Dvorak is only barely superior to QWERTY keyboards for speed; it’s true advantage is in comfort and preventing RSIs.
How is it more comfortable and less RSI-causing? I saw something about requiring less motion—but if that’s the benefit how does that square with the desirability of fidgeting?
Edited to add: Also, it requires less motion for standard English, not random strings, I presume—so if I spend a lot of time typing shell commands or other things that were chosen to be easy to type by people sitting at a QWERTY keyboard, would we expect to see the opposite effect?
Edited to add: Also, it requires less motion for standard English, not random strings, I presume—so if I spend a lot of time typing shell commands or other things that were chosen to be easy to type by people sitting at a QWERTY keyboard, would we expect to see the opposite effect?
Carpalx, which I linked to in another comment, is keyboard optimization software (as well as several recommended layouts that it outputs). You can train it on whatever corpus you want- and so if you run a keylogger for a week or so, you’ll be able to get a keyboard layout that’s optimized for the things you type.
Do note that portability is basically a non-issue. If you expect to spend one-twentieth of your typing time on other computers (an insanely high estimate even for a backwards company’s “IT guy”) and we pessimistically assume that learning a new layout will magically reduce your old layout skills to hunt-and-peck[1], the gain in speed only has to be something like 5 wpm before it drowns out the lost speed on old layouts.
[1]: This is not supported by my experiences; two of my close friends have remapped to Dvorak and their QWERTY skills only mildly deteriorated. None of the concerns you have raised have been a problem for them; although one thing that did happen is it became impossible for any of us QWERTY users to type on their computers (something they quite enjoy).
we pessimistically assume that learning a new layout will magically reduce your old layout skills to hunt-and-peck
That basically happened to me. I’ve switched away from QWERTY in 2006 and really only ever use it if I fix something on my mother’s computer. Previously I was typing at 80-90wpm, now I don’t even know where the keys are anymore. I could maybe get back to 30wpm with a week of practice, but most of my QWERTY skill is gone.
I don’t spend 1/20th of my typing time on computers I don’t control, no. But I do think the time I spend on other computers is more likely to be particularly time critical, and I don’t expect to get any real speed gain from the transition as my work is generally more thought or compute bound than typing-bound (data entry might be sped up significantly, but I don’t spend 1/1000th of my time at the computer doing data entry).
[O]ne thing that did happen is it became impossible for any of us QWERTY users to type on their computers (something they quite enjoy).
They aren’t married, are they? My wife complains enough about my running ratpoison...
It doesn’t work like that. Typing does not take conscious thought—it is overlapped with my thinking. Speeding up my typing even tenfold would not significantly speed up my output.
Except when bound by something unrelated. My point is that the gains are minimal, and putting my optimization effort there is ridiculous from a speed perspective—that’s not how you do optimization, if you want to do it well. If there are actually large RSI gains to be had, that’s another matter.
It’s of course anecdotal, but I write almost daily in three languages (English, French and Romanian, with quite a few accented letters via AltGr) on Dvorak, in addition to the various computer languages I use as a programmer, and it doesn’t feel worse than QWERTY at any particular task (which I use on computers not my own), except in the very limited sense that shortcuts and games tend to assume the latter.
There are a few common shell commands that are particularly ill-matched to Dvorak’s ideas, like “ls -l”. But the point of Dvorak is to require minimal movement by keeping your hands in the “home position” and only moving your fingers. Which I do, but only when writing prose, like I do now; when I do things like programming and command-line work however my hands move a lot more (since you need to hit numbers, symbols and navigation keys often anyway), and words-per-minute are not quite as important. (I have a reflex by now of typing “ls -l” by almost swiping my index finger along the l-s keys and hitting “-” with the middle one, which is completely different from how I’d hit those keys when writing text. I got similar brain-macros for common Ctrl-{CXZV} combinations that I never need to think about.)
(I thought about switching to Dvorak for “coolness” for years but never bothered. I did switch half a decade ago when my hands started hurting. The hurting stopped, but I can’t tell if it was related, it’s not like I tried going back. I do use QWERTY without trouble on other computers, I just need to remember to look at the keys often otherwise my brain switches to Dvorak. For the record, I also used to look at the keys before switching, just a bit less often. I typed a lot from memory, but I wasn’t really touch-typing, just kind of dancing my hands around and peeking every now and then. I forced myself to lean Dvorak without key-caps, and now I can touch-type on it, much faster than I used to on QWERTY and completely blind. Note that I was 25 or younger when I switched, I’m not sure if a switch would go that well for others.)
A much better methodology than the apparent one!
How is it more comfortable and less RSI-causing? I saw something about requiring less motion—but if that’s the benefit how does that square with the desirability of fidgeting?
Edited to add: Also, it requires less motion for standard English, not random strings, I presume—so if I spend a lot of time typing shell commands or other things that were chosen to be easy to type by people sitting at a QWERTY keyboard, would we expect to see the opposite effect?
Carpalx, which I linked to in another comment, is keyboard optimization software (as well as several recommended layouts that it outputs). You can train it on whatever corpus you want- and so if you run a keylogger for a week or so, you’ll be able to get a keyboard layout that’s optimized for the things you type.
Right, but that’s even more awkward in terms of portability.
Do note that portability is basically a non-issue. If you expect to spend one-twentieth of your typing time on other computers (an insanely high estimate even for a backwards company’s “IT guy”) and we pessimistically assume that learning a new layout will magically reduce your old layout skills to hunt-and-peck[1], the gain in speed only has to be something like 5 wpm before it drowns out the lost speed on old layouts.
[1]: This is not supported by my experiences; two of my close friends have remapped to Dvorak and their QWERTY skills only mildly deteriorated. None of the concerns you have raised have been a problem for them; although one thing that did happen is it became impossible for any of us QWERTY users to type on their computers (something they quite enjoy).
That basically happened to me. I’ve switched away from QWERTY in 2006 and really only ever use it if I fix something on my mother’s computer. Previously I was typing at 80-90wpm, now I don’t even know where the keys are anymore. I could maybe get back to 30wpm with a week of practice, but most of my QWERTY skill is gone.
I don’t spend 1/20th of my typing time on computers I don’t control, no. But I do think the time I spend on other computers is more likely to be particularly time critical, and I don’t expect to get any real speed gain from the transition as my work is generally more thought or compute bound than typing-bound (data entry might be sped up significantly, but I don’t spend 1/1000th of my time at the computer doing data entry).
They aren’t married, are they? My wife complains enough about my running ratpoison...
Sure, and learning a different layout would make it even more thought- / compute-bound.
It doesn’t work like that. Typing does not take conscious thought—it is overlapped with my thinking. Speeding up my typing even tenfold would not significantly speed up my output.
If your typing speed increased tenfold, you would go from “generally thought/compute bound” to “always thought/compute bound”.
Except when bound by something unrelated. My point is that the gains are minimal, and putting my optimization effort there is ridiculous from a speed perspective—that’s not how you do optimization, if you want to do it well. If there are actually large RSI gains to be had, that’s another matter.
It’s of course anecdotal, but I write almost daily in three languages (English, French and Romanian, with quite a few accented letters via AltGr) on Dvorak, in addition to the various computer languages I use as a programmer, and it doesn’t feel worse than QWERTY at any particular task (which I use on computers not my own), except in the very limited sense that shortcuts and games tend to assume the latter.
There are a few common shell commands that are particularly ill-matched to Dvorak’s ideas, like “ls -l”. But the point of Dvorak is to require minimal movement by keeping your hands in the “home position” and only moving your fingers. Which I do, but only when writing prose, like I do now; when I do things like programming and command-line work however my hands move a lot more (since you need to hit numbers, symbols and navigation keys often anyway), and words-per-minute are not quite as important. (I have a reflex by now of typing “ls -l” by almost swiping my index finger along the l-s keys and hitting “-” with the middle one, which is completely different from how I’d hit those keys when writing text. I got similar brain-macros for common Ctrl-{CXZV} combinations that I never need to think about.)
(I thought about switching to Dvorak for “coolness” for years but never bothered. I did switch half a decade ago when my hands started hurting. The hurting stopped, but I can’t tell if it was related, it’s not like I tried going back. I do use QWERTY without trouble on other computers, I just need to remember to look at the keys often otherwise my brain switches to Dvorak. For the record, I also used to look at the keys before switching, just a bit less often. I typed a lot from memory, but I wasn’t really touch-typing, just kind of dancing my hands around and peeking every now and then. I forced myself to lean Dvorak without key-caps, and now I can touch-type on it, much faster than I used to on QWERTY and completely blind. Note that I was 25 or younger when I switched, I’m not sure if a switch would go that well for others.)