in 1878. This was followed shortly afterwards by the concept of "touch typing" attributed to Frank E. McGurrin, a federal court clerk in Salt Lake City, whereby typists would type without looking at the keys, having memorized their locations.
These new techniques, and some famous typing competitions, demonstrated the worth of the new machine and led to greater acceptance. However, proficient typists easily caused the typewriter mechanisms to jam.
To address this, Sholes had an ingenious idea. He discovered that many English words contained combinations of letters next to each other in the alphabet, for instance ABBey, DEFEct, HIGh, etc., which occurred frequently. With the help of a teacher called Amos Desmore, Sholes determined the combinations that occurred most frequently, split them and placed the component letters far away on the keyboard of his machine. And this is how the QWERTY layout was born. (The layout is referred to as “QWERTY” because of the arrangement of the keys in the upper row).
As a result of this rearrangement, the keys that were used most frequently were not as easily accessible to the typist. Thus, the QWERTY layout effectively reduced the speed at which human users could type, thereby preventing their jamming the mechanism too often.
The Dvorak Layout
The non-sensical QWERTY layout caused many different layouts to be invented. The most notable one is named Dvorak after its inventor, August Dvorak, an early ergonomics researcher at the University of Washington. In 1936, Dvorak analyzed the English language to determine which letters were most frequently used. He then rearranged the keyboard layout so that these keys were positioned on the home row, that is, the row under the fingers of a typist in the rest position. By grouping the keys so that the most used keys were closest to the typist's fingers, reach was minimized and typing speed was increased.
The introduction of the Dvorak layout, despite its efficiency, was not successful because the QWERTY layout had become a defacto standard and no typewriter manufacturer wished to introduce a product that would require its users to have to retrain the manner in which they worked.
The Advent of the Personal Computer
Perhaps the most attention paid to the keyboard as a human interface was by IBM in 1984, and was in regard to the compatibility of the layout of the Personal Computer that it had just developed with the layout of the Selectric™ typewriter. The Personal Computer had no jamming problems and its keyboard could handle even the fastest typist. Therefore the issue of separating the keys did not pose itself.
Moreover, no attention seems to have been paid by IBM to the fact that the newly developed Personal Computer, was going to be used primarily by people with little or no typing skills and to whom therefore the issue of the "QWERTY legacy" was unimportant.
Because of this, IBM could have redesigned the layout of the Personal Computer keyboard to a more ergonomic and user friendly layout. Unfortunately, IBM missed this wonderful opportunity and so it is that a keyboard layout designed over a century ago, for a different technological situation, is in use on over 500 million computers today.
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Changes can't open overnight, it's always a gradual transition, and it can be a major pain. But it can be viewed as an investment, and while I don't know what the "fantastic payoffs" (if any) can come, why are companies not making any attempt to turn us to efficent system of DVORAK, instead of purposely designed ineffiency of QWERTY? One of the driving values of today's society is speed after all, and while a transition such as this would likely cause a slow down, the end result is speed!
I mean, heck, this wouldn't be the first time we have a change in systems. 2 notable ones that come to mind is the simplified Chinese character system, with the phase out of the old traditional characters, as well as the change from the Imperial system to metric, <i>join us Americans! Resistance is futile! The outmoded ways of Imperial rule are crumbling. Join us NOW!</i> <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Theories as to why DVORAK isn't taking over?
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The Non-sensical QWERTY Key Arrangement
When initially introduced, the typewriters were utilized by typing with only two fingers. The development of 10 finger typing is attributed to a Mrs. L. V. Longley in 1878. This was followed shortly afterwards by the concept of "touch typing" attributed to Frank E. McGurrin, a federal court clerk in Salt Lake City, whereby typists would type without looking at the keys, having memorized their locations.
These new techniques, and some famous typing competitions, demonstrated the worth of the new machine and led to greater acceptance. However, proficient typists easily caused the typewriter mechanisms to jam.
To address this, Sholes had an ingenious idea. He discovered that many English words contained combinations of letters next to each other in the alphabet, for instance ABBey, DEFEct, HIGh, etc., which occurred frequently. With the help of a teacher called Amos Desmore, Sholes determined the combinations that occurred most frequently, split them and placed the component letters far away on the keyboard of his machine. And this is how the QWERTY layout was born. (The layout is referred to as “QWERTY” because of the arrangement of the keys in the upper row).
As a result of this rearrangement, the keys that were used most frequently were not as easily accessible to the typist. Thus, the QWERTY layout effectively reduced the speed at which human users could type, thereby preventing their jamming the mechanism too often.
The Dvorak Layout
The non-sensical QWERTY layout caused many different layouts to be invented. The most notable one is named Dvorak after its inventor, August Dvorak, an early ergonomics researcher at the University of Washington. In 1936, Dvorak analyzed the English language to determine which letters were most frequently used. He then rearranged the keyboard layout so that these keys were positioned on the home row, that is, the row under the fingers of a typist in the rest position. By grouping the keys so that the most used keys were closest to the typist's fingers, reach was minimized and typing speed was increased.
The introduction of the Dvorak layout, despite its efficiency, was not successful because the QWERTY layout had become a defacto standard and no typewriter manufacturer wished to introduce a product that would require its users to have to retrain the manner in which they worked.
The Advent of the Personal Computer
Perhaps the most attention paid to the keyboard as a human interface was by IBM in 1984, and was in regard to the compatibility of the layout of the Personal Computer that it had just developed with the layout of the Selectric™ typewriter. The Personal Computer had no jamming problems and its keyboard could handle even the fastest typist. Therefore the issue of separating the keys did not pose itself.
Moreover, no attention seems to have been paid by IBM to the fact that the newly developed Personal Computer, was going to be used primarily by people with little or no typing skills and to whom therefore the issue of the "QWERTY legacy" was unimportant.
Because of this, IBM could have redesigned the layout of the Personal Computer keyboard to a more ergonomic and user friendly layout. Unfortunately, IBM missed this wonderful opportunity and so it is that a keyboard layout designed over a century ago, for a different technological situation, is in use on over 500 million computers today.
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Changes can't open overnight, it's always a gradual transition, and it can be a major pain. But it can be viewed as an investment, and while I don't know what the "fantastic payoffs" (if any) can come, why are companies not making any attempt to turn us to efficent system of DVORAK, instead of purposely designed ineffiency of QWERTY? One of the driving values of today's society is speed after all, and while a transition such as this would likely cause a slow down, the end result is speed!
I mean, heck, this wouldn't be the first time we have a change in systems. 2 notable ones that come to mind is the simplified Chinese character system, with the phase out of the old traditional characters, as well as the change from the Imperial system to metric, <i>join us Americans! Resistance is futile! The outmoded ways of Imperial rule are crumbling. Join us NOW!</i> <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Theories as to why DVORAK isn't taking over?
Comments
me too <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
The Dvorak keyboard layout:
',.pyfgcrl
aoeuidhtns
;qjkxbmwvz
Home row is dominated by all 5 vowels and most commonly used letters in words in English. Dvorak developed his keyboard by research in the commonality of letters so you could type more words and sentences without leaving the home row.
I did a lot of research into Dvorak keyboards around 6 months ago and learned all sorts of wierd facts. Like the world's fastest typist hit around 180 words per minute, but on the Dvorak, not qwerty layout.
If you want, you can configure your qwerty keyboard to use the Dvorak layout through software. Windows does support it, as I'm very sure Linux does too. I once attempted to learn it, but quit trying when I didn't have the time to practice. You have to take Yoda's words here and unlearn what you have learned when you change kinds of keyboards. Qwerty's stuck on me because it's what I know. Defacto standards got me here.
Yaah, I know a few peope who use Dvorak (simple programs will switch your keys for you). They can NOW type faster ussing dvorak then qwerty(hehe typing that is fun qwerty).
Again the amount of time it would take to learn just isn't worth it in my mind <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> (I am 20 and have been ussing qwerty for ohh, around 15-16 years now)
hehe
qwerty
qwerty
qwerty
hehe, it is fun to type <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
qwertyqwertyqwerty
ok, I am done now
qwerty <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
It's basically just learning how to type all over again, and not many people would be willing to go through that again when a standard qwerty keyboard is already effective enough as it is. Although from what I've read, it really doesn't take very long to get used to Dvorak - maybe a few weeks. Still, that's a few weeks when your productivity is down while you're making the transition.
Another thing - who would benefit from a faster keyboard layout? To be quite honest, the only time most people use their keyboards nowadays is to write an email or maybe a document or two here and there. Most everything else is mouse-driven with a few typed words every once in a while.
People like us who post messages on forums might benefit since many of the regulars would sometimes type up long responses (<i>/me glances at my rant so far.... <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--></i>), but even that's usually rare. Most responses usually seem to be less than four lines, which is only about 30 seconds of typing for most. Being able to shave off 5 seconds with a Dvorak layout hardly seems worth it.
How about programmers? Would programmers make the switch? I really doubt it - programming is mostly a strange mix of words, letters, symbols, numbers, and other annoyances. I seriously doubt Dvorak would benefit a programmer, as Dvorak seems more designed to benefit word input and not character input.
I considered the Dvorak layout about a year or so, but decided to stick with ol' faithful qwerty instead. It just didn't seem beneficial enough for me to make the switch.
Hey that is (qwerty) fun
qwerty, qwerty, qwerty,qwerty, qwerty, qwerty
(Venmoch Apolgises For The Last Post. He said in a formal press release he doesn't know what came over him)
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Qwerty!</span>
as for programers, we do use real words and dvorak CAN help (guy I mentioned is a programer)
Also if you could pick this up BEFORE you go off to college then I would sugest it.
BAH
[OFFTOPIC][RANT]GAHH stupid email server being down (I emailed my self my paper so I could go print it out in this lab and now my server is down) BAHHHHHH[/RANT][/OFFTOPIC]
I, too, am a programmer, and for the past 6 years. I have yet to encounter any programming language where a keyboard designed with the keys in optimal locations for word input would truly benefit a programmer.
You mean it's easier to do <b>for(int i=0;i<=sql_r_someIntValue;i++){ ...more code...; }</b> using Dvorak over qwerty? As I said earlier, the few seconds you might save hardly seems beneficial enough to switch to this 'faster' layout. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<i>note: the for() example is merely the first thing I thought of that any programmer would recognize.</i> <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
psh, not for programmers.
However, it could possibly work beautifully with introducing children to the computer; I mean the software is there to easily switch from different key settings; all it would need would be a way of adding a temporary "skin" to the keyboard to correspond with the keys, (and given a few weeks, that too would be unnecessary as the memory would have kicked in).
Actually, there are keyboards that are 'compatible' with both standards.
The qwerty letters are on the top left of each key, and the Dvorak letters are on the bottom right. It'd be a good solution for those who already know qwerty but want to learn Dvorak as well. It's a fairly simple process to switch the keyboard to whichever layout you prefer.
It's also good for family computers where not everyone knows Dvorak. Simply switch it to whatever setting you prefer. In this case, it's a hardware switch (a simple button), so there's no OS configuration changes required.
<img src='http://users.frailart.net/cmallard/200015.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
My only gripe about Dvorak is that keyboard shortcuts like Copy, Paste, and others make sense in QWERTY rather than Dvorak. For that reason, I keep both languages installed on my computer, and switch to QWERTY whenever I'm doing work in Photoshop or 3dsmax. Perhaps if I ever get a real Dvorak board, I'll switch completely. It's actually good, in a way - I maintain about 50wpm in QWERTY even though I use Dvorak almost exclusively on my machine, which means if I'm ever using a foreign keyboard I can still type at a reasonable speed.
i guess you leran something new every day, no matter whats its irrelevance!
In terms of amazing advertise-able benefits, many new Dvorak users claim speed increases, increased wrist comfort, diet-free weight loss, etc., but the most noticeable benefit to me has been typing accuracy -- it's gone from about 75% to 90 or more.
My only problem now is that unlike Coil, I can't switch to Querty so quickly. When I need to do Querty, I'll get my brain to go back to it over time -- half an hour or so to return to around my normal typing speed. But then it takes a half hour to switch back...
Still worth it.