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Bah; a real editor would have found the pro-Dvorak rebuttal, which (like TFA) is also ancient history.

No Dvorak version?

QWERTY is for losers!

I remember seeing this at a ComDex YEARS ago. Always thought it would be pretty cool, but with a serious learning curve. And since I haven't even bothered to learn the Dvorak layout, I can see why they are no more.

http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html

I don't have to use his asinine keyboard layout.

The article above notes how economists "Liebowitz and Margolis cited ergonomic studies that conclude that the Dvorak keyboard offers at most only a two to six percent efficiency advantage over QWERTY."

Please see this article which sets out to debunk Liebowitz & Margolis's study. Just like certain large corporations that are unpopular around these parts, L&M are guilty of picking and choosing studies that support their conclusions.

Not hard at all.

The Dvorak QWERTY debate takes on aspects of a
religious war because it is supposed to be an
example of "Market Failure", and for some people
believe that the market is always right, that its
people mucking with the market that cause failure.
See the wikipedia article on "path dependence"
which has links to the discussion. One link that
used to be in that wikipedia article and has
been removed for some reason (had to go back to
an old version of the article to find it), is
http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html

A reply to that at http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html

A more detailed refutation at http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/dissent.html

Every conversation about Dvorak, these two supposedly genius contrarians get brought up.

The big thing is, their whole agenda was to show that the market doesn't make mistakes. Since everyone using an inferior keyboard is obviously a market making a mistake, they decided to grab the bull by the horns and attack that.

Go ahead and read it. Then google the search, and find people who don't have an economic point of view to push have addressed its sketchy (and often ad hominem) attacks.

(Oh, here's a link to a plaintext version:
http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html )

It will point out that the Navy study is dubious, etc. It won't actually point out other important things, like that Sholes (the creator of the Qwerty keyboard) never intended it to become the defacto standard, and actually designed a somewhat Dvorak-like keyboard (vowels one place, consonants another, though he didn't have detailed statistics to get key placement) and intended for *that* to become the standard.

But, everyone already knew Qwerty by then! He knew his standard was substandard, but it was "good enough", and he couldn't move it. Dvorak, trying decades later, barely made a dent.

Anyway, Dvorak is better. The fastest typists in the world use it, and they know more than two guys who desperately want to show that the market is always right.

But I don't use it to type faster, I use it because my fingers hardly ever get tired (the mild performance increase is pretty much nothing). Typing is more pressing buttons and less fingers flying. I mean, just *look at the layouts with your own eyes*. What do you want to type a lot? J? K? How about H and T instead? Hey, "E" is the most common letter, get that the hell off the home row! Etc. Qwerty is a pretty arbitrary layout, meant for a specific purpose, over a century ago. If you don't want to learn to do it better because it's a big pain, then don't. But don't let these people go denying reality because it's convenient for them.

Anyway, if you don't want to google Fable Of The Keys to find it debunked, here's at least one link:
http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html

And now, 'The Fable of "The Fable of the Keys"'
(Original Article seems to be down, here is the google cache of it.)
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ro7lk9oKNWkJ: www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/dissent.html+&hl=en&client =safari

and another response

http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html

And plus the fact that the writer of "The Fable of the Keys" DESTROYED all of his data so people would not be able to draw their own conclusions from it.

...which they were saying "The market always chooses the best option."

Right on track you are. That's the real issue: does markets always choose the best tech? Or does tech-development follow paths which are chosen more or less accidentaly. There are stronger cases for this than the qwerty-story with a simple example's beeing the best.

Take a hypothetical story of a 10 year-old trying to deceide whether he should buy a X-BOX or a PS2. They're at approx the same price in the shop he visits and for some reason he chooses XBOX (he likes the green X). Then his friend is also to buy a game console. If the friend buys an XBOX he could borrow games from the first buyer whereas with a PS2 he has to buy all his games himself. What kind of console will these guys' classmates probably buy? The whole class is quite soon in a lock-in on XBOX. Does this make XBOX better than PS2?

Transfer this scenario into companies deceiding which console they should produce games for and you have a theory of economic behaviour. There are of course many more factors at work, but still there is some truth in this theory.

Slashdotter's may also notice that Liebowitz and Margolis has some interesting claims:"The pair also take aim at the VHS-Beta story. VHS won that battle, they say, because it could tape for twice as long, something consumers clearly wanted. Similarly, they note that DOS computers caught on because they were markedly less expensive than Apple's."(from the WSJ link above)
The availability of more videos (and porn) on the VHS format didn't affect VHS's market victory? Microsoft's market tactics had no effect on the lock-in on DOS and later Windows?

They also argue: "What's more, while today's personal computers can easily be reprogrammed to the Dvorak layout, few people do."

I wonder why? You may also use Firefox instead of IE, use a mail program which doesn't spread viruses as default behaviour, etc.

So which serious objective tests between the two keyboards have there been?
Not objective, but at least to be taken seriously.
Anti-Dvorak Crusaders
Keytime

You don't need a new keyboard - just have the settings adjusted on each system/laptop.... (assuming you are a touch-typist anyway).

"Dvorak has been built in to Microsoft Windows since version 3.0."

This page tells you how to do just that in various MS Windows flavors, OS X and .... Lindows/Linspire. I'm sure you can find out how to do it in X by yourself.

I use QWERTY out of laziness, so I am far from a DVORAK religious nut. I also find that most who are against switching are also lazy (when it comes to this.) Just sayin....

What I don't get is why they still insist on forcing on users flat layouts? Do they WANT to give pain to their users? Flat (i.e. non-ergonomic) keyboards are a pain.

I use a Kinesis Maxim keyboard and you have no idea what a difference it can be, but even a Microsoft natural keyboard is a lot less painful than a flat layout

Oh, yeah, and to get a few mod points more... I also type Dvorak.

A myth? Hardly. The linkage jamming argument is often used in a misleading fashion. Yes, it's true that key placement was selected to avoid jamming...jamming that happened more often at higher speeds. Even if you don't count that as being 'to slow down typists' (which is arguable) it's still the net effect.

The study you refer to was considered suspicious by other researchers. When attempts were made to look at the raw data it turned out it had been destroyed (details). A single study with no access to the raw data isn't very convincing.

The usual study people mention as proof of qwerty's superiority was written by economists. Also not terribly convincing. Here's a refutation.

Either way, it's clear that the main design decision with qwerty was to in response to an engineering problem.

The best way to find out is to try it. I used to quote the same studies and had the same opinions until I tried it myself. It took about a weekend to get started and three weeks to exceed my previous level of proficiency.

A myth? Hardly. The linkage jamming argument is often used in a misleading fashion. Yes, it's true that key placement was selected to avoid jamming...jamming that happened more often at higher speeds. Even if you don't count that as being 'to slow down typists' (which is arguable) it's still the net effect.

The study you refer to was considered suspicious by other researchers. When attempts were made to look at the raw data it turned out it had been destroyed (details). A single study with no access to the raw data isn't very convincing.

The usual study people mention as proof of qwerty's superiority was written by economists. Also not terribly convincing. Here's a refutation.

Either way, it's clear that the main design decision with qwerty was to in response to an engineering problem.

The best way to find out is to try it. I used to quote the same studies and had the same opinions until I tried it myself. It took about a weekend to get started and three weeks to exceed my previous level of proficiency.

One poorly written anti-Dvorak article has had more press in the last several years than the Dvorak keyboard itself. Written by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis, it has been published in journals, magazines, and web sites again and again and again -- even though The Dvorak Keyboard author Randy Cassingham debunked it years ago.:
http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html

"I agree with L&M on another thing: there is a need for good-quality, unbiased studies on Dvorak. The best raw data I have access to at present is from KEYTIME, a Seattle-based company which uses keyboard instructional technologies they developed in house. In the past nine years, they have trained several hundred typists on Dvorak, and several thousand on Qwerty, using the exact same equipment and teaching methodologies. They have "repeatedly found" that after 15 hours of training and practice time, existing Qwerty hunt-and-peck typists can touch type at an average 20 WPM. After 15 hours of training and practice on Dvorak, similarly able (Qwerty) typists consistently average 25-30 WPM touch-typing on Dvorak. Further, KEYTIME reports that the Dvorak typists continue to improve at a higher rate. They have noticed a recent "a change in tide" of students wanting to learn Dvorak over Qwerty. "

www.dvorak-keyboard.com/

It's not a myth. A debatable point perhaps. As for checking the facts, here's some more.

Here is the response to the paper which the page you linked is based on.