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.

I made the switch years ago

[Underholdning]

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

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.

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!

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.

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!

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: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.