Slashdot Mirror

ok, I'm game, but rather than studies (since you've not yet presented one,
only an article). I'll come back with an article that slightly less biased than
yours (only slightly). One that is in fact, written as a point for point
counter to the article you cite. It can be found Here.

Your up.

Dvorak is designed for alternation. That's why the vowels are on the left hand and the consonants on the right. Your example:
....... alternating between hands with a spaced out layout
dvorak: lrrlrrlrlrr rlrrllr rlrrr rlrr l rllrlr lll rlrllr
qwerty: lrlllrllrrl llllllr rlrll lrlr l lrllll rrl rlrrrl
Words such as between brings back memories of my qwerty past where I often encountered letter clusters that had to be done not by one hand but even by one finger (that was in the Dutch language).

>the little research there is that's solidly pro-Dvorak was done by advocates.

According to these Dvorak pages, there isn't either that much solid research which is contra-Dvorak.

For a debunking of the Fable of the Keys article, check out this article. Liebowitz and Margolis are biased and their arguments flawed.

Yup, but also keep in mind that The Fable of the Keys is not without its own problems.

Link 1 Link 2

Please keep in mind I'm being blatantly lazy; those were just a couple of the links that popped up on Google, not necessarily the best ones. This debate just goes on and on and I don't care to get involved again. I just wanted to point out that that article isn't the last word on the subject.

The bottom line is that there's no reliable studies for or against Dvorak. It would be good if someone did one to help put the debate to rest, but no one has as of yet. I use it, I like it, but that's just my personal opinion.

Such a wild conjecture probably has more validity than most Dvorak articles anyway.

"Anything optimized for writing english text is going to be horrible for any other symbol system."

You make it sound as if qwerty is optimized for such symbols. I highly doubt that to be the case.

I struggle with dvorak layouts too, but for one reason and one reason only: I was brought up on qwerty.

I think the measure here is how efficiently someone without prior exposure to other keyboard layouts can use such characters.

The symbol placement on dvoraks is actually quite good, so long as you go for a 'proper' layout and ignore the ANSI layout

I made the change a year ago. My fingers haven't been in pain ever since.

It's much easier to change to Dvorak than it is to change to anything else. Just rearrange yaur keyfboard. Then select Dvorak as yaur keyboard layout. (All mainstream OSes since Mac OS 7/Win 3.1 support it)

And relearn.

It took me about one and a half weeks to regain my typing speed. I haven't looked back since. I'm faster than ever. And I can still use Qwerty keyboard, albeit with a few difficulties.

You could even rearrange the layout at work. Like I did.

More info on Dvorak

I do realise that converting to a typewriter is great in itself, but for many reasons Dvorak beats anything else out there.

Greetings,
The Coward.

If you're going to get that attached to a keyboard, you might as well make it a Dvorak keyboard. (But does anyone actually use those anymore?)

I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, and my wife doesn't. When I'm not glued to my laptop we share a desktop machine and tend to switch often. It has a DvortyBoard, which is hardwired to switch between the two layouts with a keypress, and is dual-labeled, but the dual labeling is confusing to my wife because she looks at the keys. Something like this would be a godsend for her.

This article shows the various articles disputing this notion.

The reason why QWERTY was invented is to slow typists down, in order that the hammers did not stick.

Dvorak layouts are designed for speed and ergonomics. How's that not better than QWERTY?

There's a good commentary on the Liebowitz article here.

What the hell would they know about ergonomics? They where the ones who argued that Microsoft's monopoly was good for the economy.

Try this!

http://www.independent.org/tii/news/liebowitz_econ omist.html

Liebowitz's article does not debunk anything. It merely gives evidence that some studies were flawed, puts forward its own flawed and ambiguous studies, and entirely ignores the compelling non-empirical arguments for Dvorak's superiority. (Do you not believe anything that has not been established by studies?) Let's not even mention the fact that Liebowitz has a strong prejudice about market efficiency to support (oops, mentioned it!).

Marcus Brooks has a longer rebuttal. I actually do not find it totally satisfactory either, but it should certainly make clear that Liebowitz has little credibility.

The authors of the cited article have an interest in denying the existence of "path dependence" so that they can argue that the most popular product is always the best. (I'm a libertarian, and have no love of government, but I can't agree to that.) For balance it might also be worth looking at this web page.

See this page for a good debunking of the Fable of the Keys article. Basically their whole analysis was biased from the start and logically flawed (circular logic, etc.).

Interested in why the DVORAK keyboard layout (which I am fluent in as well as QWERTY) was not standard, I read Liebowitz's and Margolis's paper (linked in the article). It was a classic case of economists bending facts and commonsense to fit their theories (or, more accurately, their beliefs). To see a reply to this paper go here . I'm not suprised that this pseudo-scientist is supporting a system (DRM) which will make 1984 look like a picnic. I just hope he doesn't read the earlier slashdot article about "blocking the analog hole" - it could give him ideas.

Let me provide a preemptive response to the inevitable post that will disagree with the parent post:

Whenever someone claims that the Dvorak layout is superior, there is usually a response that relies on the article The Fable of the Keys by Liebowitz and Margolis.

The Fable is written by two economists. They rebut the claim that the failure of the Dvorak keyboard to replace the QWERTY layout represents a market failure. Essentially, they say that Dvorak isn't much better than QWERTY so there was no real advantage to it, and it added costs.

I have no doubt that Liebowitz and Margolis are first rate economists, and that they know all sorts of things about nework effects and market externalities. What I do strongly oppose is their misreading of the cognitive psychology literature, and their unsubstantiated and overblown attacks on August Dvorak.

I am a cognitive psychologist. I've read the literature. I understand my field, and it is apparent that the bias that Liebowitz and Margolis bring to their evaluation of the literature taints their paper. I make no claims about their economic arguments, but they have done their readers a great disservice by unfairly treating their subject (whether out of malice, bias, or incompetance).

For a decent layman's response to The Fable, check out this page

</rant>

The bottom line is that Dvorak is about 10% faster than QWERTY, given the same training. This is substantial, but one must consider that most of the time it takes to compose a document is not typing time, but rather content generation (e.g., thinking about what to say). Therefore, someone like a transcriptionist would benefit from a superior layout more than a typical knowledge worker. In addition, there's pretty good evidence that Dvorak error rates are significantly lower than QWERTY rates. This isn't as much an issue with computers as it was with old typewriters (it takes more time use use whiteout than it does to hit the Backspace key). There have been claims that Dvorak layouts reduce the likelihood of RSIs. There haven't been any really good studies, and it is unlikely that there will be (given the small number of Dvorak users)

I use a Dvorak layout, and I enjoy it for a number of reasons:

* I type a bit faster, but it is probably due to the fact that I engaged in dedicated practice when I learned to type Dvorak.
* People don't ask to use my computer
* I gained a lot of insight about the process of skill acquisition when I learned the new layout.

Oh, and I can still type pretty decently on QWERTY keyboards.

Or, better yet, learn dvorak. I know a quite a few people with carpal tonal problems that switched and quit having trouble. A couple of good links:

http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/
This site has a lot of general information about it.

http://www.karelia.com/abcd/
This is a really good tutorial that I used. I was able to switch in about three days.

Nope - I noticed the same problems. On my Athlon, 2.4.10 compiles *sometimes*, depending on what options I set (sometimes I have had to resort to compiling for PIII instead of Athlon). Even then, when I install it and reboot, sometimes I get a kernel panic. I've noticed no discernable pattern to it.

I'm compiling with GCC 3.01 (maybe that has something to do with it). And like you, 2.4.9 seemed to work fine....
Mike

Typed damn fast with the Dvorak keyboard layout

http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/dissent.html

The pain around my knuckles and center of the top part of my hand got bad enough that I had to have an intern read/write e-mails for me at work. And rather then being a senior systems admin, I did staff training for various technical topics. Yippy. I took two weeks off of typing, and did a lot of research. This is what I ended up doing:

1) Kinesis Contour Keyboard . I was highly skeptical of this keyboard, being $250... but my hand pains were enough that I would try anything. I got it for home, the one with dual-dvorak/qwerty caps. I now swear by this keyboard so much that I would rather give up my Athlon and go back to a 486/33 if it was the only way to keep this keyboard. I then had work buy me one. It's hard to learn a new keyboard if it changes depending on where you are :) The primary advantage of this keyboard is no matter what keys you hit, your hands never move. Things that don't move, don't get stressed. I've also got some good photos of it's inards and some closeups.

2) Dvorak Keyboard Layout . I took the dive when I bought my Kinesis and immediately began learning Dvorak. Having my keyboard labeled with dual-dvorak/qwerty keys helped me a lot. Un-learning 12 years of QWERTY was by no means easy, but worth it. It was very rough to learn (took about 3 weeks to get back to normal speed), but because your fingers don't have to move as much for english words, my fingers are under a lot less stress. Doesn't help much with perl though, but Ruby's nicer syntax means my hands contort less anyways. Oh, you don't lose your qwerty skills. Whenever I type on a normal keyboard, my hand things qwerty. It associated Dvorak with the Kinesis keyboard.

3) Contour Systems Perfit Mouse . This was almost as important as the keyboard. It amazed me what a difference this made. These mice are custom to your hands. I got two 3-button mice for 7-inch hands, one lefty and one righty. I use the left handed mouse at home (my natural hand), and the right handed at work. It took some training on my right hand, but the balance makes it much less hurtful. I still get pains going to Microsoft mice or trackballs. I can't stress how excellently designed these are for your hands. Rather then pushing the end of your finger to click, you apply a very light pressure in the middle of your fingers. Less movement is less stress is less pain.

4) xwrits . This is software to remind you to take keyboard breaks. You can install it straight from /usr/ports/deskutils/xwrits in FreeBSD. This is the .xsession command line I use:

xwrits typetime=50 +finger=japanese +clock +mouse +beep +breakclock +multiply +top &

I'm going to have to set it so that locks me out of my workstation soon. I often will type "killall xwrits". Anyways, that's what I ended up doing for my situation. I can now type again quite happily, though I still get pains on normal qwerty keyboards like the one I'm on ATM at a friends house. Hand damage really sucks, I miss being able to use laptops without pain. Now I have to drag this Kinesis around.

IF YOU FEEL PAIN - STOP - TAKE BREAKS - FIX YOUR SITUATION! SEE A DOCTOR!. I cannot stress this enough. Not fixing this earlier has cost me.

Hi there!

I sort of agree with the poster who said you really should be able to use a keyboard with more resistance. It's a question of preference, of course, but you shouldn't get any muscular problems from a heavier touch sensitivity, unless you already have them from somewhere else.

I am a piano player, and my experience is that high resistance can be confortable ... gives you more dynamic control ... but that wouln't be very useful for a keyboard would it? lol, it would be cool with a keyboard where you just punched harder for capital letters.

Seriously, if you feel adventuresome, you might want to try out a Dvorak keyboard. They have a different keyboard layout, but are said to be very comfortable to use once you've aquired the knack. All right, so it's a bit eccentric, but if you use your own keyboard most of the time anyway it's worth a look.

Exactly one year ago I made the switch from Qwerty to Dvorak. This was not because of an uncontrolled scientific study or evidence that my fingers would move less. I switched because I saw people typing on Internet Relay Chat faster than I thought possible. Some of them were typing so fast that they even punctuated! As a long time piano player and computer user, it was very difficult for me to accept the fact that other people could type circles around me.

Questioning those who could type faster than myself led me to Dvorak and gave me an unfounded sense of confidence. Initially, the going was slow, but before Christmas break was over I could type fast enough that I wouldn't have to write my English papers in Qwerty. Now, I type about 30 wpm faster than I used to (75-105).

I'm not saying Dvorak is better for everyone. I was still young - 16 years old - and admittedly not that fast a Qwerty typer when I switched. However, the Dvorak keyboard layout was a really positive experience for me and I feel I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't share my experience.

I haven't been reading slashdot for that long, so it's likely that my argument has already been stated. I'm sorry for wasting your time if this is the case, but the fact that informed people still use Qwerty leads to the assumption that the advantages of Dvorak haven't been thoroughly explained.

Anyways, if you're even considering the switch to Dvorak, do it now. Today. It's Christmas break and I gauruntee that you can achieve acceptable speeds before the holidays are over. While I can't provide controlled, scientific proof that Dvorak is superior, it has helped me out considerably and trying it is free. The website that got me started is here.

Here is an article by two economists that rather thoroughly demolishes the claimed superiority of Dvorak

And here is a page addressing the myths your source has perpetuated.

I find it hard to believe that people are so stubborn about admitting these things. A little commmon sense and a simple look at a DVORAK keyboard shows that it would be easier to type on once you've learned it. For crying out loud -- all of the vowels are kept in the under one hand in the home row!

A few years ago, I tried getting used to the dvorak keyboard layout. I converted my keyboard, I did their excercises, I regained about 70% of my typing speed.

But the problem was, sitting at another computer and going to a qwerty layout. And then going to work and sitting down at the qwerty layout.

I never got to see if I could really improve my typing speed because My mind didn't play well with typing on two different formats. I type with instinct on the qwerty layout and never consciously think of where the keys are, this is from years of typing. I don't think I could get used to anything else, especially since I use about 30 different workstations at work, I don't think they'd let me switch to a new keyboard format on all of them......