Advocating Dvorak

zeroweb writes "A group of three faithful Dvorak promoters have launched new website at DvZine.org. The big thing here is a Comic (available in print, pdf and html) describing the history of QWERTY and Dvorak, how and why one should make the switch, and real-life stories of the converted. If you are thinking about making the switch, this could push you over the edge. My favorite line: "It could be the difference between working in your garden at 70 or wearing wrist braces at 40." As someone who started wearing wrist braces at 23, I couldn't agree more - I read this comic, changed my keyboard layout and have been happier ever since."

Comments

funny you should say that

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to wear wrist braces because of my QWERTY keyboard as well. Sincerly, Kevin Mitnick

Oh, That Dvorak!

[njfuzzy]

At first, I thought this was about that horrible Internet Troll who calls himself a journalist.

Only going to work if it became standard

[syousef]

Bottom line is the last thing I need at work is to not be able to use anyone else's computer because I'm use to a non-standard keyboard layout. I refuse to use shortcut keys on non-standard keyboards for the same reasons.

I've been working in IT for a good number of years now without needing wrist braces, all the while using QWERTY. I know a lot of other people who haven't suffered this fate. I'm not saying no one has ever had this problem but when you exaggerate risks like this its called FUD/scaremongering.

Re:Only going to work if it became standard

[treff89]

Dude, I use Dvorak full-time at home, and wherever else possible. Since I can touch-type, I can also quickly change the drivers. EVEN IF I must type with QWERTY, I have only lost a few WPM compared to when I used it all the time. Dvorak eclipses it in terms of speed by an exponential amount. Don't be so stubborn if you haven't tried it!

Re:Only going to work if it became standard

[bigtallmofo]

My history of typing (all on QWERTY):

First learned to type on my Commodore 64 when I was 10.
My first year of typing class in high school, I typed 70 WPM while my typing teacher typed 65 WPM.
My second year of typing class, I was up to about 90 WPM.
My third year of typing class, I was up to about 110 WPM.

I'm a 33-year old professional programmer with 15 years professional experience and now type over 130 WPM. I've never had a single problem with wrist or hand pain until about 3 months ago. I started having all kinds of numbness in my hand and pain in my wrist. Needless to say, I freaked out. The problem went from nothing to seriously impeding me in a matter of days.

Considering I never believed that carpal tunnel syndrome or other wrist problems existed previously, I was quite surprised. After a few weeks with fiddling with various things (using wrist straps at night, using Microsoft Natural Multimedia keyboard, taking B vitamins, etc.) I'm now symptom free. Pretty much the only thing I do now is use the MS Natural keyboard both at work and home and that seems to keep any problems at bay.

The bottom line is, just because you don't have any symptoms now doesn't mean that you won't sometime soon. Trust me, you'll be quite surprised if it happens.

Re:Only going to work if it became standard

[goatpunch]

Bottom line is the last thing I need at work is to not be able to use anyone else's computer because I'm use to a non-standard keyboard layout.

I use Dvorak full-time at home, and wherever else possible. Since I can touch-type, I can also quickly change the drivers. EVEN IF I must type with QWERTY, I have only lost a few WPM compared to when I used it all the time.

I switched to Dvorak 5 or 6 years ago. Never changed the keycaps- I was previously a Qwerty touch-typist and found that within a few weeks I was up to and perhaps surpassing my previous Qwerty speed. I switched back to Qwerty after a couple of months.

A couple of points I can add to the discussion:

• I found that, while Dvorak may be 'faster', flat-out typing speed is rarely the limiting factor when I am working, if I'm writing code or any text that I want to sound decent my fingers usually have to pause occasionally while my brain catches up. If I was transcribing large blocks of other people's writing typing speed would be more important, but for me there wasn't that much difference.
• Other people's keyboards- this is the reason that I switched back to Qwerty. It's all very well to be happily chugging along at 80wpm on your own machine, but when you have to sit down at your boss's desk for 2 minutes to look into a problem, and you're slowly hunt-and-peck typing, it's rather embarassing. Even if you install the drivers and/or switch keyboards on their machines, it's a pain for them if you forget to switch back ("What did you do to my fing keyboard?")
• Qwerty is a standard, and as anyone who uses the internet knows, sometimes a sub-optimal standard is better than a superiour non-standard solution.

I would only recommend the switch to Dvorak if: A) the geek factor of using an alternate layout is enough that the problems are worth it, or B) if you rarely have to switch machines, and you do a lot of typing at full speed, or C) you have room in your head for 2 keyboard layouts at once, and can switch at will.

Re:Only going to work if it became standard

[SuperQ]

I'm 27, and I started having a bit of hand pain from typing at work. I re-adusted my keyboard on my desk, raised my chair a couple inches, and the problem has mostly gone away.. having good typing posture is esential when you sit in front of a computer 8+ hours a day.

Re:Only going to work if it became standard

[Coryoth]

One of the best programmers I've met, who could turn out good code at least as fast as anyone else I've ever met, typed with his feet (he had cerebral palsy). Sure, his WPM rate wasn't as high as most, but give him a decent editor and he'd fly along - mostly because he could think through his code very efficiently.

Typing speed for coding is vastly overrated.

Jedidiah.

I made the switch years ago

[Underholdning]

I'va nver bnee hpaiper in my lfie! Dovark hsa cahgned my tpyign seped imenmsly!

Staying away for now.

[AtariAmarok]

I stay away from such keyboards as Dvorak and "Natural". Not because they are a bad idea. Rather, it is because I only want to be able to have to know one keyboard. If I learn Dvorak, I'd still have to frequently use QWERTY due to the other keyboards I have to use that are still QWERTY this. Is it easy to be proficient at both and switch back-and-forth at ease, or does the confusion result in rmmre o erf rree rkjdkc yt wpodcxs?

Crackpots?

[kzinti]

I haven't RTFA yet (it's printing now), but I can tell you as a longtime Dvorak user that we're viewed as crackpots and we have little credibility with the QWERTY types. So I hope that if these guys are making medical claims that they have some real medical evidence to back up their claims, and not just the kind of anecdote mentioned in the Slashdot teaser. I've used Dvorak for 13 years and I can type faster than I could in QWERTY and the keyboard feels more comfortable. But that doesn't mean that it will be so for everybody, and it certainly doesn't mean that Dvorak will reduce anybody's likelihood of damaging their wrists. Caveat emptor.

DVORAK for real world, SysAdmin/Programming uses?

[Blymie]

Someone should do a study of how fsck, dir, cd, ifconfig and other "stuff" works into dvorak.

These words often have none or few vowels.

One key line in the comic:

"Come on! How often do you type a semi-colon??? It's a wasted key! On the home row no less!"

Guess what ;) I type a _lot_ of semi-colons. Bash scripting, PERL coding, you name it.

Honestly, it would be amusing to see how DVORAK stacks up, when programming and sysadmin tasks are taken into account. DVORAK could be a detrement in these cases...

Re:Dvorak is very good

[njcoder]

If you're a developer, imagine how much faster you'll be if Das Keyboard starts making blank Dvorak keyboards!!!

Even more fun. Imagine how silly people will feel when they sit down at your keyboard and try to type something.

Re:Dvorak is very good

[squiggleslash]

Hah, Dvorak's old hat man! It's so 1990s. I personally use the Gentoo keyboard, where my typing's 5-10% faster than Dvorak or Qwerty. That's because instead of it being one keyboard layout for everyone, the keys are actually reordered for every application in the most optimal layout.

With Qwerty or Dvorak, you have to use the same keys regardless of what the program is you're using them with. The "Q", for example, on a QWERTY keyboard, is always in the top left (on English language layouts. It's "A" that's in the top left for French "AZERTY" keyboards.)

However, with Gentoo, the keys move around. So, for example, in OpenOffice.org, because I have to type "O" a lot, the "O" is right there where the "D" is in a QWERTY keyboard. The "Q", on the other hand, is assigned to F2, because I rarely need it.

Some have criticised the layout, arguing that the 5% efficiency increase is more than offset by the fact that you have to spend a day compi^H^H^H^H^Hlearning the new layout. This may be a problem for some people, but if you do a lot of typing, it's obvious that this is much more efficient. And besides, you can always let it run overnight, with you learning how to type using the new layout when you'd normally be wasting time asleep.

You should try it. I find the best performance is with -funroll-fingers -O102.

My findings

[kahei]

As someone who does a lot of typing and is willing to spend a lot of time and money on ergonomic stuff (because I'm lazy and stupid), I have typed on a lot of strange things over the years to a pretty high rate of wpm. My findings have been:

1 -- The shift from Dvorak to Qwerty did not greatly increase my speed or accuracy. It made me a bit more comfortable, but learning it was total torture for about 2 months.

2 -- Learning Dvorak does not mean you forget Qwerty. I can flip between them now -- in fact, the varying placement of the shift key gives me more trouble.

3 -- None of these layouts is designed for programming in curly-brace languages :)

4 -- The difference in using a well-shaped keyboard (KINESIS!) is much greater than that between different letter key layouts.

5 -- Much of the hand strain I have suffered has to do with reaching for nonletter keys (cursor keys, and the backspace key) -- fixed by a Kinesis, but not by Dvorak.

6 -- Habits and posture (not resting hand on the keyboard etc) count for about as much as the ergonomics of the actual keyboard.

My suggestion therefore is: first fix your posture and find a way to stop reaching around for the backspace and arrow keys. If you crave more efficiency, get a kinesis. If you STILL demand utter total perfection, try Dvorak, but by that point you will be putting in a fair bit of work for what you gain.

Other people's mileage may, of course, vary. There's no doubt that Dvorak is more efficient and comfy -- but there's a serious cost/benefit calculation to be made.

P.S. Yay for Kinesis.

Yes, of course

[ToadMan8]

First, allow me to admonish your hasty conclusion.

On this page http://www.koniaris.com/dvorak/ there is a discussion about distance of finger movement. The test document was the Unabomber's Mannifesto. The results:

* Typing the Unabomber Manifesto in QWERTY costs about 5.7km (XY).
* Typing the Unabomber Manifesto in Dvorak costs about 3.3km (XY).

In terms of planar movement Dvorak is more efficient. Then, for the pain standpoint, one must decide for themselves if moving up a row (above home row) is more comfortable, or would one rather move down a row. Personally I hate that bottom row - it compounds what rock climbing does to my wrists. I am much more pain-free on Dvoark, and I still have the ability to switch mid-sentance back to qwerty and not think about it, making other peoples' computers easy.

There are a ton of studies of varying levels of scientific valitidy. This was my first decent result of quick google search. The bottom line is it's thought out, and thus better, but people don't want to re-learn 'till QWERTY hurts them.

The best answer is in TFA itself!

[zanderredux]

I just love the following pro argument (on page 25):

Nobody worries that their English gets worse because they learned Spanish

This is sensacional! My english got so much mejor, ya no can hablar two lenguajes at same tiempo!

Re:Dvorak is very good

[mcgroarty]

But seriously, DVORAK is _so_ much more efficient, and typing actually becomes a pleasure.

This is the part where you move from advocate to fanatic. Seriously. You sound like the Mac or Firefox evangelist who spends half an hour showing how cool his tool is, changes someone's mind by revealing how it can be useful, then changes it back by going all weepy over it and making it clear this isn't about the tool qua tool. Big neon culty warning signs.

Dvorak sucks if you're not American.

[Vo0k]

Not because it was made with usage of characters in ENGLISH on mind. Okay, that is a problem, say, if you are a Finn and the vovels + k make up 80% of your language. But in many countries the frequency is at least similar to English.
The problem is support. Keymaps with "native" characters. On install you see a whole list of keymaps for different countries, but all of them are variants of QWERTY, be it QWERTZ, AZERTY or similar. A non-US Dvorak is a rare. At one time I thought about switching. In Polish we have a bunch of extra characters that are laid out in pretty obvious manner - all are derivatives of some english characters and pressing the alt+original character produces the extra one, alt+o=ó etc. Pretty simple? Yes, and could be easily ported to Dvorak. But it wasn't. I'm left out in the cold, no Dvorak-PL for me.

Re:DVORAK for real world, SysAdmin/Programming use

[mcgroarty]

If you're typing fsck often enough to worry over speed, you've got bigger problems than your key layout.

Re:Dvorak is very good

[Ford Prefect]

However, with Gentoo, the keys move around. So, for example, in OpenOffice.org, because I have to type "O" a lot, the "O" is right there where the "D" is in a QWERTY keyboard. The "Q", on the other hand, is assigned to F2, because I rarely need it.

It sounds a bit similar to that new Microsoft keyboard, you know the one where it moves the keys round depending on which are most frequently used, and begins to hide those that haven't been used for a while.

Although it's probably a bit too revealing of (personal, as opposed to Unicode) character for some - a colleague's keyboard consists solely of the keys 'O', 'M', 'G', 'W', 'T' and 'F'.

I suppose it could be worse - the manager's keyboard is now a completely blank piece of plastic.

(Spider Blog: The spider has gone! It had made itself at home on a bank statement for several hours, but after I came back from lunch it was no longer there. More updates as things happen!)

Dvorak Learning Resources

[mnemonic_]

Utilities
Dvorak Assistant - Lets you change the Windows keyboard layout without administrator access. Useful for school lab computers.

Free Dvorak Tutor Software
KP Typing Tutor (Windows)
GNU Typist (*nix)

Online Dvorak Tutorials
A Basic Course in Dvorak - No frills tutorial, just make sure you repeat the lessons until you're actually proficient. You won't learn anything drilling through them only once.
dvorak.nl tutorial - Very slick, remaps the keys for you if you want (convenient if you can't use Dvorak Assistant). Non-english languages available. Works better for experienced Dvorak typists.

Re:Not that Dvorak either!

[JustOK]

He's been dead for years. He's a decomposer now.

Re:DVORAK for real world, SysAdmin/Programming use

[helixblue]

As a system administrator who switched to Dvorak about 5 years ago (tendinitis), I was curious too. So, I piped my shell history (533 lines worth) to a file and ran it through a finger movement calculator. The results are as follows:

Dvorak: Total strokes are 14613 and total distance is 19593.6341607972.

QWERTY: Total strokes are 14869 and total distance is 26349.32260203948.

So, there you have it. If you're a UNIX admin who uses QWERTY, you are moving your fingers around 34% more than a Dvorak administrator, at least if you're using commands similar to mine.

Re:Dvorak is very good

[ChuckleBug]

You sound like the Mac or Firefox evangelist who spends half an hour showing how cool his tool is, changes someone's mind by revealing how it can be useful, then changes it back by going all weepy over it and making it clear this isn't about the tool qua tool. Big neon culty warning signs.

I don't understand this mentality. If someone convinces you something works, why would you decide to discard that simply because the person who convinced you turned out to be annoying? Either he's right or wrong. Why does the attitude of the messenger enter into it?

I agree that zealots are annoying. That doesn't mean they're always wrong, though.