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Back and Forth Between Qwerty and Dvorak?
jamesh asks: "I'm interested in switching over to an alternate keyboard layout, probably Dvorak, before I begin to suffer any effects of RSI. I'm almost 30 and have been typing since I was about 8, and these days spend most of my workday in front of a computer, typing away at a keyboard. I've searched the Internet and most people's comments are that within a few months they were up to or faster than their previous speed, with better accuracy. I'm mostly a programmer, but I do spend time at client sites and do need to spend time at various users computers to have a look at whatever hole they've dug themselves into, and so I will need to switch between QWERTY and Dvorak mode fairly frequently.
What others have found when switching back and forth, as required? Can you mentally just flip back between them, or do you 'lose' your QWERTY skills and become 'hunt & peck' when faced with the old keyboard layout?"
It can't be THAT hard to get the title right, can it?
Lasers Controlled Games!
If you're serious, then rather than Dvorak, choose one of the layouts specifically designed to help RSI. The leading contender is probably the Maltron layout. The sculpted keyboard helps, too, but they're also available in more traditional flat models as well.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Have you considered carrying a USB dvorak kbd with you to your client sites? ;)
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
You must be using a new keyboard layout lol...
I tried the switch out last year when I was starting to get RSI. Despite what people say, you can mentally flip between Qwerty and Dvorak without much of a problem. I noticed my Qwerty speed slowed down some because I'd hit a wrong key occasionally, but nothing major. Just make sure you have a good two weeks when you don't need to type much else. I used this site to learn dvorak.
In the end, I really just stopped using Dvorak. I got over the beginning effects of RSI by not typing much and keeping my wrists straight when I did. Posture's important, too. But my typing speed in Dvorak never exceeded my Qwerty speed, so I just stopped using it. I can still type around 20 wpm with Dvorak, but I really don't have a use for it.
For linux users: "setxkbmap dvorak" and "setxkbmap en_US"
What is Qwery? And why no mention of Dork?
...seems you're having enough trouble just with QWERTY as it is.
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/ 14/126222&tid=227
...I found I could no longer ride a bike without training wheels.
That said, Dvorak is a poor choice if you're doing any punctuation-heavy programming (perl, C, java, ...). The placement of the braces and continuance operators alone will drive you batty -- Dvorak was designed for a world where you were lucky to use either in a day, rather than several times per line.
it comes back to you... kind of like switching between a telephone and a keyboard number pad and typing phone numbers. alternating keyboards is a lot like riding different bicycles... it's just much harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.
if you want people to think you know what you are talking about, just put ".com" at the end of everything you say.com
Methinks the editor has switched keyboard layouts recently, so ask him.
I switched to dvorak about 5 years ago with a kenisis keyboard. I definately like it a lot better than querty...but I have no real problem switch between the two...as long as you go back to querty once in a while you should not have a problem. I would say that my querty speed has only dropped by about 20% and my dvorak speed is about 50% faster than my original querty speed. Just make sure you get used to the means to switch the layouts if you plan on playing games...I have to use querty to play WoW.
My comments may be crap...but they are my crap...and I am brave enough to stand by them...Never post as AC!
You can switch between QWERTY and DVORAK keyboard layouts in the international preferences pane.
Frg mgoy x. hrtcbiv Dr, dape jab cy x.Z S[) :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
cjl mrj os xae
0x68ADA2CC
Switching back and forth is surprisingly easy.
What I find funny is that certain computers I use are usually Dvorak and others are usually Qwerty, and this causes no problems. But trying to type Qwerty on a usually-Dvorak keyboard is painful.
I switched about 3 years ago and it was a lot of work for me. I'm very glad I did and I wouldn't switch back. I struggle on QWERTY now though so if I'm going to do serious typing (long term, not just fixing a computer) I need to switch it over to Dvorak. Many of my friends I have gotten to switch were able to do so in 2 weeks and be up a full speed. They can also switch back to QWERTY without any effort and prefer the Dvorak layout. I'm very glad I switched and I definitely notice less strain but everyone's mileage is going to vary.
I used to type at about 60 wpm on qwerty, within 2 weeks (I went cold turkey, not allowing myself to type qwerty at all) I passed that on dvorak, settling in somewhere around 80-90 wpm. At that time, I could barely type qwerty anymore. But now, 2 years later, my qwerty skills have recovered to about 50wpm. I find it very hard to type qwerty on my computer, and it takes me a few minutes to get used to it if I am able to type dvorak on other people's machines. Somewhere in my brain my computers got connected with dvorak, and all others to qwerty.
I HIGHLY recommend the switch. I type faster, and can do so for longer.
Learning another typing layout doesn't make you lose your ability to type on a Qwerty keyboard anymore than learning German might make you forget how to speak English.
That said, you might not be quite as good a Qwerty typer as you were originally, just like how learning a new language occasionally introduces a little bit of confusion in your mind. For the most part you're just as proficient though and potentially better off because of what knowing something new (language or keyboard layout).
Get a Kinesis keyboard, they are damn expensive but keeps you from having to deal with dvorak.
Meh.
I really learned Dvorak at the same time I got my first Kinesis Ergonomic (the fingerbowl) keyboard 5 years ago. I had played around with Dvorak on and off since the Apple IIc (which had a Dvorak switch!) days.
Now, I type effectively on Dvorak on the Kinesis. I still type pretty good QWERTY on a normal keyboard (and a common 'split' keyboard is normal after the Kinesis). I can get my fingers to do Dvorak on a flat keyboard with some effort (sometimes I put the laptop in Dvorak, sometimes not). But, I can not, for the life of me, type QWERTY on a Kinesis keyboard. Mind you, I like Dvorak enough that I haven't tried for days on end, but my fingers are programmed for the Dvorak when they feel the Kinesis.
I doubt that I'll ever lose QWERTY skill, no matter how long I use the Dvorak. After all, I could type at a reasonable clip as a four-year-old. (When I occasionally deal with children, I have to remember that my hyperlexic reading-at-two was the abnormal situation).
Maybe he made the typo on purpose, to emphasize the question? Kinda hard to miss a key if you go in a straight line, eh?
Take a break from typing for a while. Take the time off work if need be. (Could probably be sick days.)
I have no problems flipping back and forth between the two layouts. It's a lot like 2 languages - I can say one sentence in English and the next sentence in Spanish without any problem, so why not keyboard layouts?
With that said, if you totally switch over to Dvorak, your Qwerty skills will get rusty - just like if I don't speak a foriegn language for a while I'll start to forget parts of it. My solution is to have my main machines Dvorak, and let the lesser used machines, and machines that would be hard to switch (like laptops) stay Qwerty. That way, I get practice in both layouts on a daily basis, while still enjoying the benefits of Dvorak most of the time.
My car has a manual gearbox, my parents' car is automatic, and quite often I have a to drive a fork lift (which is a WHOLE new ball game). And I haven't run over anybody just yet. Just get on with it, simple as a that.
please excuse my apathy
There is a fascinating article in reason magazine debunking the myth of DVORAK's superiority, and it's common use as a poster child for so-called 'market failure'.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Here's an article and discussion on the topic: An Arguement for Dvorak
I wonder if slashdot fans are as tender about linking to Kuro5hin as Kuro5hin fans are about linking to Slashdot. Let's find out.
I use both without really thinking about it now. The best reason to use Dvorak: Watching your friend's heads explode when they sit down to use your computer.
Someone needs to contact Penn and Teller and ask them to do a segment on the Dvorak layout. Why? Because they have a TV show on shotime called BULLSHIT that debunks thinks like the dvorak keyboard layout. If anyone cares to put this fairytale bullshit to the test PLEASE share your results. I've tried dvorak and it didn't do me a damn bit of good. It's kind of like trying to learn japanese by watchni dragon ball z, except there really is no benefit.
Do you even read Slashdot? Ever? This is an absurdly recurring discussion.
It's like deja vu all over again all over again.
I used to have to switch between French and British layouts on a regular basis. Now I have no problems with British and Dvorak. I have more difficulties with the physical positioning of keys between my laptop and Microsoft Natural keyboards...
The "natural" keyboards that split in the middle try and do that as well, but it's completely unnecessary to split the keyboard. It's just a matter of getting used to your hands at an angle to the keys.
I think tendon stress and inflammation comes from forcing the tendons to bend while using your fingers. Seriously -- the layout doesn't matter as much as your wrist position (think about it -- it's the pressing of the keys, not the moving of the fingers
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I just about never use qwerty, but when I do, it usually takes a few minutes for me to readjust. I have to look at the keyboard a bit, but after a while I start typing pretty fast with few mistakes. In fact, I started writing this post in dvorak, then finished it in qwerty.
The main thing stopping me from trying dvorak is that I use VI all the time and have gron used to the 'hjkl' keys vs arrows. Is there any different adjustments for dvorak on VI?
dvorak was really nice and typing with qwerty seems really uncomfortable and strained now, but I wouldn't go dvorak again, at least not for a college student or anyone who uses other people's keyboards a lot.
Maybe others can learn dvorak while still typing qwerty a lot, idunno.
I find that I can switch back and forth between QWERTY (for English) and AZERTY (for French) pretty easily.
You may want to consider the SafeType keyboard.
It gives you ergonomic benefits that no "ergonomic" bump-in-the-middle keyboard comes close to.
Besides, does Dvorak make that much of a difference? Sure, the layout might be marginally better but you're still twisting your wrists 90 degrees to make your hands parallel with it (pronation), you're then angling your elbows in 45 degrees and your hands back out 45 degrees to line up with it (deviation), and you're still, likely, tilting it (extension)putting even more stress on.
A better arrangement of keys is only going to do so much for you. At the end of the day, you've still got extension, deviation and pronation going on - even if you're marginally reducing stress within those three.
The SafeType sorts all three out. Lower your arms by your sides. Now lift your forearms up so your elbows are at 90 degrees. Nothing else. That's it. You're done. Your arms are in a massively more neutral position, your carpal tunnel is now straight, letting the tendons run through without rubbing against it, all is good in your world. Wouldn't you prefer a keyboard like that to one that's just as bad as every other keyboard with a marginally better layout?
The other advantage of the SafeType is that, if you can already touch type, once you stop overthinking it, you can already use it. All the keys are still in the QWERTY position - they're just broken in to two vertical blocks. Most people I've watched are up and using it within ten minutes, typing naturally within an hour or so.
That advantage translates in to backwards compatability - you're still using QWERTY so you can transfer to a client site without ever having to make a mental switch.
I've tried a lot of ergonomic options and this one's by far the best. It's not cheap - at about $300. Then again, if you're worth anything as a developer, you likely earn that in a single day or less. Isn't one day's pay worth ensuring your career last another 20 years? One day's pay is a lot less than no more days' pay.
(Note: I reviewed the keyboard for one of the IEEE magazines. At the time I was impressed but had enough minor issues that I regarded it as only useful for those who had problems they needed to immediately address. After the review, I kept using it - and I'm completely willing to admit I was wrong. It's a great keyboard and, honestly, well worth the price for anyone who works with computers all day every day.)
I've used DVORAK for 10 years after 15 years on QWERTY. With all due regard to Reason magazine, my RSI disappeared, my speed improved, and the number of typos I made went down significantly. Try typing "the cat is on the mat" or any sentence in DVORAK and QWERTY and you'll quickly conclude that the Reason article is thoroughly misguided. Keeping your fingers on home row makes a huge differenec. As far as switching back and forth, yes it can be done. The only weird thing is that since I learned DVORAK on a QWERTY keyboard, can't name the keys aloud or point to a given letter if I'm asked, I have to type the appropriate letter first. This is actually a good thing since it means I never look at my keys.
I have used Dvorak for a few weeks or months several times in the past. It takes me a about a week of daily practice or two weeks of practing an hour or so every other day to get back to touch-typing Dvorak above 50 wpm (I touch type Qwerty at 110 WPM with 3% error).
I have no trouble switching back and forth, although when I switch from one terminal to another I'll usually type a whole line of gibberish before I remember which layout I'm supposed to be using. It boils down to remembering several common 'chords' on both layouts (the, iou, tio, sh etc.) plus the locations of less frequently used individual letters. It helps that the numbers and associated shift characters are the same; for me, the biggest pain is the differnt '?' key which isn't really easy to hit on either layout.
However, I'm not sure I'd use Dvorak to alleviate RSI rather than getting a better chair/desk/keyboard - I do it to type faster with fewer errors. Plus, it's a lot of fun to watch other people try to use my machine (I don't usually switch the physical keys).
If you have RSI/carpal tunnel : get a chair that's the right height for your desk and practice holding your wrists an inch or two off your desk while you type, with the weight of your forarms naturally suspending below your shoulders - I learned this in grade school keyboarding class and have never had trouble with my hands due to typing, despite having arthritis all my life.
I had one summer internship which didn't give me privs to switch keyboard layouts and I had to jump back and forth between my home and work computer. It's annoying for the first few minutes of going back to qwerty but it's a breeze from there, meaning that I was up to full speed but I missed the comfort of dvorak.
One thing that's annoying is using the command line. For some reason it takes me longer to adjust to back qwerty for command line use than in other applications.
I've used Dvorak for about 9 years. My experience is that I touch-type Dvorak and hunt-and-peck in Qwerty (which I used to touch-type). I admit that I never tried to keep up my Qwerty.
It took a good month of practice to get my speed up, and probably a year before it really felt comfortable. I don't remember how long before my wrists felt better. They don't bother me now.
For a while, I think I felt physically a bit worse, because I carried slightly more tension when I was learning. I've had no reason to want to switch back.
Have you done other things to prevent RSI?
Things like making sure your desk and chair are the right height? Also it might make sense for you to not just change the layout, but change the keyboard. Either use a Microsoft Natural Keyboard or something like this: Maltron Keyboard
I use Dvorak, but occassionally use qwerty on my wife's computer. My qwerty skills really vary depending on how much I practice. If I use qwerty at least occasionally then I pick it up reasonably well after a bit of use.
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
Quit queuing! With qmail, you don't have queues, because it will figure out ways to (non-standardly) lose your mail!
P.S. If you want to lose mail standardly, there are many kludgy patches out there.
P.P.S. The only good thing about emacs is that it has vi compatibility mode.
Personally, I don't feel that the layout makes a significant difference in my accuracy. However, I do find that I can't type properly if I'm using another keyboard other than the one I have at home. It just feels different if I'm using a different keyboard - physically not layout wise - and it makes me have a lot of typos. Anyone else feel the same way?
I've used Dvorak as my primary keyboard layout for about a year and a half now (I'm typing in it now, in fact). Switching took a while -- about 2 weeks for my Dvorak speed to pass my QWERTY speed, but I'm never going back now.
However, I can't use it all the time. At work, I type in QWERTY about part the time. Switching back and forth for me is no problem. After a few keystrokes of thinking where each key is, I'm back up to my old QWERTY speed (which is slower than my Dvorak speed). Dvorak is more "natural" to me, and the QWERTY->Dvorak switch is much easier than the other way around.
I've noticed that if I think about which keys I'm typing, I tend to mess up the layouts, but if I don't think about it at all, I have no problem. I can't explain it any more than that.
The worst part about switching back and forth is the punctuation. A friend of mine that also made the switch commented to me on this, so it's obviously not just me. Maybe this is because punctuation is silent, and is learned a different way than other keys?
For most typing, this isn't a problem. The odd time I'll typo a period as a V or an E, but that's that's few and far between. Programming I can now only really do in Dvorak, because of how common punctuation is. However, I rarely do programming on any computer that I cannot switch to Dvorak, and so I just always use Dvorak for that.
I do recommend switching to Dvorak.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 Whoops, silly middle mouse button...
It's like deja vu all over again all over again.
Stop saying that!
faster with "telekenisis"?
I can assure you that using both systems is possible, though the learning curve can be tough. I've tried Dvorak several times, and have always preferred it, but it has only stuck since I started carrying around my (Dvorak-enabled) laptop. I use a primary computer, and then many other computers that I share with others, which, needless to say, are QWERTY-handicapped; now that I've shifted my workflow to primarily my own computer, Dvorak is here to stay. The key (pun intended) is to go all-Dvorak for however long it takes you to become natural with it. Then, QWERTY will be awkward at first--you'll have another learning curve--but will in short order settle out. It is sort of like having different passwords for different stations at work: at first, you need to think about it, but after a while it becomes automatic. Sometimes I find myself using the wrong keyset, but that's about as common as placing fingers on the wrong keys, which we all do at times anyhow.
As for the matter of whichever is faster, the question has had a history of controversy, with some studies showing that DV is much faster than QWERTY and some showing that the opposite is true, I think that in recent years there has been a compromise that DV offered a 4% (something really small) or so efficiency increase over the standard QWERTY.
Speed, however, is besides the point of why I like to use DV, as the real reason is comfort. I find that I can type for hours with absolutely no fatigue on DV, as my fingers rarely leave the home row (70% of the typing is done on the home row, opposed to the 30 or so percent on QWERTY), and my hands alternate keystrokes in a strumming pattern. (the vowels are on the left hand side, the common consonants are on the right hand side) I don't think there have been any studies confirming that DV decreases the risk of repetive movement injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, but it certainly can't be harmful, as there is much less movement associated with typing on Dvorak.
Give your hands a rest; learn the Dvorak simplified keyboard layout, and you'll wonder how you ever typed on Sholes' cheap hack known as QWERTY.
I swapped to dvorak a few years ago, and it took a couple of weeks of not being able to type effecively. Once I learnt the Dvorak, I've never been able to touch type QWERTY again, but then I've never tried to maintain the skill either. I don't think that Dvorak is the cure to all RSI. It's more efficient, and you can pump more words out for a given amount of finger movement, but at the end of the day, the fingers are doing much the same types of movements.
I think the biggest improvement that the Dvorak switch gave to me was a consciousness of typing, and an opportunity to learn again properly. The fact that there are QWERTY caps on the board forces you to never look at the keys and that really builds the foundation of doing it right. I think the very fact that there were the "wrong" letters printed on the keys had the indirect effect of pushing me into a better posture and hand positioning.
So maybe the RSI benefits observed in going to Dvorak are partly indirect, and can be obtained just by better concentration on hand posture and sitting posture, without going to the new layout. If you are in a position of having to use QWERTY at times, that may offer the better compromise.
Also, don't discount the power of switching to a different make of keyboard, and also swapping which thumb you use to press the space bar - and if you use a mouse - which hand moves the mouse. Those things can also have a significant effect.
I tried to make the switch to dvorak a while ago, and I found I got good pretty fast at typing text and word processing documents. By far the worst part though, were commands like ls -al which are very hard to relearn with a different layout. The show-stopper, however, was using VI. Vi assumes that you're using a querty layout, because the keys in command mode (like hjkl for left/up/down/right) aren't in logical positions when you're using a different keyboard. So until there's a widely available 'dvorak-mode' for Vi which reassigns the command mode keys to be whatever the old querty key in the same place would have been, I'm sticking with querty.
Watch out. There's plenty of evidence that Dvorak provides no/little benefits ergonomically and with typing speed. Some of it has been cited above.
Anyway, yeah, it's certainly possible for the brain to switch. If you switch between US and UK keyboards, or between Mac and PC keyboards, you need to be aware of a number of switched keys and key combos. I need to be aware of this even between programs! I sometimes use pico, where internal cut and paste are ctrl+k and ctrl+u.. yet most programs use cmd+x and cmd+v..
One thing I noticed was that even at the very beginning, when typing was maddeningly slow, it just... felt right. When my finger would hit a key, it just felt like that was where the key should be. Hard to explain, really, until you try it.
Of course I also found that QWERTY (man that's weird to type!) is a bit harder to get back into. I bet I'd have trouble typing it because the switch is still so new to me. But people seem to agree that after you start typing QWERTY for a few minutes it comes back to you. Frankly, after getting used to Dvorak, I've never saw the point of using QWERTY for even that long. :)
On your own computer, the best bet is to buy a vinyl CafePress sticker from DVZine. I printed out my own, and it looked awful and the glue melted. The CafePress stickers are a lot better.
I really don't know how well you'll be able to type QWERTY, but like I said I bet if you need to use it it'll come back after 10 minutes or so. That, or you could use a USB keyboard or something.
although they are not expected to ship until august
http://www.alphagrip.com/index.html
also with regards to RSI the Datahand is a very good
http://www.datahand.com/
Switching between two keyboard layouts is akin to switching between two musical instruments with some similarities but significant contrasts.
For example, switching between the violin and the viola requires one to learn a new clef (alto clef, if going to the viola) as well as distinctly different finger spacings. There is still enough similarity between the two instruments to make this analogous to switching between dvorak and qwerty: both are typing layouts which require the use of both hands, and both instruments require the right hand to bow and the left hand to finger; most people can't tell the difference because they are otherwise almost identical instruments.
I know of many masterful violinists who are also great violists. They have no trouble switching between the two.
If one takes time to learn qwerty and dvorak I don't think there should be an issue, unless you neglect one over the other for several weeks to a month or more.
-Foo
I switch natively between Dvorak and Qwerty, and between "standard", Kinesis, and DataHand.
FWIW, the rule I adopted was to use Dvorak on the Kinesis, and Qwerty on regular keyboards.
Learning a new keyboard, you want to use ONLY that keyboard for at least a month. Past that, it's not too bad, and I can switch back and forth instantly.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I mean, what are the chances of getting either keyboard layout wherever you sit before a computer?
/.ers should worry about other repetitive actions for RSI, of the one-handed surfing sort. Now there's a keyboard to create with a profit potential. The pr0n keyboard.
Sarcasm, but the idea is easy to get. I don't have a lot of choices, the choice is pretty much made for me by default. Do I get a choice of which side of the car I get my steering wheel? Not unless I move to another country or buy a surplus postal van.
The days of choosing between them are pretty much over and belong for me in the past with Mavis Beacon and Typing Attack and whatnot. QWERTY is the default.
Besides, I rather think
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
*Stick with QWERTY.
Or Dvorak, if you're used to Dvorak. Or whatever, really.
*Keep your wrists up.
Don't put them down while typing. Ever. A wrist rest is a poor man's substitute, and using it, your wrists still still get slightly tired. Your wrists should be around the same level as your knuckles.
I've camped out in my computer lab in college, worked as a Software Dev, will play marathon sessions of rogue-like games , have never used the "ergonomic keyboards", and yet I've NEVER had a twinge on my wrists. Why? Because I'd taken over a decade of piano training during my childhood, so I had the habit of keeping my wrists up, when pushing piano keys, and computer keys were not much different. For years, I'd honestly thought that RSI was a "bullshit disease" until I saw someone with a sling around his wrist.
Oh, you mean Residual Self Image, the mental projection of your digital self?
I've been using Dvorak for about three years now. I used to do tech support for several computer labs at a major university and I would type all day long. Like yourself, even though I used proper posture, aids, and so forth, my hands would hurt from all the constant typing at the end of the day.
m l
Once I switched over to Dvorak, I never had any pain again. I can type faster, longer, and more accurately now. For about a week during the transition, it sucked because my muscle memory was inbetween QWERTY and Dvorak, but once you get past that hurdle, you'll have no problems.
As part of my job, whenever I'm not on my machine, I have to type in QWERTY. That happens alot since, well, no one else but myself uses Dvorak. I've not lost any memory of QWERTY and I do not have to hunt and peck. You could say I'm bikeyboardal. It's just like knowing two languages. So long as you're speaking both, you're not going to forget either. Same with QWERTY and Dvorak.
Brooks' site is probably the best overall Dvorak site on the web:
http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/
There's also a yahoo message board, altkeyboards, where Dvorak newbies and oldies discuss all manner of minutiae about that layout and others:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/altkeyboards/
If you're still skeptical of the benefits of Dvorak, use this QWERTY/Dvorak comparison applet and see for yourself.
http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/compare.ht
I discovered dvorak a few years ago after a hand injury. I noticed that typing qwerty with an injured hand was very uncomfortable, but playing Quake 2 was not. The obvious (at the time) difference was that my Q2 keyboard layout was designed with all the useful keys grouped together, and the qwerty layout was the opposite.
More details at http://www.tarind.com/dvorak.html
For the last two years Ive been very happy with the dvorak layout. I strongly recommend it to anyone who spends their day behind a keyboard and can be bothered to spend a few minutes daily for a few weeks learning a new skill. There is no doubt that all my previous pains have stopped, typing speeds do not seem any different, and there is no problem switching back to qwerty for occasional tasks.
Earlier this year I was curious about whether the reduction in wrist pain is a coincidence, and I was disappointed that I didnt have the opportunity to measure typing speed before and after the switch. So, in the interest of science, I decided to switch back.
I have been measuring typing speeds since the beginning of June, and on June 24 I switched I switched to qwerty exclusively and plan to stick with it for a whole month. So far there is no significant change to typing speed, and nothing has started hurting.
I am definitely looking forward to the end of this month. My only use of the dvorak layout since the switch has been for speed measurements, and for those brief moments it just feels so good.
I will definitely update http://www.tarind.com/dvorak.html when this experiment is complete.
I switched a number of years ago to the Kenisis Ergo Dvorak keyboard.
It took a few years, but now I can swtich back and forth between it and a normal QWERTY with no problems.
It just takes time and practice.
And although I type *much* better on Dvorak, I can type fine on QWERTY too. I used to type better on QWERTY before I learned Dvorak. Then I went through a period of being completely unable to do QWERTY. Following that, I learned to switch between them at ease. You just have to be natural with both, it'll come with practice. Switch to Dvorak.
Le français vous intéresse?
I use Vi, and it seems like the choice of editor commands goes with the qwerty layout. If they were moved around significantly, I think I would lose a lot of navigation ability. Just a thought...
It puts the lotion on it's skin, or else it gets the hose again.
I've been blogging the whole experience on myspace. Isotope Lab
-=Zeus=And=Hades=-
I switched to a dvorak layout from a variety of qwerty-like layouts (american qwerty, along with italian, swiss german, and occasional other keymaps, which are all very similar except for y/z and symbol layout) a bit over 2 years ago.
My qwerty typing is slower, but gets back up to a respectable speed after about 15 seconds to 3 minutes back at a qwerty keyboard. I can type at least 50% faster on dvorak - I've gone from 60 wpm to 90-105 or so, but don't count on that; a lot of people report no change. My accuracy has also improved. I switched for the reason you did, wrist pain; I still get some, but the very slow typing I had to do for about a month while picking up dvorak helped a lot, and I'm mainly ok except for when I game too much now.
It's nice to just be able to remap the keyboard in a command or a few mouse clicks, which is doable under almost any modern system; I occasionally switch OS X or Linux systems to use dvorak temporarily if I'm going to have to do a fair amount of typing on them.
All in all, switching has been a minor inconvenience, in the fumbly-ness of the first couple of seconds back on qwerty (worse when tired or at a weird angle, like standing up and typing from the side while someone sits in front of the PC), and in the slowdown that dvorak entailed until my fingers were trained. The decrease in wrist-pain has been a nice benefit, as have the typing speed and accuracy increases.
I've always been lured by the pervasiveness of standard physical keyboards which are easily remappable, rather than ergonomic ones (and not keen on spending a lot for one I might not like, as I'm a student), but those might be worthy of consideration as well.
About a month ago me and two other developers at work took a few days and learned to type dvorak. We learned the layout by working through the website tutorial at http://www.gigliwood.com/abcd/abcd.html/ and printing out the keyboard layout image at http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/layout.html/ (It may also help to highlight the keys on the homerow on your printout). We only had to go through the tutorial once to learn the layout.
After a month, I still slip on some keys but all three of us are typing at about 40 wpm. I do find it more comfortable but it was a lot of work to learn it and I was useless as a developer for a week and a half. I still am pretty slow at vi and java is harder to code with the braces ({}) up where - and + are on QWERTY.
As far as switching back and forth, it isn't easy. Yesterday I used my wife's computer without switching it to DVORAK. I had to look at the keyboard a lot and I was definitely slower. It has also made typing in DVORAK harder today for the first ten minutes.
Overall, I would recommend the switch if you have the time. Good luck.
I had no problems what so ever to activly switch between the layouts. It took a couple of months to gain full speed with dvorak, but while doing that I also once in a while typed qwerty and still I can type qwerty as good as (or even better) than before. Though on my own computers I always use dvorak.
I had like 3 weeks of christmas break during my freshman year of college, so i changed my keyboard layout to dvorak and sat down with a typing tutor for an hour or so a day (not necessarily every day). From there, I didn't look back...except for a few brief moments where i had to use qwerty at a foreign terminal. That summer, I got a position as a network tech for my college and found myself around qwerty keyboards rather often. It was slow going at first, but i rediscovered how to touch type qwerty again (although i've never gotten back to my original qwerty speed...probably because it feels forced compared to dvorak...and i don't spend much time on qwerty anyway). During the next year, i had to make the switch quite often at my network tech job. Basically, my brain implemented a subconscience switch that knows which layout is being used based on the first few characters typed. I imagine that after a period, everyone would develop this switch. Over the past few years, i haven't needed to use qwerty much, so when i do use it, it's slow-going, and people sometimes look at me funny because i'm quite a literate computer geek, but type very slow at their computer, and make newby-looking spelling errors. i usually then end up blowing their mind about being able to type two keyboard layouts.
Switching can be done, but it isn't easy. Just like you need to practice to change, you also need to practice switching to be able to switch easily--it does not just come naturally, like speaking two languages. I find it can take a few seconds to shift from one mode to another, but then I'm fine, and I often can't even tell what mode I'm in without looking at the keyboard. There are times, of course, when I get confused, but with practice you can eliminate much of the interference.
What is really interesting is that the typing mode is closely tied to the context you have used it in before. I learned Dvorak by transcribing text, and it didn't transfer as easily to other tasks that you might expect it too, even like writing papers, and especially things like programming.
I had to re-learn to type in each programming language again, which sounds wierd, and is probably tied to overlearned keyword sequences and how brackets and parens change position. Also, if you use command-line tools a lot, you will have highly overlearned keypress sequences that will cause some trouble. Ditto for emacs/vi key combos. These would be difficult to transfer between typing modes flawlessly without intentional practice. I switched on a normal square keyboard, and found it relatively easier to type QWERTY on a split keyboard I used rarely, because there were more context cues that helped me. This is not true anymore, since I use a split keyboard all the time.
The moral: you can move between keyboards easily with practice, but highly overlearned things are more difficult.
But I've never been able to get away from QWERTY completely, because I've always worked in a computer-related field where I was in whole labs of machines that others used. Today I work as a school tech coordinator, managing dozens of Macs and PCs, so I'm in and out of both layouts constantly.
My findings:
End manifesto. I highly recommend Dvorak - I believe, despite all the philistines and "evidence" to the contrary out there, that it does help reduce RSI and keep finger movement to a minimum.
Was that out loud?
Before switching to a different keyboard layout, you should identify why your feeling pain and experience repetitive strain injury.
I think people overplay the benefits of DVORAK over QWERTY, specifically with regards to RSI, simply altering which keys you press probably will not solve your problem.
Some things to consider, your posture at your desk, are your arms inline with the height of the keyboard, or do you have to angle them up or down? Do you tense your hands while typing, or are your wrists and fingers relaxed. Do you pound on the keyboard, or just tap on the keys. Also, are you trying to be a speed demon, or do you realize the benefits of slowing down your typing and maintaining a consistent speed, rather then typing in sudden quick bursts. Finally, do you take a break at least once an hour?
Also, I am 30 as well, a professional software developer and been touch typing since high-school and do not experience any RSI symptoms, largely because about 6-7 years ago I switched to the Natural Keyboard by MS which promotes better hand and arm position. Finding a keyboard that is more ergonomic could be all you need.
Relearning a new keyboard layout will stunt your programming performance for a few months, and if your switching back and forth between two formats, you may find it takes longer to learn and become skilled using DVORAK. But, ultimately, if is solves your RSI problems, then it will be worth it in the end.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
from the
Don't see how this could provoke indignant responses. Confused, perhaps, but there was a certain logic underlying the post, and it certainly isn't hard to decipher given the overall topic of discussion - and someone's already done so.
There were no distortions of truth in this, no attempts to mislead, it was relevant to the topic of discussion, and, well, if you're here you're probably wasting time anyway, so, no, I don't think it's a troll, I think someone went trigger happy with the moderator button.
I've been gradually switching from Dvorak to QWERTY for about three months. I do QWERTY at work and Dvorak at home on the weekends. I can tell you it's not that difficult to switch.
The general consensus seems to be that within a month of switching full time, you can be up to your old QWERTY speed. I've heard some people say that it only takes a week, and that might be true for some people, but not for me... I have a LOT of typing to do during the week, and if I went from my 55 WPM QWERTY to my current 25 WPM Dvorak, it would be a disaster for me. At some point I hope to be fast enough to switch over to Dvorak full time.
One thing you might want to think about is why you're switching. I've heard people say they're radically faster with Dvorak layouts, and several decades ago I saw "the worlds fastest typist" on the David Letterman show... she used a Dvorak layout. But... most of the people I know who use Dvorak don't get appreciably faster. However, I have considerably better accuracy with Dvorak.
Some people talk about Dvorak as being "more comfortable" than QWERTY. I can't say that for me Dvorak is more or less comfortable.
But... if you're starting to get RSI, there are all sorts of things you can try before switching to Dvorak. Consider a "tenting" keyboard, or any one of the other ergonomic keyboards.
The main reason to switch to a Dvorak keyboard is the great thrill you will have in being a member of a small, select group of people who use a "better" keyboard layout. We tend to be smarter, better looking, and our reproductive cells tend to produce more viable offspring. Do not discount the warm feeling you will get when you see the befuddled look on your coworkers faces when they try to use your keyboard.
Within two weeks of using a Dvoarak layout, you will have an urge to start speaking Esperanto. Mi parolas Esperonton. Cxu vi parolas Esperanton?
Within a few months of using a Dvorak keyboard, you'll have the urge to join one of the many small congregational churches in the Boston area that differentiate themselves based on theological minutia like "What color was Mary's Nail Polish?" or "Water turned to wine : red, white, or rose?" Eventually you will start attending services at a church filled with warm-hearted fellow travellers who are virtually indistinguishable from main-line christians execpt for the inclusion of St. Cthulhu and Nyarlythotep the Martyr in the canonical sunday school instruction book. Every five years you will be called upon to make a blood sacrifice, but since that would be especially messy, the entire congregation makes a pilgrimage down to a steak house in Milford and orders their beef extra rare.
Shortly after this you will wax poetic about the "good ol' days" of communism. Not the shoe-slamming days of brother Kruschev, but the wonderous days of the 1920's when your encyclopaedic knowledge of Marx trivia made you the envy of your Komsomol friends.
So... Dvorak Komrade? Absolutely!
From the conclusion:
As an empirical example of market failure, the typewriter keyboard has much appeal. The objective of the keyboard is fairly straightforward: to get words onto the recording medium. There are no conflicting objectives to complicate the interpretation of performance. But the evidence in the standard history of Qwerty versus Dvorak is flawed and incomplete. First, the claims for the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard are suspect. The most dramatic claims are traceable to Dvorak himself, and the best-documented experiments, as well as recent ergonomic studies, suggest little or no advantage for the Dvorak keyboard.
Second, by ignoring the vitality and variety of the rivals to the Remington machine with its Qwerty keyboard, the received history implies that Sholes's and McGurrin's choices, made largely as matters of immediate expediency, established the standard without ever being tested. More careful reading of historical accounts and checks of original sources reveal a different picture: there were touch-typists other than McGurrin: there were competing claims of speed records: and Remington was not so well established that a keyboard offering significant advantages could not have gained a foothold. If the fable is to carry lessons about the workings of markets, we need to know more than just who won. The victory of the tortoise is a different story without the hare.
The most interesting part of the discussion (the original article says very little) is that the keyboards themselves are identical - people just rip the keys off and move them around. Problems due to the design, rather than layout, therefore are not dealt with.
The rest of the article is the usual trolling.
The problems with QWERTY and DVORAK really boil down to:
The ideal would be a keypad system that would support the requirements of today, rather than the needs of the early 1900s. Mathematicians type, too, yet there are no easy maths symbols. They're usually included in ASCII above 128, and have been for at least 30 years, but we still don't have keys for them.
Europeans who need umlauts and accents have no keys for those, either, except on "foreign language" keyboards - which tend to be more expensive OR have other useful keys missing.
In this day and age, we need keyboards that can generate UTF. We need keyboards that make typing easier for books and doctoral theses, not just e-mails and short notes.
QWERTY originated with typewriters, in the days when typed letters would likely be in the order of a few pages long. Most RSI injuries result not from the stress of using a keypad system, but from the stress of typing faster land lengthier documents - not just occasionally but frequently.
No, we need something that replaces the existing system - not just for a week or two, but on a more permanent basis. This could be as simple as some form of chord system. It could be built along similar lines to a double-sided accordian. It would be technically bigger than a keyboard, but would actually take up less volume, making it good for mobile computing devices.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I was proficient on QWERTY when I started using Dvorak. It took me about two weeks to adjust to using it on my computer. I've been using it for over a year and I still find it quite comfortable. After I switched I only used QWERTY keyboards occasionally, and at first I completely lost my typing skills to the point that it was as hard to type on QWERTY as it had been when I had never typed before. However within a few months I regained my QWERTY ability as well, so now I am pretty much equally good at QWERTY and Dvorak and have no problem switching back and forth. However I do still sometimes accidentally think that a key on a QWERTY kbd should be where it is on a Dvorak, but that's rare. So point is, if you can take a few weeks of slowed down typing, you'll be fine after that.
Dvorak doesn't stop you getting RSI. Bad posture and bad habits is what gives
you RSI. They are all still applicable to a Dvorak keyboard.
Maybe I'm a little slower than those of you who can switch back and forth mentally; once I learned Dvorak, I lost the ability to use QWERTY. For me, it wasn't like learning a second language. It was like re-wiring my reflexes. It completely eliminated my every-day wrist pains though.
Tip: in Windows 2k/XP you can add Dvorak under keyboard/languages. It allows you to even switch back and forth in the current window by hitting ALT+LEFT_SHIFT. My co-workers still think I'm weird, though. I don't think there's a button to switch that.
I was concerned about some of those issues before switching to Dvorak, but didn't find it to be a problem after learning the layout for a while. ls -la seemed awkward initially, but now seems to flow fine. Then the control sequences that originally had some location significance are just learnt as letters anyhow, and once you are touch typing, they don't matter much where they are physically on the board. Your brain does the logical remapping for you. Then it just comes down to the overall efficiency of the finger movements. In QWERTY hjkl is on the home row, but on the down-side, two of those letters share the same finger. So it is a bit each way.
I'm interested in switching over to an alternate keyboard layout, probably Dvorak, before I begin to suffer any effects of RSI.
First, try to enlighten yourself on why Dvorak may not be a great solution for more efficient keyboard usage, if that's what you're looking for to achieve.
I can't really see key placements as the issue here, but how you physically use a keyboard, how your wrists are aligned, etc.
You still have to move your fingers and press keys an awful lot on Dvorak boards if that's what you're looking to avoid, anyway.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
After sufficiently long, it is likely you will be more concerned about switching the *OS* back and forth than switching the way you type.
I've used Dvorak almost exclusively for the last 12 or so years. Before that, I'd used QWERTY for about 10 or so years.
Dvorak is faster and, somehow, feels tremendously "smoother" as the pace of keystrokes is more regular. If you start, and get used to it, you won't want to go back.
There *is* a price in terms of the cost of switching back-and-forth. In the beginning I could easily switch back. At some point it became very unpleasant and slow to use QWERTY. If I have to use it for a while -- hours to days -- the memory does come back and I become a decent QWERTY typist again, but I am left consciously missing Dvorak. Fortunately it's easy to switch the OS -- even on Windows it no longer requires a reboot.
Seth
So over the past 9 years of Dvorak use I've found myself switching less and less. Here's an estimate of how my Qwerty speed was affected by Dvorak use:
Week 1 - Dvorak 10% of present speed (130 wpm), Qwerty 100% of original (pre-switch) speed (110 wpm)
Week 2 - Dvorak 30%, Qwerty 90%
Month 2 - Dvorak 80%, Qwerty 90%
Year 1 - Dvorak 95%, Qwerty 70%
Year 2 - Dvorak 100%, Qwerty 60%
Year 5 - Dvorak 100%, Qwerty 50%
Year 9 - Dvorak 100%, Qwerty 50%
Something like that. It now takes me longer to get over the "shock" of switching to Qwerty, too, maybe a day instead of 10 minutes...
One option for frequent "switchers" is to use Dvorak for typing, and Qwerty for commands. Mac OS X comes with a "DV - Qwerty command" keymap that lets you keep your muscle memory for all those command (CTRL)-C, V, etc. combinations. And it should be theoretically possible to set this up under Unix with an appropriate xmodmap, too.
Good luck!
I used to have to switch back and forth frequently. It only took a second or two to get back into the qwerty mode or dvorak mode. I had the most trouble trying to type qwerty on my Model-M IBM keyboard.. because that's the touch I most associate with Dvorak.
It may be different for other people, but the keyboard touch itself helps me associate between qwerty and dvorak.
Now that I rarely use qwerty anymore, it's a little bit of a struggle to switch to it.
Just to get another vote in there... I use Dvorak and Qwerty both, having started learning Dvorak this spring. Within a month I was full speed on Dvorak as well as on Qwerty. I use a Mac and sometimes run into cases when I have Dvorak in an OS X window and Qwerty in an OS 9 ("Classic") window, and I found that I can go back and forth pretty easily. I prefer Dvorak because my hands feel more relaxed, and because it lends a certain nerd credibility, I feel...
You may want to consider a Touchstream Dvorak.
You will get less stress on your wrists, because you are using the same mousing and typing, and the programing mode and gestures eliminate the weaknesses Dvorak generally has for programming.
And they fold up to bring with you, so you can plug them into the machines you're working on wherever they are.
a total pain in the neck, but necessary, since most of my coworkers use vi and i use emacs, so i have to use vi on their machine. also vi is better for admin. Is there a diy dvorak keyboard? That would be cool.
i am so very tired....
Your point isn't very clear here. It seems to me that the time has only recently arrived when you can easily choose your layout. In older operating system releases you usually had to fiddle around a lot to get a dvorak layout, and maybe have to install extra software components, but now it is generally fairly easy to swap a computer over. Default installs of windows XP and mac OSX allow a unprivileged user to switch, and linux installs will if they have the right packages installed.
Unless you want the printing on the keycaps to match the layout, which IMHO is a bad thing, swapping a computer to a different layout is typically easy. So the days of choosing between keyboard layouts are just arriving.
There's a nice little Windows application that sits in your systray waiting for you to double-click on it to change the layout from QWERTY to Dvorak or vice versa. You can also set a hotkey, which can be quite handy. It's a tiny self-contained executable, so you can just run it when you get on there, and close it when you get off.
There are caveats though; it cannot be extended to support other keyboard layouts, which would be extremely useful. In addition, it's billed as an open-source program but I have searched everywhere and sent emails to the creator asking for the source to no avail.
Nevertheless, you should try it out. Works like a charm on the computers at my school.
http://clabs.org/dvorak.htm
SourceForge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvassist/
Dear Slashdot;
I'm looking to set the site record for most duped question every, and Dvorak Vs Qwerty is the easiest subject to continually post under the guise of "News for Nerds". Could you please post a minor variant of Dvorak Vs Qwerty every, say, 3 weeks, until someone notices?
Thanks,
Dvorak-Dork
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Much like their keyboards, it appears the company has folded.
From the page you linked to:
-----
Important note!
FingerWorks has ceased operations as a business.
-----
oi,
i have a powerbook which has a dvorak keyboard layout, as well as a peecee with a qwerty keyboard. since i am developing software for macos as well as for linux, i have basically forced myself to frequently switch between both layouts. i was confused at first but after a month i was able to work with both without even thinking which layout i am using. i can switch layouts on the fly and it doesnt take a second to get accustomed to it - it doesnt even influence the typing speed. so my tip would be to switch quite frequently from dvorak to querty and back again when you are learning the dvorak layout. it might take a tad longer to get accustomed to dvorak at all but it will pay off.
I can still use a qwerty keyboard, I just have to look at the keys while doing it.
the hardest thing now is to use vim on a qwerty. I can still do it, I just have to be careful. normal typing on qwerty is nearly I fast as I used to be before the switch though.
Huh? Did somebody take a hammer to either your hands or your keyboard at some point?
I've been using DVORAK for about 2 years now and find that switching to QWERTY only takes about a minute to get used to. I'm sure the more often that you switch, the easier it is though.
I switch back and forth between keyboards on a regular basis. The thing that I find that helps is to have different types of keyboards. I actually bind my expectations to the keyboard shape. When I walk up to a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, I expect it to be Dvorak, because that's what I use at home and work. When I walk up to a standard rectangular keyboard, I expect it to be QWERTY. I get in real trouble if the rectangular keyboard is Dvorak, takes me a while to readjust my mind to the other map.
Probably helps to be a touch typer too....
after 9 months of using both dvorak and qwerty regularly (with 9 years qwerty experience, and switching back and forth through the entire 9 months so far), i can touch type on both at similar speeds.
;)
dvorak is definitely much easier on the wrists and fingers, and is much faster to program in than qwerty.
if you're worried about RSI, i suggest throwing out your mouse and grabbing a thumb trackball, eg the logitech trackman wheel -- i've found that the switch from mouse to thumb-trackball has made a far more dramatic difference to my RSI woes than changing to dvorak. also, my fps gameplay improved too -- no more running out of mousepad, and no more unwanted movements when you click the button (makes double clicking way easier too). plus, your wrist/arm never needs to move much at all, unless you're switching back and forth from keyboard to rodent.
and the usual, set up your workspace properly
hth
Handyboard Hackers' Resource Guide
For the most part, layout is really a small factor in the scheme of things. Putting the more common letters in the home position tends to reduce finger travel distance, but that just means any problems would happen later. On the other hand, something like having good posture could reduce or eliminate the chances of the problem entirely.
:) ), the importance of constant posture reminderss should not be understated. But for the forgetful, there are always special keyboards that force the wrist and fingers into their respective natural positions. As a bonus, they also sometimes place control keys (alt, shift, space, etc.) in more natural positions, though by no means would such a small change require learning a whole new keyboard layout.
What I find interesting is that pianists tend to not have RSI or carpal tunnel, even though their repertoire might primarily be Chopin. They do get arthritis, though that's usually from age and a matter of nutrition. But for a pianist, posture is extremely important in producing the right sounds. Wrist and forearm strength is necessary for dynamics. As well, having excellent control of their strength is very important. Of all these things, I think both the posture, and the way power generation is spread throughout the arm accounts for why pianists aren't as prone to RSI.
Power isn't really something we are in control of, as no one really wants their keyboard to be the length of an upright, or even close. I doubt anyone would like their keyboards to type like a piano either. The largest discouragement would be the necessari investment in developing agility and strength in their hands just to type up a 2-page essay.
As I mentioned before, posture is something we are fully in control of. And for those of us who are physically lazy (read: those of us who sit on our asses all day
Of course, if the special keyboards are too expensive, just type using only one or two fingers. That moves most of the stress to the forearms though perhaps at the cost of speed.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I have trouble switching between different QWERTY keyboards; The CAPS-LOCK and Ctrl keys are backwards on the PCs, and this sometimes causes me trouble when switching machines.
maybe im doing something right with the typing (i have my keyboard flat, not raised.. if thats any help) and something very, very wrong with my mouse
I made the switch to dvorak from qwerty a few months ago. I was suprised at how quickly I became proficient in dvorak with a little perserverance. Since I have stopped using qwerty except for occasions such as a search at the library I can no longer even touch type and go for hunt and peck. This happened in a *VERY* short period of time. So my answer to your question is no from my personal experience. As far as switching, it is fairly trivial to temporarily switch to the dvorak layout and then back to qwerty on Linux, windows and Mac OS. So there is probably little need to try to such mental gymnastics.
If you type so much that the keyboard is slowing you down, you need to get some voice activited program and save your hands. [cough, cough]
A few years ago, I was teaching a typing class for which I had written my own typing program when I decided to give dvorak a try. I fixed my typing program to automatically remap the keys for me and started practicing. I type about 120 WPM qwerty and was anxious to see how fast I could get with dvorak. After only a small amount of practice, I got so I could go 60-70 WPM with dvorak for normal English text. When I tried switching back to qwerty, it was very strange. When I was typing in my typing program right after switching back, I had a terrible time with qwerty. My brain just didn't want to do it. But the really strange thing was that when I was trying to type from my typing program (i.e. transcribing text from the screen) I had trouble, but when I would then type something straight out of my head (and not something dicated by my typing program) I had no trouble whatsoever. I could exit to a shell prompt and function just fine. But then when I went back into the typing program I still had trouble. It was a really weird feeling to have my brain not obey my wishes.
However, I only experienced this difficulty for a short period of time. A few minutes later I would be back to normal. Interestingly enough, this same phenomenon did not happen in reverse. I could pretty much always pick up dvorak immediately to my highest skill level. I have since let my dvorak slide so I can't type that same speed, but it's still not too hard to switch back. I just got 40 WPM after having not touched dvorak for several years.
Anyway, I really don't think you will have any trouble switching back and forth. This problem I just related to you really wasn't a problem since it only happened when I did a very abrupt transition from fast transcription in dvorak to attempted fast transcription in qwerty. Most of the time you're not transcribing and so this particular artifact of my brain shouldn't matter. And that's not to say that you might not experience the problem like I did. I'd be interested to know whether you do.
Give it a shot. The only reason that I haven't kept up with my dvorak is because I do a lot of coding and dvorak isn't quite as well-suited to that as it is to plain English. Also, using vim is difficult in dvorak.
damnit, why do my modpoints expire just before threads like this spring up.
Dvorak keyboards have only won in tests administered by Dvorak himself.. The truth is that he was looking to make money off of his patented configuration.
Still, the Dvorak story is very interesting to me in a sociological sense. The Dvorak keyboard's superiority has existed as a sort of counter-culture convential wisdom but has all the underpinnings of an "urban legend" -- a false or heavily-embellished story that survives because the story evokes a strong emotional response, serves as a cautionary tale and/or plays into feelings or ideas felt by a community. In this case the Dvorak story survives not because of the flimsy, circumstantial "proof" but rather because it evokes people's sense of outrage of the "Little Guy with new ideas" being unable fight the tide of convention.
That said, there *are* keyboards specifically designed to be easier on your fingers. I like the split keyboards because it's easier to keep my wrists straight.
I switched to Dvorak almost a year ago, and I love it. I didn't spend the expense of an actual Dvorak keyboard, but I learned to touchtype on the regular QWERTY board that came with my desktop (Use a teaching program, it makes things easier), and I just use the OS to switch the keyboard layout.
I've gotten about 75 wpm in Dvorak, but when I do need to switch back to QWERTY, I find that I can still maintain about 40-45 wpm as long as I'm looking at the keyboard. In fact, I cannot type in Dvorak unless I concentrate really, really hard, when I'm looking at the keyboard.
Go for it, make the switch. You'll find that your brain doesn't "forget" what it used to know.
I have only QWERTZ, no QWERTY, you insensitive clod...
I switched do DVORAK ten years ago and never looked back. It saved my hands. I am a very good typist and a pianist. I have good posture and hand positions. But my hands would fatigue and get sore. I switched. It took one month.
When I told my sister about how much better my hands felt. She switched too. She was almost to the point of needing hand splints. She used a typing tutor for DVORAK. It took two weeks and she was up and running. Her hands never felt better and she types unbelievably fast.
I use a lot of other computers and easily switch back to QWERTY for short work. However, it is trivial to switch anyone's computer to DVORAK if you have to type a lot.
Good luck and switch. It's worth it.
Switch, you'll be fine.
I use QWERTY at work and when I'm doing work on other people's PCs. I do fine on QWERTY for letters for the most part but have a little more difficult time finding punctuation marks without looking for them.
Dvorak is ideal for programmers and anyone who uses brackets etc... since they seem to fall in more ergonomic places.
I was having to do some PHP coding on someone else's computer with a QWERTY layout and my only issue was when I had to put in quotation marks and curly brackets. Other than that, I type about 70wpm (QWERTY), a far cry less than the 140 I used to go at, but when I'm at home it's a different story.
I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak a few years ago, and while I didn't find it was really too much faster, I immediately felt a difference in the strain on my hands. They would start to get tired and sore if I did a decently long session of typing on QWERTY, like an hour or two, but every since switching to Dvorak, I've never felt any significant strain in my hands even after long sessions. I'll buy that it's probably not statistically faster than QWERTY, but I do think it helps reduce the strain on your hands.
I was brought up on querty, but I recently moved to Europe and had to deal with the prevalence of azerty keyboard here. I've discovered that, barring symbols and such, if you can type blind it is not at all hard to learn multiple layouts. It's a bit like multiple languages - you just have to know which one you want and the rest flows naturally.
I still prefer querty, but if I'm faced with azerty all it takes is a minute or two to recall the differences. It'll probably be a bit different with dvorak, as the layout is significantly different (azerty and querty are very close), but it should be doable.
Jw
i grew up on qwerty, then switched over entirely to dvorak sometime in college, then i graduated and started working (as a programmer).
at first i continued to use dvorak, both at home and at work, but this had a few problems: 1. whenever coworkers were at my computer (e.g. to debug a kernel dump) i had to switch it back to qwerty, which was a hassle, and 2. the keyboard shortcuts on visual studio (which is what we used) are much more convenient in a qwerty layout. so, i started using qwerty at work.
but i continued to use dvorak at home - on my home computer i mostly did emailing, web browsing, and IM-ing, so i preferred to use dvorak. for a couple weeks i was typing maybe 80% of my normal speed until i got used to switching back and forth . now i can switch between the two layouts with absolutely no effort, i.e. i'm completely "bilingual."
so i guess my advice to you is to give it a try. switching back and forth works great for me, of course ymmv.
I type like that too, but sometimes i get my wires crossed and type completely the wrong word, eg 'else' instead of 'void'.
:p
Once upon a time i had a thing for a girl named 'Sue', not a strange thing for a teenaged male. I went to type in 'dir/w' at a dos prompt one day, also not a strange thing, but typed 'sue.q' instead. 'q' was also the first letter of her last name. I had my hands one key over to the left on the keyboard. It was a freaky coincidence!
BTW, i was the poster of the askslashdot question. I sincerely apologise to anyone I offended with my typo in the heading. I proofread the article but not the title. There are no excuses and again I sincerely apologyse.
I've been attempting to switch to Dvorak and I do notice a huge difference in comfort and even intuitivness when typing normal english like this post for example.
However I do alot of network admin work, commands like ping, and typing IP Addresses I find much more difficult in dvorak (I probably type between 300-400 IPs a day) because of the location of the period being so close to the number line. I also program alot and having the curly braces up on the number line is an extra stretch I don't have to make in qwerty. (although having the dash/underscore so close is nice). All in all for the work I do, I doubt dvorak saves me much in the RSI department.
I have multiple personality disorder.
I keep one for Dvorak and another for QWERTY. I just have to bang my head on the wall to change layouts. Pretty easy, huh?
Now the problem is the Dvorak one insists on using Windows. The moron!
A few stupids never learn Windows is doomed!
I started learning Dvorak a few weeks ago. I find that I can only switch back and forth if I use muscle memory -- if I think about the change consciously, then my brain shorts out and I can't use either one :-). I am becoming more confidant that I'll be able to retain both indefinately, however.
I read on slashdot somewhere that switching between the two layouts (Dvorak and QWERTY) is easier if you have two styles of keyboards. I suppose that is the case because I do switch between the two layouts fairly often. The dvorak keyboard I use is typematrix keyboard. Rarely will I reach for the wrong key on one of the keyboards but if I don't really think too much about "where the key is" I do fine.
For RSI the split-and-curved keyboard helps quite a bit. Avoid the old Microsoft one because its keys don't move up and down well.
It also helps to occasionally put 3 or 4 inch books under your elbows.
After typing sessions a few minutes with the thinking putty helps. Kneading bread dough also helps strengthing hands and avoiding nerve damage. It's also good for making cheap pizza.
Also consider experimenting with a speech-to-text program. They have to be trained to an individual's voice but they respond well when used with a fast 3 GigaHertz CPU. They can be a real pain for use in a programming format until you assign certain words and phrases to the formatting operations common to writing code.
(I had put this apology way down in a grandchild post, but thought it more proper to put it here)
:p
I was the poster of the askslashdot question. I sincerely apologise to anyone I offended with my typo in the heading. I proofread the article but not the title. There are no excuses and again I sincerely apologyse.
I'm a programmer with rsi...I found this http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ helps better than standard dvorak...I also edited the maps and switched backspace with tab, capslock and enter
:)
It's great for rsi but my qwerty is shot...but my hands still work
I made the switch about two years ago. It took me about 1.5 months to get back to my old speed on the Dvorak layout, but after 2 months I was 10-15 WPM faster on Dvorak and about 20% more accurate than with QWERTY. During the transition I spent a lot of time on both layouts, using only Dvorak on my main machine at home (2-6 hours a day) and using QWERTY at school and work (4-7 hours). About 2 weeks after I started the switch I began using keyboarding software which helped a lot in improving my speed and accuracy. I still use both layouts regularly on primarily nice IBM Model M keyboards (which help a LOT in improving both speed and accuracy), maintaining a steady 100 WPM on Dvorak and around 65-80 WPM on QWERTY. It's interesting how I can transition from one keyboard layout to another. The change is completely seamless for me, I can be typing Dvorak on my machine upstairs and move downstairs to the server and type easily and quickly on QWERTY. The layout on the keycaps determines which way I type. I've attempted to use the label-less keyboards but failed rather miserably typing in some strange combination of QWERTY and Dvorak. If you make the change don't plan on ever being able to truly touch-type, you will have to look at the keys when you first start typing to get your bearings though you wont have to look at them again until you switch to another layout.
It was a very worthwhile change for me and helped to reduce and eliminate the small amount of pain I was having in my wrists and fingers, and greatly improved my speed and accuracy. If you want to invest the time into learning a new layout, make 100% certain that you continue to use QWERTY regularly while you're learnig Dvorak so you don't forget your old skills.
Unfortunately, the Dvorak keyboard seems completely useless for typing anything other than English.
There don't seem to be variants for (all the other) languages which use accents, and not even an "International" variant with dead accent keys like the "US International" or a few other English variants.
So, unless you write exclusively in English and correspond exclusively with people having English names, and never need to mention some foreigner's name like Muñez or François, it seems not to be worth the hassle.
I switched to Dvorak in 1997 and have never looked back. I do mostly programming and sysadmin tasks. It is true that some things become tedious such as the 'ls' command, but I just aliased that to 'no' which let me use the original keys for that command. As long as you use the modified Dvorak that puts [ and { together on the - key and ] and } together on the = key, programming is not a problem.
:)
I switched cold-turkey. I printed out a reference sheet and just switched. I used some typing tutor programs to help. First I got the keys down, then I started getting two-key combos down, and more, and more. It took me about 1-2 months to get back to my qwerty speed of 85wpm. By about 3 months I was up to my new max speed of over 120wpm. Certainly much more comfortable, but it does not eliminate the problem, especially if you type at 120wpm a lot!
Now to your question -- until about 4-5 months in I could not touch-type qwerty any longer. At about 6 months I was about back to my original qwerty speed as well. It takes me about 10-15 seconds to switch in my head, until then I keep making typos.
I find that the ease of switching is related to how often I do it. I was able to switch easily, until I worked from home for 2 years and never used qwerty. During that time switching to qwerty took minutes of mistakes. But now I'm back to normal, I'd say.
All in all, I'm happy I made the switch. Good luck!
I am currently driving my car, but I'm looking to switch to a bike before my stupidity kicks in. I was curious if anyone has switched to riding bikes, and, if so, did you forget how to drive your car?
Do or do not. There is no try. --Yoda
You know, the French have the AZERTY map, you insensitive clod. ;) just teasing.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
I lived in Mexico for 3 years and the keyboard layout is REALLY similar for regular typing (though different for the kind of stuff that comes up a lot in programming, like brackets, parenthesis, and punctuation marks). And even for just typing e-mails, I found it to be a huge pain switching from my American keyboard at home to the Mexican keyboard I used at the internet cafes that I worked in. Eventually I switched to the Mexican keyboard full time because the switching caused so many typos.
Much like you, I've been using computers since I was 10 or so and am now 36. I've been typing that entire time and never had any sort of wrist or hand problems.
The only problem I've had, actually, was in my shoulder from using a mouse. I ended up switching to a thumb-trackball and haven't had a problem since.
Since you began typing at 8, I suspect you don't type "properly", and by that, I mean like you'd learn in a typing class. If that's the case, you're probably fine because you probably type as is comfortable for you and not in some awkward, unnatural, but possibly slightly more accurate and faster, position.
Actually, I'd like to see a study of people with wrist injuries due to typing and see how the percentage of people who learned to type properly compares to self-taught typists. My guess is there'd be a big difference, but maybe I just say that from my own experience.
I friend tried to "correct" my typing once and all I could think is, "God, this isn't natural at all."
Anyway, just my very humble opinion and probably doesn't mean much. But I think you're going to be causing yourself more problems than you're fixing.
I made the switch several years ago and I find that although noticeably slower in QWERTY, I can still touch type it. I just have to make a mental switch.
I play Clarinet, Saxophone, and Flute, which all have similar (but by no means identical) fingerings, and it's not difficult at all to switch between them on the fly. I assume QWERTY vs. Dvorak is probably similar.
* The "clarinet, saxophone, and flute" mentioned are, for you slashdotters, also known as "musical instruments." Contrary to the norm here, they do not run linux and are in no way directly associated with computers, programming, or anything else of similar nature.
When you first learn Dvorak, you should not do any switching during the process. Wait until it has been a few weeks and you are able to touch-type reasonably fast.
After that, you should be able to switch back and forth as long as you do it. That is, you will need to actually type Qwerty once in awhile to keep your skill fresh. You will probably not be as fast in Qwerty as you were before learning Dvorak, as you will be using Dvorak most of the time and most of your brain will focus on that. But, yes, you should still be able to touch-type in Qwerty.
Personally, I don't bother practicing Qwerty. Any time that I am going to be at a computer for a long period, I just go into the preferences and switch the layout. It only takes 15 seconds. However, in the rare case that I actually have to type Qwerty, what I find is that I type maybe half or 1/3 speed. I do have to look at the keyboard, but I don't do "hunt-and-peck". I type with all my fingers like normal; it's just that I have to actually look as I do it.
Once you have Dvorak down, it's fun to leave your keyboard in Qwerty layout even though your OS is set to Dvorak. Keeps people off your computer.
I routinely switch back and forth between QWERTY and DVORAK. I have my email and messaging clients using DVORAK because I typically type plain English into these and rarely use keyboard shortcuts. I have my development IDE and everything else using QWERTY because of the difficulty typing C++ symbols with DVORAK and frequent use of keyboard shortcuts.
Expect your typing productivity to take a nose dive for at least a month or so as your brain learns to switch between the two layouts. At the moment, my DVORAK is just as fast as my QWERTY but I don't think DVORAK will reduce RSI related problems. I use DVORAK purely for the geek factor associated with it.
I'd go for an ergonomic keyboard rather than an alternate keyboard layout if you suffer from RSI. Unless you know some incredibly hot chicks that will be impressed with your typing prowess, I don't think the transition to DVORAK is worth it.
i fidz ik rwollu easy to swatk betwics qwerty ant dvorak, nu frablem dt all.
Mentally flipping back might not be a problem. In fact, I have learned typing (in french) on an AZERTY keyboard, but I have been using for 3 years mostly a jp QWERTY keyboard for my work, which mostly involves english. I have noticed that when I have to type french, my fingers switch to an AZERTY layout without even thinking about it.
flipping from one keyboard to another in the same language may be something quite different though =/
Some benefits of Dvoark:
1) Less finger movement for typical English sentences. This is easily verifiable, and not questioned AFAIK.
2) The keycaps on typical keyboards don't match the letter assignment, so you aren't tempted to look a the keys.
3) It is supported by modern operating systems and can be used with readily available keyboards.
These are real benefits, and not hype. In contrast, much of the argument against Dvorak is based on hype arguing against hype. Though they argee QWERTY was never optimised for touch typing, Dvorak proponents these days don't necessarily say that the QWERTY was deliberately designed to slow typing down. It is hype to say they are saying that hype.
But still, Dvorak was designed with touch typing in mind and without the constraints of key jamming, and althogh not the best possible design, it is more efficient. I would expect it to be the most efficient layout possible when walking up to a stock computer with XP on it and adjusting settings. So it isn't the most optimal data entry method possible, but it is still the best without going to custom hardware and/or software.
The link you give seems to just be hype debunking things that people didn't believe in the first place. Even Dvorak proponents will believe that widely spaced common letters is good, and that is one of the things that the Dvorak keyboard does do even more than qwerty.
So what you are doing is inventing extra "benefits" that can be disproved, and then based on than, extending it to say that all benefits are disproved.
It's like saying "A security vulnerability was found in Linux, so it is isn't secure after all, and so most the benefits of Linux are hype. You should be concerned with the architecture of the computer as a whole rather than just the operating system."
How is using a different layout going to prevent RSI? Isn't the use of ANY keyboard going to be repetitive?
BTW, doesn't most of the pain come from using the mouse at improper angles?
It's all moot if you slouch in your chair or are way above it, start with getting sitting right, then go from there.
R(k)
I've been using computers for 15 or 16 years now, and been a QWERTY touch typist for at least 10. Although I never had a problem with RSI (I think guitar playing might be related to that), a couple of years ago I decided to preemptively switch to Dvorak like you, and I also appreciated the challenge in a layout switch. I was aware of the fact that I'd be typing in QWERTY everywhere except on my computer at home.
The transition period is the worst. During a certain phase of your training, you can't type quickly in either layout, so be prepared to lose some productivity -- in fact I suggest that you do this while on vacation, or at least be sure that you're not going through a stressful period in your life, or you'll give up before training is complete.
After a while I started to get up to speed with Dvorak but not QWERTY. I believe this is mostly due to the fact that I was typing in Dvorak most of the time -- it seems one actually needs some retraining to regain their old speed in QWERTY, and this is what happened.
Today I can type as fluently in Dvorak as I can in QWERTY, although most of my typing is done in Dvorak, of course. I'm periodically forced to use QWERTY, which ensures I don't forget about it. Now I can't comment on what happens if you use Dvorak all the time and QWERTY very seldom (say once a month for a few minutes), whether you lose your QWERTY skills or not. However I'd expect that the skills are indeed lost if you don't practice, so you might consider periodically switching to QWERTY if you've gone too long without using it.
A warning though: although I can easily switch from one layout to another, it's a bit more problematic if you have to do it frequently. For instance, sometimes I'm logged to a Windows box via RDP, and the RDP client forces the QWERTY layout despite the system-wide default for Dvorak. In these situations I have the expected problems (start typing on a new window and realize that you're still using the layout of the previous window), but in addition I might get confused midsentence or something like that. Seems the brain can't handle constant switchs.
Finally, something I wish I had been told before switching: the hardest part of switching are keyboard shortcuts. The way your mind processes them is not to think of the key Control plus the letter C, say, but rather something like the key at the corner of the keyboard plus the key in the bottom row that is pressed by the middle finger. Getting used to keyboard shortcuts in the new layout was probably the hardest part of the switch for me.
Hope that helps.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
I switched from a straight keyboard to an ergonomical keyboard when I started to suffer from CTS, and there was a learning curve but a mild one.
/ qid=1121043742/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-3479916 -7944842
I can switch between an ergo, to straight and back without a problem now. But there is an odd effect. Going to a ergo to straight is harder than it looks. I've never tried a Dvorak keyboard yet, but it shouldn't be a problem once you learn it.
BTW to prevent or clear up any CTS problems, try this book:
Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome : And Other Repetitive Strain Injuries
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1572240393
I found this at the local library when my hands was hurting so bad I couldn't hardly get on the keyboard. After a week of streching exercises, the pain and stiffness was gone, and has been gone for about 4 years. I've recommended it to many people and it *works*.
One other piece of advice. Do NOT use a Microsoft Natural keyboard, but a brand with *softer* keys. MSN's I found are far too stiff, and acually will make CTS conditions worse. The PC Concepts have been the best so far. Sadly, the key characters scrape off so easly.
Good luck!
Kevin C. Redden
kcredden@kevinredden.name
I've been typing dvorak for about 3 years now, and I *can* mentally switch between QWERTY and dvorak. Intuitivly I type dvorak on unix systems, and qwerty and Windows ones (work uses Windows + qwerty). But. If i think about it for a second I can mentally change what keymap I'm typing.
Although i have not worked with Dvorak, i can offer experiences with two similar pairs of keyboard layouts. I am a very good typist on Qwerty and a fair typist in Arabic. Although i am an American, i lived in a foreign country for a while, where i bought a German typewriter, which has a similar layout but several different key positions from American Qwerty. (I think the German layout is Ayertz where English is Qwerty.) It was always a pain switching between my German typewriter and an American computer keyboard, because i'd always be making mistakes with those different keys. (I would make mistakes using both Qwerty and Awertz.)
In Arabic, i trained myself using the standard (IBM) layout. But then i started using a Mac for Arabic stuff as well, which uses a similar layout which is a little more logical (for example, by placing certain similar-looking letters next to each other). Once i started using that my speed decreased significantly in Arabic. They were different, yet too similar to let me type without hesitating with certain keys. There are still certain characters i'm always hunting for (since i don't have the Arabic letters on the physical keyboard).
I'm not sure to what extent these experiences apply to the Querty and Dvorak question, because they may be so different that it's not such a problem switching back and forth.
I personally HATE split keyboards. The angle is wrong for me, and I sometimes use thw wrong fingers for the keys near the border. In particular, B may be pressed with either index finger.
I type in Dvorak but I don't find it hard to type in Qwerty. My Qwerty typing speeds have gone down but I am still much faster than the average person at typing. Dvorak does have less finger movement but if RSI is your problem then you might be better off with a better desk setup and a keyboard pad. The only thing I do not like about Dvorak is that the keyboard shortcuts are much less convenient.
It takes between one and two months to be able to type naturally on the Dvorak keyboard. Switching between Dvorak and Qwerty is really easy if you type a little with each layout regularly. However, if you don't use one of the layouts for a long period of time (about a year using just the one layout) you quickly forget the other one. That's what happened to me. I learned Dvorak 10 years ago. During the first year, I used Dvorak for all but a few things I did at school. It was really easy to switch between the two layouts. However, after about a year I started to lose my Qwerty typing ability which really wasn't much of a problem since hardly using it for a year shows just how unimportant it was. So for the last 9 years I've only used the Dvorak layout and couldn't care less about Qwerty.
For a while, I had Dvorak set up on my home machine, and I used QWERTY everywhere else. No problems about confusion. All was well. I did notice one thing: I couldn't type in QWERTY on my home machine if the Dvorak driver was off. My brain would see my home machine and automatically switch me into Dvorak mode, and I would type very slowly in QWERTY on my home machine, even though I would type at my normal speed in QWERTY everywhere else (five or six fingered, but still pretty fast; Dvorak I touch typed with all ten fingers).
If you want to avoid RSI, stop touch-typing. I'm also nearly 30, and have been typing since I was 7 or 8 as well. I've never had RSI, because I don't use a single static abnormal posture for my forearms. I can type over 60 words per minute using (mainly) my two index fingers. To do this, my forearms have to move around a lot, and my wrists can almost always be inline with my forearms. And no, I don't look at the keyboard when I type. I've been doing it for so long that I can move my arm and have my index finger land on the key I want, without the need to peek. I have to glance occaisionally to make sure my fingers are over the keys I'm expecting, but that's about it. There are some downsides, though. I have to slow down a lot on so-called "ergonomic" keyboards, I can't hit 100 wpm like some touch typists, and changing the motion required from wrists to arms means my shoulders will get tired after long days typing. On the plus side, the shoulders are a lot more durable than the wrists, and I'm betting I'll be able to sustain 60 wpm for the rest of my life while most touch-typists will hampered by wrist bracers by the time they're 40. 100 wpm ain't worth it, as far as I'm concerned. QWERTY, DVORAK, doesn't matter, just get your damn wrists off the desk!
I switched to ',.pyf, er I mean Dvorak, earlier this year. I used to get the odd twinge in both limbs. I was never a touch-typist, always have to look at the keys now & then. I resisted the change for a long time, fearing it would be too much effort. It took about 2-3 weeks to get comfortable with the new layout. I was very surprised. I was helped by being able to modify a keyboard so I could continue to look at the keys (by swapping keys round). Remember that this won't be possible on a lot of keyboards, due to the different curves that each row has. Switching back to the old format can be a pain (not literally), eg on server kbs at work & so on, I find myself looking in the Dvorak position. For me it does become "hunt & poke". But it's not too much of a problem. I'd certainly recommend it for English-typists who get pains. Also it keeps QWERTY idiots off your box :)
One downer is the keyboard shortcuts, so if you're heavily into your vi etc you will need to think carefully. Maybe you can get modified versions. The ctrl-x/c/v combo in Windows was binned straightaway, I've now got used to QuickBasic's good old ctrl-ins/shift-ins. Also, being British is a disadvantage, since I can only get an American layout. Therefore hash/pound/quote/@ etc are all messed up, and UKP/libra/£ can now only be found on alt+156 (Lord knows where in *nix)
Yes it made a difference, since I switched I've had barely a twinge. However I do use Workrave, anybody with RSI simply has to use this or something similar. However I've been using that for a couple of years, and the twinges only went away after deploying Dvorak.
Mostly that article seems to say that there has been almost no high-quality, scientific study that says Dvorak lets you type substantially faster than QWERTY. That's not the same as a demonstration that there is no benefit. Besides, it talks primarily about typing speed, which isn't the only consideration for someone who is going to be using a keyboard for extended periods of time.
Also, from the article:
So according to the article, Dvorak meets two of three conditions, and Qwerty fails two and meets one. What they don't mention is that Dvorak is pretty good at C by virtue of having all the vowels on one side, meaning that there is a very large amount of hand-switching during typing. The gist of the studies they refer to seems to be that Dvorak sounds like it should be really great, but they haven't been able to prove that it's as good as you might expect. That doesn't sound like "pure hype" to me.
I switched to the Dvorak layout almost a year and a half ago. As I'm a student and programmer, I use both QWERTY and Dvorak layouts daily.
When I trained on Dvorak, I used it exclusively for three months. Afterwards, moving between keyboards was easy.
I do have one strange mental block. If I'm on a QWERTY keyboard, even if I know the codes are being entered in Dvorak, I can't bring myself to type in Dvorak. The visa-versa is true.
I learned qwerty as a small child, under orders from my parents. *chuckle* It took me a while to become proficient, but it was good experience in retrospect.
When I was about 16, I taught myself Dvorak in two days. Since then, I've used Dvorak about 80% of the time.
I don't even think about switching back and forth, in fact it's not even as complicated as a mental toggle. I can just type in both layouts, as long as I know which layout I'm using.
I've followed the debates about whether the effectiveness of Dvorak is hype or urban legend and I think both sides have good points. However, in my experience, my fingers and wrists are much less sore after a night coding on Dvorak than with Qwerty. And that's all that matters to me...
I once switched to Dvorak and had gotten up to 50 wpm, but then I had to spend some time intermittently on a Qwerty keyboard. At each session, a few minutes would be required for my brain to make the switch, but after that, as long as I didn't think about it and just let my hands work automatically, I could operate at 40 wpm. My error rate was about double or triple what it was when I could work for a long period on the Dvorak keyboard.
The brain is such an amazing programmable tool - think braille, morse code, as well as typing.
I used to type over 100 wpm on Qwerty, with peaks around 150 wpm. When I started getting wrist pains and such, I decided to try out Dvorak.
Switching is easy, if you follow a simple rule: whatever you do, don't touch a Qwerty keyboard until you've learned Dvorak. Move your keycaps around and force yourself to hunt and peck until you learn the keys. The positioning really makes a lot of sense. Also, do something that requires a lot of typing during this time. I use IRC constantly, so that part was pretty easy.
I was touch typing within a week of changing to Dvorak, and I gained about 5 wpm a day until I hit somewhere around 45 wpm. After that it took me a month plus until I started typing in phrases instead of letters, and now I can type over 100 wpm again, though not quite as fast as my old Qwerty speeds. I attribute this mostly to the fact that I am no longer in a situation where I'm trying to type fast.
As far as speeds go, I have shared a screen with a friend of mine who types perl on a Qwerty keyboard so sickeningly fast that it looks like he's just pasting it over a slow modem connection. That alone convinced me that there isn't necessarily much of a speed bonus for switching. However, I haven't been able to beat Dvorak for comfort.
Originally I planned to switch back to Qwerty after I learned Dvorak and train myself to be 'bilingual', but I liked Dvorak too much to bother with it. Recently I took a job that has me using the keyboard a lot again, and I found that with very little effort I was able to touch type Qwerty again at a reasonable speed. I don't get confused between the layouts when at work and home, as the environments give me cues that help, but I do find myself slipping back into Dvorak mode occasionally at work. I expect this to occur less the more I use the computer here.
A side-effect you may not have thought of, however, is if other people use your computer they will be utterly lost at the keyboard. My siblings couldn't use my computer until after I'd learned to touch-type Dvorak and changed the keycaps back to Qwerty (and showed them how to toggle the language).
All in all, however, I've found the switch to be a good choice, and one that hasn't caused me any noticeable problems. If I ever reach a situation where I really just need to type Dvorak, it is pretty simple to switch the layout at any (Windows?) computer, and I can then type away at max speed. I have only done this once, when I was typing something being dictated to me, and I'm not even sure I'd have to do it anymore.
You really need to bury yourself in Dvorak. Switching while you're learning the layout is counter productive.
Once you become proficient in Dvorak, you then need to relearn Qwerty. Almost everyone I know who's made the switch feels the same way.
You can't simply "switch back" without learning how. You have to forget qwerty, in a way.
The lesser finger travel and more conventient key locations for programming have made me a happy convert. Bad carpal tunnel is hardly noticable. YMMV. A word of warning:
If you are accustomed to cursor movement keys in say... vi or vim... then you may hate yourself for making the switch. Myself: I just learned the new key locations. No worries.
I use both dvorak and qwerty. Since I'm at home, I'm typing on a dvorak keyboard right now. I would say that frequent switching makes you look at the keys a lot when you start to type (for obvious reasons) but then you pretty much can type on either layout.
As for the claims that dvorak is faster, more accurate, and helps ease typing fatigue, I would say that they are perhaps 30% true. I do notice a very slight increase in my speed while typing on a dvorak, but this could easily be explained by the fact that it's my home keyboard and I'm most comfortable using it, etc, and may have nothing to do with the layout. I do NOT notice a drastic increase in speed between the two layouts.
The idea that the dvorak layout reduces spelling errors is not only BS, it may in fact be the opposite. I have noticed especially that the famous home row with all the vowels in it causes no end of problems. You are hitting keys there so often, that you are bound to mess up. I mix up 'a' and 'o' frequently.
There is some truth in the claim that dvorak is more comfortable. This makes sense, given that the vowels are under your fingers and the keys are spaced so the most common ones are also the easiest to reach. I definitely notice after a while that typing on a qwerty starts to hurt in the muscles in my hands, and it happens far more easily on a qwerty than on my dvorak. I would say that the main thing that keeps me on a dvorak is that it's simply more comfortable to type on for an extended peroid of time.
Switching to dvorak takes about 50 hours, no BS involved. At first, it will really screw you up to reach for a key that's been in the same place for decades, to have it moved to a different place. I advise a lot of instant messaging and long college-style papers. If this sounds like fun, then go for it. If you are switching because it's going to be easier on your hands, then you are spending a lot of time and effort for it, and you will get some return on that. However, do not go into dvorak expecting a miracle keyboard.
Mostly, dvorak is simply different. As a dvorak user, I would argue that it's better and more comfortable, but mostly it's just a preference. Much like linux, it's a different way of doing the same thing.
I have spent enourmous amount of time in front of computers and key boards over the last 14-15 years and have never, ever experiecned RSI as a result of the typing. Maybe this is related to my continued inability to touch type. If this is true, then I don't want to be able to touch type. I figure that I have been able to type quickly enough so that it isn't a burden, I merely have to look at the ketboard as I type.
Exactly what does touch typing get me? If I was able to write papers in college in a reasonable amount of time, if my coding doesn;t suffer, why must i be able to touch type. I find the inadequacies of the QWERTY keyboard are overblown when most of us don't need to type as fast or as efficiently as we think we ought to. Does a few extra words per minute matter when the difference is finishing a document in an hour vs. 55 minutes? I think not.
While my job has always involved computers, I find that I spend enough time not typing that I don't experience RSI, and I find that I don't know that many people that do, so is it really a problem?
As others have pointed out, the return on investment may not be what you expect when switching to another keyboard layout - you are still stuck with rows of keys that force your hands into an unnatural position. So why not do something more radical and take a look at the Ergodex DX1? Although Toms Hardware Guide and others refer to it as the ultimate gaming controller, it should be possible to build your own ergonomical keyboard layout for coding. The tray can hold up to 50 keys, and with a clever setup this should beat both QWERTY and Dvorak. It seems they are using high quality keys and have good software. I will buy one next month, although this is not exactly a cheap toy.
The hardest part of a new layout is all the little characters you don't use often in regular typing. If I were a writer, switching back and forth would be a simple matter but as a programmer, Dvorak really slowed me down finding semicolins and square brackets without looking. Since these things are a major part of every program I would think you'd loose a lot of productivity with a switch.
alternative keyboards http://www.keytools-ergonomics.co.uk/keyboards/de
RSI advice http://www.keytools-ergonomics.co.uk/advice/defau
It has a largest variety (although not complete) of alternative input devices to help people with RSI and disabilities. In addition it has guides about RSI, workplace environment etc to help you avoid getting RSI. Nice fancy flash animations and everything.
i personally use a twiddler http://www.handykey.com/site/features.html combined mouse and keybord and find no trouble switching between it and the qwerty keybourd layout. Twiddler makes no claims about it's affects on RSI but one of the testimonials state that his RSI has been cured by switching hands
http://www.datahand.com/products/personal.htm
look at the link. It uses a layout as similar to querty as possible given the key possitioning and they have comissioned studies into RSI and their keyboard. A bit pricy though.
The only trouble i can see is if you touch-type properly (I look at the keys for qwerty but touchtype the twiddler), but I think as long as you remain practiced at both you will fond no trouble switching.
Apologies for my waffling.
I switch my keyboard six months ago to dvorak and it is very good, but the most problem is the pre-configured keystroke, like HJKL in vi, and ALT+(QWER) in gnone. :-(
The biggest problem is that you will need to change all your keystroke, and everytime you switch you layout to QWERTY (if someone need to use your machine), the keystroke will be mis-configured.
that is it.
[]'s Breno Leitao
I use Dvorak at home and QWERTY at work. When switching from one environment into the other, it takes my fingers about a minute to figure out that they're switching keymaps, then they're at full speed on either. As an aside, I find that I type faster and more comfortably on Dvorak, but am uncertain whether it is better or worse for the remediation of RSI.
For your Dvorak keyboard, get one that has a noticeably different feel from the standard cheapo QWERTY keyboards you're likely to run into. Something with buckling-spring feedback is best. An IBM Model M will do in a pinch, or you can go all out and get an Avant Stellar, if you have the budget for that. (Yes, it costs a lot. It's worth it, though. Among other things, a keyboard like that will let you customize your layout in ways that you otherwise can't easily do -- e.g., you can move the shift and ctrl keys around, which if done right can relieve your pinkies of the need to be hyperextended frequently, something Dvorak won't do.)
Anyway, even a cheap used IBM Model M that you can pick up on ebay for practically nothing will have a quite different feel from today's cheapo squishy compact membrane keyboards that most PCs come with out of the box (and which, therefore, is what most people use).
So when you sit down to type at one, your fingers will feel the difference. At first you will find yourself using the wrong layout sometimes and mistyping until you stop and think, but after a few weeks of switching back and forth on a daily basis, you will find that your fingers automatically "know" where to go based on how the keys feel. When the keys feel squishy, your fingers will automagically go to the QWERTY positions.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I have to agree. I switched about 3 years ago, after several years of wrist pain. I've hardly had pain like this since.
And to answer the original poster, I'm afraid I've become hunt-and-peck on QWERTY, except for certain words such as my userID, which I have to enter in QWERTY mode on occasion before my layout preference has taken effect.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
For me, rather than learning a new keyboard layout or buying specialty molded keyboards, I decided to make sure I do a lot of different things with my hands to build up strength, and to make things, less repetitive. Try stuff like playing guitar, or another musical instrument, or getting a toy from thinkgeek, like the Powerball.
I took a keyboard and switched the keys around, learned to switch layouts in Mac OS X (web designer/developer).
:( Althogh switching to a tablet (Wacom) can help that if you need an alternative input, unless you are a vi user, in which case you have been shaking your head at my GUI -based mouse here, click there foolishness all along...
Positives-It does really cut back on strain, it feels like you never need to leave home row almost, and the reduced movement makes for less wrist stress. Great for typing english words Why I quit - Most of my interaction with the keyboard is not to type english. The brackets keys are even MORE inconvienent, bad if you are doing PHP or other lang. which uses them a fair bit. I also use the command shortcuts quite often, and they are no longer placed so that the most used ones are under your left hand (command z, x,c,v), so you have to take your hand off the mouse more, slowing me down.
I got to thinking about re-maping the keys back to QWERTY when command is down, then realized I type so litte actual english, I gave up and stayed with QWERTY.
I know you did not metion this, but do you game often, esp. First Person Shooters? My wrists hurt the big one for a month after I get addicted to a new shooter. I have to play in moderation now.
Rule of the open mind
People who are resistant to change cannot resist change for the worst.
Your brain will adapt. I have a qwerty to my left and a dvorak that I am typing on and I switch back and forth 50 times a day. The only difficulty is that VI is not set up for a dvorak.
o krap were did mie kies goe...
o n0....c0nformaten?
*Copies and pastes*
Whew. That was close.
Last time I do that again.
I know at least three keyboard layouts: English (US) Russian Ukrainian and I'm proficient in all of them. Switching between them is pretty easy. I've noticed that my typing speed in each language varies based on how much I time spend typing in that particular language. Here's the problem: Russian can be written in cyrillic and in and using latin characters when a cyrillic keyboard is not installed (I mean the software, not the hardware, I do touch-typing in all three languages). In any event, switching between transliterated Russian and real Russian is a pain in the ass. I use the real Russian layout more than translit, and thus I always have the urge to switch to the real Russian layout whenever I need to type in translit. I imagine the same would be true for DVORAK v. QWERTY. I tried learning DVORAK but gave up due to the lack of time. However, I see the potential benefits and I hope to learn it at some point in the future. Good luck with DVORAK! :)
-Palal
I am mostly a programmer as well, so when I decided to try using the Dvorak keyboard layout, I decided to use it to use it in my programming -- but only for programming. This had kind of an interesting effect. I got so used to using Dvorak for programming that I occasionally stumbled back to it when trying to program with QWERTY. I could switch to a normal conversation in QWERTY no problem though. And when I tried typing in Dvorak for a normal conversation, I could do it, but not as well as I could type using Dvorak while programming. It was like I learned the Dvorak layout to type in computer languages while I stayed in QWERTY to type in English. I think this helped make switching back and forth easier, because it was dependant upon the context I was working in.
Overall, just like you will get better at typing in Dvorak by practicing, you will also get better at switching between the two layouts by practicing.
If you are getting RSI it is not because of the few lines of code you type. Gaming is a much more dangerous activity, to say nothing of other repetative motions.
I'm with you on the stress balls. Sence I'm working from home I also like to put on the gloves and work on the heavy bag for a break. Many problems have become clear to me after working up a sweat.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm sure you can switch back and forth however, but you will be less accurate/fast spending time on two mappings than you would on one. I've found I'm quite comfortable switching between the following:
Add Dvorak to your list and you've got an argument that you are cooler than I. One of the guys I work with has a keyboard with all the keys removed and replaced completely out of order. Many have their labels erased. I think he also uses a wacko key layout. Nobody can use his computer except him.
But as far as your goal of avoiding RSI, the interface doesn't matter as much as the method in which you use it. I started getting numb fingers about a decade ago, but paying attention to my posture and doing occassional stretches made it go away. Keeping your wrists from resting on the surface of anything has a lot to do with it--this closes the carpal tunnel and causes friction and irritation to the tendons and nerves, which swell and cause more problems.
So I prefer practicing on QWERTY keyboards since they are available everywhere. And I use overhand hammers for nailing. Taught myself a bit of C, C++ and perl for well-roundedness too.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
I had a *lot* of 10,000+ word essays to write, my hands and wrists were getting so painful I could barely type, yet the deadlines couldn't be put off.
I switched to dvorak and the pain vanished within about a week of using it.
Could it be that the reason the pain vanished was because you were learning a new KB layout, and you were therefore typing more slowly? RSI is associated with *rapid* repetitive motions.
i switched to dvorak. AND i can not type qwerty AT ALL anymore.. If i try i have to look at the keyboard, or i will end up typing gibberish on it. also, it took me about 3 months to get up to speed, my typing practice was the mmorpg dark age of camelot. for the first two weeks i made a ton of errors, so much that my pinky was starting to hurt. finally i stopped making errors, and my speed went up. now i type just slightly faster than i did when i was typing qwerty. But the major benefit has been that it doesn't hurt much anymore... theres alot less streching your fingers around on the keyboard, and more useful letters come out more quickly. it has been worth it, because my fingers are not in pain anymore.
Am I the only person that still uses the hunt and peck method of typing? Since most of my typing is done while programming, I don't need to type very fast, and reaching some keys like |, -, =, and + are difficult while touch typing. It also doesn't help that I've broken most of my fingers at least once, and my pinky fingers aren't straight :)
Of course, I do have the problem of not seeing what I'm typing as I'm typing it, but I get between 60-80 words per minute hunt and pecking. I can do 30 words per minute touch typing, but only if the text doesn't include hard to reach characters.
With all that said, I don't get RSI, and I can slouch all I want when I type, but I don't get any of the advantages of touch typing, like being able to look away from the keyboard while typing. Of course, not being able to look away from the keyboard doesn't affect me while programming, since the code comes from my head, and not off a piece of paper.
So, if you're like me, and can afford to type slowly, then try going to hunt and peck for a while.
"I switched to dvorak and the pain vanished within about a week of using it."
Which showed that your pain was in your head.
If you had a wrist injury, it could not have been "cured" within a week, particularly if you were still using the wrist regularly.
The power of suggestion is such that someone "told" you that your wrist would feel better using this new keyboard layout and voila! magically it did.
Its kind of like back pain. Almost all back pain is psychological in nature, unless there is an actual injury. That doesn't mean the pain isn't real. But its based on your thoughts, not actualy injury.
That said, you can be injured by poor keyboard and/or mouse placement. At work, I had a badly placed keyboard because it made a neater workspace, but after about a month, I had shoulder pain that was severe. I had actually injured my rotator cuff. I finally realized it and moved my keyboard, and that decreased the pain after a few weeks.
Now, to show you it wasn't psychological, that pain persisted almost 10 years, until I went to the gym for over a year and strengthened the shoulder.
And unlike some whiners, I didn't miss a day of work nor did I blame my employer. It was my own doing.
My typing speed probably went down from perhaps 100 to 0 instantly. I tacked a picture of dvorak layout to the top of my monitor with little dots indicating the home keys. It took about 3 months to switch to where I could type at all. Another 3 months probably to where I could type acceptably enough to get work done. My wrists instantly stopped hurting, typing is much more "fun" with dvorak because it feels smoother. Some people say that they type faster. My qwerty speed and dvorak speed are now both much slower than before I switched. And it's a little tricky to shift gears between them. I can't, no matter how hard I try, type qwerty at my normal desk but at other people desks it's easy. But it's not about speed, it's about not killing your wrists and the comfort.
:)
And if you do HTML, the > and < are really easy to hit!
A few people I work with say that a Kenesis keyboard does mostly the same thing, but you don't lose the speed. But you can't carry a kenesis around with you on a laptop (and they cost $$$). Dvorak is easy to switch between and free.
I don't regret switching at all, it's totally worth it but it does take work.
www.senseboard.com keyboard and 3d mouse in one - the ultimate of the keyboards (at least for me) and have whatever freakin layouts you want. can't understand how they can't get enough funding for the project?!!!
I have been using the Dvorak keyboard layout for about 5 years now. I am not sure of the proven evidence regarding whether or not it is really better for your hands as far as RSI... but I can say for me it did a lot of good. I used to have quite a bit of pain in my wrists through the day and ended up switching to dvorak as one of a couple ways to combat it (good ergonomics helps too).
As far as switching back and forth... I have found that nowadays I can switch between the two keyboard layouts no problem. Once in a while my brain takes a couple mistyped words before it realizes I need to use the other layout. I am definitely not as fast in QWERTY as Dvorak, but I am fast enough to feel like typing is not a hurdle to getting my tasks done.
The problem is that you need a good solid foundation in the new keyboard layout before you can start switching between the two. I found I really had to discipline myself when I was first learning Dvorak to use only it. It is easy to get frustrated and revert to using QWERTY just when you want to get something done fast. When using the new layout you will feel like you have reverted back to a pseudo-hunt-and-peck and that's tough, especially when you need to get real work done.
I was at LSM'05 just last week where most keyboards were dvorak. I found it took me only a few tries to sort out at least half-speed typing...
I didn't find it any more comfortable though... you know why? For the exact same reason as switching isn't hard!!!
Many of the keys are in the same place, only a few common ones like a and m [well others too but those are the ones I noticed the most] are different.
You know what saves you from RSI? Streching and breaks. Try doing extensions in your cubicle, may look weird but will help.
Try this other nifty idea as "get the fuck up, walk over to the water cooler, look out the window for 2 mins then go sit back down".
Seriously. If you type so long and hard that your fingers go numb you're an idiot. I did that a few times when I was a kid and had no self-restraint [at least about the computers issues, let's leave food alone for the moment]. Now I regularly take breaks every 15-30 mins for a few moments just to stretch. You don't need to take long breaks, just long enough to take say 30-50 steps while moving your arms and hands...
Simple shit like that can keep ya going.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I switched years ago and never looked back. I never had a problem with RSI in the first place, but I hadn't typed for years as others here have. The biggest thing I found was that my accuracy went way up. I wasn't hitting the back key every three strokes. This really improved my speed.
:)
Took me about 2 weeks to get back up to where I was, and within 2 weeks after that I'd greatly improved my speed.
Switching back and forth isn't a problem if you're doing it often. It's just like learning a new language. People fluent in more than one don't have to "think" about what language they are using, they just do it. You'll find the same thing happen with you after a little while. Give it a good month though before you decide it's not worth it.
Ergonomic keyboards will help a lot, but it's the layout of the keys that's Qwerty's biggest draw back.
If you want to know the facts, do a serch in Discovery magazine about Dworak keyboards. That's when I switched over.
I switched to Dvorak over a year ago. It took me a week before I could even attempt to touchtype at all, but my speed picked up rapidly after that. By the first month, my speed was faster than my old QWERTY speed.
I will warn you: learning to be able to switch back and forth required me to re-learn QWERTY. I instantly forgot my QWERTY training. However, I gained the ability to switch by forcing myself to do just that. I find that if I take a glance at my hands (my physical keyboards are all QWERTY, although they are mapped Dvorak), I can force myself to start typing QWERTY. At that point, I can look back at the screen without reverting to Dvorak. I don't actually know the Dvorak layout with my eyes or mind. It's more like my hands know it all by themselves. I can't picture the Dvorak layout in my head. I can't really describe the order of the keys. I can't even say what the Dvorak mapping of a QWERTY key is. Typing became for me like walking. Without actually studying how one's feet move, it's difficult to create a believable animation of a walking human, but walking isn't a problem at all--it's just something we do. Even though I can switch layouts, I'm still more comfortable in Dvorak. Sometimes I find it easier to take the fifteen seconds required to change the layout than it would be to continue on in QWERTY. --kbitz
I switched over to Dvorak about 5 years ago. The main reason was speed, and not so much RSI, though I used to get cramping in both hands after extended periods on the computer. It took me a month to touch-type again (albeit slower than when using QWERTY) and about 3 months before I had surpassed my QWERTY speed. I had maxed out at about 60 wpm with QWERTY, and was up around 90 wpm with Dvorak. The cramping has gone and never returned. I do get some pain in my right wrist still, but I think that is mostly due to the mouse rather than the keyboard. I used to be a helpdesk support guy so had to run around to other people's computers often, but not anymore. Even now, 5 years later, I can still touch type *fairly* well on a QWERTY keyboard. It's not great, but when I look I can type about 30 wpm while using all the write fingering. Hope this was useful. I actually bought a new keyboard a while ago from fingerworks.com. I never got used to it, but if you read the forums there it sounds like a lot of people have adapted and really loved it. They also have a Dvorak layout. kynddaze
its actually kind of wierd, but i have too see the keyboard once to tell myself which i am using, and then i am fine though, really... :)
with a few minor exceptions
it was actually pretty hard to type the above message in qwerty on dvorak
I know it might seem OT on the face of it, but I play both the guitar and the banjo. They're strung differently and tuned differently, but most of the fundamental parts of playing both instruments (like fretting) are the same.
Having said this, there is no sense of not being aware of which instrument you're playing, and even though there are procedures that apply to both (like fretting), you just instantly flick between instruction sets, so you never accidentally start playing 'the banjo' while you're holding a guitar.
This is only a metaphor, of course, and it may not apply to keyboards as well, but my gut feeling tells me it should be fine.
Also, as an educator, I can tell you that they skills that stay with you the longest are physical skills, like riding a bike, using a keyboard or playing an instrument. Even after very long periods of disuse, these skills generally return in a very short amount of time.
SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.
I would equate switching between the two to learning a foreign language. Even if you were to completely switch to dvorak you'll still be able to type in qwerty, though perhaps not quite as fast. I type with both qwerty and dvorak and it never seems to be a problem switching between the two.
Another thing to consider is that it doesn't actually take much to enable dvorak on a client's computer. All of 30 seconds to change it and 30 seconds to change it back, assuming you have appropriate permissions to do so.
1) Using a high precision mouse and put the sensitivity to "high"... limits wrist movements, but takes some getting used to the sensitivity.
2) Using a Powerball to help relieve stress in the wrist.
3) A natural keyboard. Logitech has some nice ones.
Just to add to the noise - I switched to Dvorak about 10 years ago. It significantly decreased the amount of pain I felt after a long day of typing. I can switch back and forth between QWERTY and Dvorak fairly seemlessly, and have never lost the ability to type at a reasonable speed on a QWERTY keyboard, even though I only use one about once per month or two.
You can use Leet Key FireFox extension to type in DVORAK.
As for RSI? Yeah, that's why I switched. My hands have not gotten worse but curiously, I find my hands feeling better. I call it "happy hands" and that alone was worth the price of admission.
Oh, one more thing, I'm not a 100% touch typist. Looking at the keys doesn't help me you see...
I'm not sure how this might help you with RSI...
From my experience Dvorak is incredibly fast, however like you I learned QWERTY as a small child and have in the mean time become quite effective in its use.
I can clearly SEE the advantages of Dvorak when its flowing, (just type "THE" for instance). But I just can't compete with my brute force QWERTY speed. I think I can type as fast as QWERTY will allow, DVORAK would in the long run allow me to probably eek out an extra couple words per minute, but I don't think my brain can go any faster thinking up words to be typed.
As to switchability. I've never gotten confused which was which. I've forgotten dvorak now and then when I don't use it for long extensions, but I tend to use Dvorak only for half-keyboard applications.
I was starting to feel some pain in my fingers and wrists and switched to dvorak.
I also bought one of the Kinesis-Ergo Classic QD keyboards.
I don't know what the other posters here are talking about, but once you teach your fingers to use a dvorak keyboard, you can no longer touch type in QWERTY. Your fingers forget -- the old muscle memory just goes away, replaced by the new. Once you've learned to type dvorak, you've succeeded in reprogramming your fingers. The old code has been deleted, so to speak.
Now, your *brain* still remembers where the QWERTY keys are. You can still hunt-and-peck fairly quickly on QWERTY keyboard, if you look at the keyboard (you eye will find the keys pretty quickly), but touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard after learning dvorak is out.
I find that I rarely have to type on someone else's machine, and when I do, it's either a Mac or Windows machine, and those are pretty easy to switch over to dvorak when you need to.
My advice? Switching to dvorak is only half the battle. To really save your joints, you need to get a keyboard that's ergonomically designed (which includes being *symmetrical*) like the kinesis-ergo classic qd, and you *also* need to type with it at the right height for you. I sit mine on my lap, with my feet propped up on one of those little ergo foot stools (to make my lap level), and with my elbows resting on the armrests of the chair. I can type all day with this setup without any discomfort (except when I have to use the mouse).
So I guess there's a last point in there as well: make it a goal to gradually learn more and more keyboard shortcuts to lessen your use of the mouse.
In all the arguments against the dvorak layout that I have been able to find they only compare speed at typing, I switched about 3 years ago, it took me three weeks before I was back up to speed, but my accuracy is much better now than it was before. I would love to see a study that actually compared both speed and accuracy of the competing layouts, even though I can switch back and forth easily.
visit me at www.longdead.net
Why am I still using QWERTY after 34 years? Why do I not have a repetitive stress injury? Three words: hunt and peck. Give up the touch-typing, man. Use three fingers and two thumbs. Go for accuracy not speed!
Your wrists will thank you,
I know RSI occurs, I've had weeks where it was painful to type much at all- but it always passes.
Yes, you can irritate tendons, but your body heals. I also play drums and I injur myself regularly from playing and have to take it easy for a while- but ultimately my tendons strengthen and the muscles strengthen so I avoid the same injury.
My point really is that instead of trying to avoid RSI, one needs to prepare themselves for it. Take breaks from typing, relax your hands, and if you start to feel pain, try to take it easy for a while. Yes, you can minimize it, but pressing keys is ultimately a task that will result in RSI and so I say better to strengthen the muscles than worry about your keyboard layout.
I never said I was a teacher...
If RSI is your basic trouble and you are not typing pure code, how about trying Voice Dictation? Much less typing. Even if you are typing pure code, the comments and some key words can be added by using voice and that should cut your typing down to half or less. It works for me, especially since I like to pace while I am working on a praticularly sticky problem. I just attach a USB or microphone extension cable to the headset and I can walk anywhere within the room and still reply to all of my emails. When adding comments, I find that I add more and longer comments when I use voice than when I type.
...for the most part all I really need to do is be able to see the keyboard letters to get almost right up to my old QWERTY typing speed, when I must. As for the rest of the time I am quite happy with Dvorak. It took me much longer than what I have heard it normally takes to get back up to or past my old speed, probably because in QWERTY I had gotten to the point where my typing was pretty much muscle memory - and that takes a long, long time to un-train. Nowadays, I can drop into muscle memory mode in Dvorak more and more often. Practice. May I suggest writing a novel during the month of November? After all, November is National Novel Writing Month. At the end of the month you will be fully functional in Dvorak AND you will be a novelist!
Anyone suffering from RSI should see a doctor and a therapist; these injuries are caused primarily by frustrated anger (which most working people likely have a lot of).
I'm 21-years-old and typed in QWERTY for seven years starting at age 12, ultimately reaching 130+ words per minute. Rather than study for a test at uni two years ago, I decided to start learning DVORAK. For the rest of the semester lab reports were hard to write and after a week, I was a steady 40 wpm on Dvorak but my QWERTY speed dropped to about 50 wpm--after such a loss, there was no turning back! After four months exclusively on Dvorak I was at 90 wpm and by the half-year mark I was at 120 wpm.
v orak_powerbook.jpg)
r e.asp?id=94). I'm two-weeks into learning the alternate layout and am finally getting good at it.
g e.html); it seems to not be so helpful to developers. If you type fast on QWERTY now, you'll lose a lot of it after learning Dvorak. You may be able to get good enough at QWERTY but it won't be soon after learning Dvorak and it won't be fast and your boss will look at you funny when you're hunting and pecking.
As for people who compare switching back-and-forth between keylayouts to bilingualism, they either (a) do not speak from experience or (b) do not type fast on either layout. Occasionally switching back to QWERTY is a REAL PAIN. The only words I can type fast on QWERTY include the URL to my uni's webmail page, my first and last name (email login), and email password. I've found that I only reach tolerable QWERTY speeds if I'm going back to QWERTY on a daily basis. I also think it helps to use the EXACT SAME KEYBOARD IN THE EXACT SAME LOCATION to really rev up QWERTY rates quickly. Of course, the latter statement sounds like psychobabble, but my muscle memory seems to benefit from these constants.
If you haven't garnered these from DVORAK fan sites, here are some little tidbits:
* 'a' and 'm' are the only keys that are not moved between QWERTY and ANSI Dvorak (more on ANSI later...)
* the Dvorak home row includes aoeu ih htns - (spaces insert for readibilty)
* as an OS X user, I find Dvorak much more amenable to common keyboard shortucts. Quit is cmd+Q and Close Window is cmd+w, which makes for easy muscle-memorisation on a Powerbook keyboard with the keys physically rearranged for Dvorak (http://www.geocities.com/rjpoling/MacOS/dvorak/d
As for ANSI mentioned above, here's the real doozey: August Dvorak initially proposed an alternate number-row layout in his book Typewriting Behavior (1936, I think?). Rather than 12345 67890, Dvorak liked 75319 02468 (again, spaces inserted for readability). In theory, I don't know how much this helps. In practice, it's kinda useful these days since the '@' character is easily accessed with the index finger. This alternate number layout was NOT included in the standard ANSI Dvorak layout, but keymap files may be easily modified by true fanatics. On OS X, I highly recommend Ukelele (http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_softwa
In sum, the Dvorak layout markedly reduces finger movement for standard English text (http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/comparePa
Hope this helps.
Jon
Why does their web page show the "caps lock" key on the home row and the "cntl" key off in the ozone under your thumb? No truly useful keyboard has the almost entirely unused "caps lock" cluttering up the valuable real estate and the heavily used "cntl" exiled to an awkward location.
i could never switch over to dvorak, because just looking at the layout reminded me of those early years where i had to type with one finger at about a word per minute. it was horrible. id rather get carpal tunnel or rsi than switch to any other layout anyway.
You shouldn't have problems switching between the two layouts. I actually go back and forth between QWERTY and Cyrillic. It's like learning two different peaces on the piano.
I now do all my typing in Dvorak. I'm a web developer writing mostly PHP, HTML, and CSS. I average about 50wpm. It took me 6 weeks of daily use to be able to switch solely to Dvorak. While I was learning, I tried to do everything in Dvorak unless it was time critical.
;)
Before learning Dvorak, I was a 40wpm QWERTY typist, but trapped in limbo somewhere between hunt-and-peck and touch typing; I would use all my fingers, but I had to look at the keyboard every-so-often. Because I couldn't touch-type in QWERTY when I begun, I can't say whether I could touch-type in QWERTY. But I can still manage a swift rate. I do however, find myself reverting to Dvorak if I have been sitting at a QWERTY computer for a while without typing.
My biggest gripe is gaming -- Using Windows and using the keyboard layout switching capability I have to switch the input mode every time I start a game -- most games look at the letters.
Funnily enough, Quake III Arena is the only game I've seen that would ignore the input mode while you were playing, seeing WASD as WASD, but if you were chatting it would go Dvorak (,AOE) -- Why don't more games do this? Once again, id was ahead of its time...
A tip for those keen to learn: don't bother with re-labelling your keys! Just print out the layout and attach it to the bottom of your monitor and use that when you're unsure which key is F or G. Maybe think about getting a label-less Das Keyboard
You don't just forget a layout you've been using for 22 years. You might lose a bit of speed with qwerty, but it's a non-issue.
.. the Finnish symbol layout is totally different to the US symbol layout (only !#%,. are in the same place) and I can mentally switch between either very quickly if I have to sit down at a US keyboard.
:-)
I've been using a "Finnish dvorak" layout that a hobbyist over here designed..
Also it seems that I'm bi-keyboard even in QWERTY
It seems that all my years of using my Amiga with the US keyboard layout paid off.. started using localized keyboards only when I went PC.
-Jope
I had a number of "hand" problems in '98 and had to find a number of solutions--I needed arm bands to take care of the tennis elbow and I got a split keyboard to take care of the early Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but then I got a nasty little problem whose name I never caught. The ligaments or tendons or whatever that make your hands work when you type would become inflamed and pushed the bones apart in the back of my hands and they turned into little more than clubs. I tell you this because what many in this discussion have overlooked is the nature of the problem and how to solve it. The solution, Jamesh, depends on what problems you are experiencing or wish to prevent.
I took a three-pronged approach: I started learning Dvorak to A) slow my immediate typing down, which kept the clubs--er, hands from becoming inflamed as readily. I typed more slowly all day, but I could type for longer periods. B) By learning Dvorak, I could do the same work without as many "reaches" from the home row, which also kept my hands cooler. I had to take notes for programming changes and for whatever reason, that would cause my right hand to tighten up, so I started learning shorthand--not to write more quickly, but to write more easily. This turned out to be ineffective because I didn't write as much as I typed, so I dropped that approach. However, these days I use a modified version of Palm's Graffiti symbols to keep notes for myself. Cursive is too intensive for what it gives me and I can actually read my own handwriting better now than ever before. I do have to switch some things when I know someone else will read my handwriting, however. The third prong was to investigate alternative pointing devices, like touchpads and the like. However, plopping your hand down on a mouse and pushing your arm around on the table is less finger-intensive than anything else out there, so I ultimately abandoned that idea.
Today, I still type Dvorak everywhere I can, but some places I don't have priviledges to change the layout or I won't be at that particular keyboard long enough to bother. I switch back and forth all the time. In the beginning, however, I was tripped up by keyboard shortcuts, because I still wanted to ^C ^X ^V all down in the lower lefthand corner, but I got used to it. Also, it took awhile before I was able to switch back and forth quickly. I could do in about 5-10 minutes and the time reduced the more I got used to doing so. Today, I still have a couple of keys from Dvorak that I stubbornly will try to type in QWERTY and (surprisingly) vice-versa. The biggest one for me is that the Dvorak "E" is where the QWERTY "D" is located.
The way I learned was from something I found suggesting to start typing five minute stretches every day with a reduced set of letters. I would take a newspaper article and type for five minutes to a metronome set at about 30 beats per minute. I would type every vowel as it came up (left hand home row) plus the letter "M", because "M" and "A" are in the same place in both layouts, but I would hit the space bar for every other letter. After I got used to that, I would add 2 or 3 letters and kept doing so until I had the whole keyboard mapped out. At that point, I sped up the metronome a little at a type until I was typing at a decent speed. The point of the metronome is to keep you from typing quick little bunches and then pausing to figure out the next bunch, which is essential to building your speed. I've found that learning to touch-type the second time left me with better habits than when I first learned to type QWERTY. However, being a programmer, I will never be able to type very fast, because I have to punch in finger-locking symbols all day long.
If you want an option to trying to mentally switch before you're really comfortable doing so, try Dvortyboards: http://dvortyboards.com/ The last holdout resource on the web is DVZine: http://dvzine.org/
To answer your questions, I
I have no idea if dvorak is any good or not but the link provided by the parent post is no authority either. I've heard the qwerty version about the jammed keys and eh, might have some truth in it but the actual reason for that layout is so the word "typewriter" would be easy to find and type for typewriter salesmen. Need proof? Look at the top row of your keyboard. Here's one link but there's many more: http://www.fonthaus.com/xheight/qwerty.cfm Hmph, you would think that people posting on /. would already know this stuff...or at least know how to use google...
I tried learning Dvorak once. While I still remember where the majority of keys are, switching back and forth requires huge leaps of brain shift. When you switch back to QWERTY, you'll find your error rate skyrocket as your brain is still in Dvorak mode. It takes at least ten minutes of readjustment with the occasional error when switching. It's not easy, and I doubt anyone could do it with ease.
- IP
Although you can usually chance the machine do dov.. for the time your there if you lean to touch type well enough and don't need the key map to find your way around.
Its worth the pain though... much faster, and no problems at all with rsi...
p.
I tried switching to Dvorak in High School just for grins and it really never got me anywhere (actually ended up practicing QWERTY more on the typing games I had after giving up on my Dvorak speed).
What I do now is lay my hands naturally on the keyboard. Since my middle and ring finger are longer than the rest of my fingers, they naturally fall to the top row, which is convenient since I can gain three more vowels that way.
Standard Home Row: asdf jkl;
My "Home Row": awef jio;
That and I lay my keyboards flat on the table and rest my wrists on the desk. Feels comfortable to me.
The world record for words per minute (170) was typed on a Dvorak keyboard.
h tml
http://sominfo.syr.edu/facstaff/dvorak/blackburn.
- IP
Take some advice from someone who used to type at 130 (no exageration) wpm on QWERTY... Then, I got this bright idea to try and INCREASE my typing speed... so I researched all these different systems, and finally read several articles boasting how great DVORAK is... So I spent a few hours with a Sharpie marker writing the dvorak letters on my keyboard and then putting clear nail polish over them to protect the ink... Well, after about 3 weeks of ONLY using DVORAK, I was up to about 35WPM on it... After 6 months, about 80WPM, but I couldn't go any faster... in addition, my speed on QWERTY now went to under ONE (1) WPM!!! I just couldn't type on QWERTY for the life of me...
This made it REALLY hard when installing new OS's or using DOS boxes on win systems as the system CAN be put in DVORAK mode, but it's a major pain, and now you've made it IMPOSSIBLE to use public terminals, systems that other people must use in an office or computers at a friends house, library computers, etc because you just feel so frustrated that you can't even type ANYTHING anymore... (linux, windows, and other do support dvorak, but it's not seemless integration because now you have some logins and user names using one system, and other using your system).
If you REALLY try to type in QWERTY again, after about 3 days you can get a decent speed again on it (maybe 40-60WPM), but then you mess up your dvorak skills.
In addition, th positioning of punctuation makes, brackets, carrots ([]{}-+;) etc. on DVORAK is TERRIBLE for programming... dvorak was designed for SPEED in writing casual english, and you usually do not use those characters nearly as often as A O E and U for instance, so they're really terrible for programming.
Oh yeah, I eventually DID switch back to QWERTY after 5 years of using DVORAK because it was just too much trouble setting up systems and dealing with all the trouble... I've been using QWERTY again for now nearly 9 months, and can only type at 90WPM on it - so I RUINED my typing speed. You mind (or at least my mind) just cant take switching rapidly betweem systems and "double mapping" where the keys are when touch typing.
One interesting thing to note is that there is also a one hand right hand and left hand dvorak system for that was developed by Mr. Dvorak for military general who lost one of his hands in a war. This might be great, however, all the dvorak layouts are unfortunately completely different.
If you want more speed, consider using word expander programs or macro programs where you can type abreviation in your document as you are typing, like f for the word "for" or tt for THAT, etc... and they are automatically replaced with the full word. I've heard that people using THESE systems can achieve a typing speed several times in magnitude of the speed of the best DVORAK typists.
So, in conclusion, I would STRONGLY recommend against switching to DVORAK - especially if you're a programmer.
I thought I'd just chime in as a "me too" comment. As a linguist who's studied 4 different languages it IS a lot like switching between 2 similar languages at times (like French and Spanish).
I've been typing Dvorak for about 4 years now. I've found that if I don't type Qwerty for months and months at a time it can get rusty, but if you use both fairly often you'll really have little or no problem (the language analogy applies here too). Plus if you have the Qwerty layout in front of you it really comes back to you faster. That said, since I primarily type Dvorak, my Qwerty speed has suffered a bit, but it's still not bad.
As for speed I agree with other posters that Dvorak is not really that much faster, but it's much more comfortable and "natural" feeling. I've been typing Dvorak for so long, and in spite of not always having the layout in front of me I still prefer using Dvorak over Qwerty.
Also if you're worried about RSI I highly recommend a Kinesis keyboard (my fave), or at least something with a bit of ergonomic research behind it.
Yeah, I see you're still having trouble. That shift key keeps getting stuck down, doesn't it?
Okay, the reason why your pain lessened or disappeard is because you changed your typing behavior. Not because the keyboard is superior.
You're avoiding the "repetitive stress" portion of RSI. You've changed how the repetitions happen. And, for a while at least, you're going to have less pain.
However, in the long-term, you're still going to acquire a certain amount of pain from using a keyboard. As you'll set up new series of repetitions on the new keyboard layout.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
i tried using dvorak awhile back. i never got up to the same speeds as with qwerty but that's just lack of effort. at first it was very difficult and each key stroke required an individual thought. if you can already type quickly this can be frustrating, so patience is required. after awhile i became more fluid and did notice i had to flick a mental switch to go either way, similar to speaking in another language. if you have that skill, your brain's already partly wired for switching between keyboards. the reason i dropped it is that i was doing data entry and i found that it wasn't that helpful. it's probably more useful if you're actually typing coherent thoughts and sentences, but when every 5th key is the tab or enter key, the benefit is low.
Switching is not hard. Performance in the old style of typing is only slowed by the same amount as if you'd not typed for that period.
Key layout only seems to be an issue for those pushing their products which feature new key layouts. The key layout makes little difference to me. Having the keyboard split and tilted apart at the bottom helps me much more than any specific layout.
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model
I switch between typing Korean and English hundreds of times a day without any problem.
My roommate switches between qwerty and dvorak at least twice a day(before work, at work, after work) without any problem.
Switching between qwerty and dvorak shouldn't confuse you either.
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber" -- Plato
It /is/ possible to type quickly without hurting yourself. I've found that the mouse is more responsible for my wrist pain than typing is. When I'm doing command line only stuff on UNIX machines, I don't have any problem at all. It's only my mouse hand that ever hurts, so I've switched to mousing left-handed. Since I use customers' computers often, and their mouse is usually on the right, it allows me to effectively switch off.
Completely solved it for me.
As many of you fellow ./ friends will suffer with pain while typing. I will give you a link to a cheap but good keyboard. I think its about 80$ if you find the rigth dealer. I seen it for abow 200$ too from special "health at workplace" shops.
s sories_mainboards/keyboards_mice/special_keyboards /kbpc_e.html
http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/products/prof_acce
For you thats to lazy to click on the link,
Its a split keyboard, with height adjustment,
and free degree split between left and right keyside.
The keys feels abit "lose" when typing the first week, but after that they feel just right.
It saved my hards for sure. I used to have pain while typing, and it mostly gone now.
I have had a time where I had to work with computers set up in either AZERTY or QWERTY, and due to some, um, less intelligent KVM setup it wasn't necessarily true that the system with QWERTY was actually configured for QWERTY either.
.
You get used to all of that, takes a couple of weeks. Getting used to Windows, on the other hand
Insert
I swapped all my keys to see the layout directly.
The funny thing is that my girlfriend got adapted to this layout, too. She was really mad at me first time she has seen the keyboard.
What I don't really like are the difficulties with typing text before the operating system is up. I don't mean single keystokes like Y(es) and N(o), but longer commands in bootmanagers for example. I cannot type with 10 fingers on QWERTZ, so it's a pain for me.
After adapting to German Dvorak type II, you'll find yourself typing 'e' instead of '.' quite often. The dot is simply in better position on my Dvorak keyboard. One further positive aspect is that I can finally type '/' without using the shift key, which is pretty convenient for URLs.
I would always recommend this layout to people who type a lot in German. And btw, it's not only about vowels being in the home row. The many common words are in this row. You should take a look at the distances which your fingers have to reach with QWERTZ and Dvorak. As far as I know, the fingers of QWERTZ typers move 10 times the distance of Dvorak typers. And this is quite much.
that should have ended with {grin}, but the anti HTML filter stripped it ..
Insert
20 plus years ago my Apple 2 C computer actually had a button right there on the front where you could swich between QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards. You could also buy key caps with both letters on them. I had mine permanently on Dvorak, and just wrote in the qwerty keys mainly for moving the cursor and such--- sometimes programs depended too much on the ijkm keys and then there was the keys which were in different spots. I was able to go past 70wpm in about 2 weeks of using it.
Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.--Solomon Short
Since the first time i used computers (C64) I always used QWERTY. For a C++ en C# junk as me {}[]() etc are just a lot more easy to type on a QWERTY board. The problem is that I live in Belgium and AZERTY is the default here. (While 12 miles east of where I live we are in the Netherlands and they have QWERTY). So evey day I need to switch between the two. And to be honest I never get used to it. After a hard day at work I come home and start typing in the wrong scheme. First I solved it by bringing my own keyboards to my job. But they disappeared overnight. And I also have to work on site with clients. So i never get used to it. After 5 of doing this I'm even getting frustrated and thinking about switching to AZERTY since that would give me the least amount of trouble when working here.
For several years I used Dvorak on my previous laptop, and Qwerty when I was in the lab at University.
It took me a couple of weeks to get up to speed with Dvorak, and another couple of weeks after that to stop myself typing in Dvorak on other computers. But after that, the different feel of the keys on my laptop flipped me into Dvorak mode.
I finally gave up on using Dvorak, because my laptop started dying, and I had to use a full sized keyboard to use it. Because it was full-sized, and didn't have my Dvorak stickers on it, I kept typing in Qwerty, instead of Dvorak.
bits and peace
Nicholas Daley
You don't lose your qwerty skills. They do degrade - but even after 8 years of dvorak I'm still doing ok with qwerty.
language-specific programming keyboards
You've never heard of APL, have you?
It does have a special keyboard, to handle its 120+ symbols. And yes, it is a nightmare, one of your worst
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Why just choose between Qwerty or Dvorak?
k /keyboard.html
Why not design your own?
A one-handed keyboard, for instance:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ianb/broster.co.u
And the author of this keyboard has no problems
switching between his own design and Qwerty.
I actually did this back in 1999 or so, for similar reasons. I found it pretty easy to learn Dvorak. It did help with pain, but I suspect this had more to do with slowing down and learning how to type (any layout) "correctly" than it being a more ergonomic layout. After about 3 years, I ended up going back to QWERTY. Several reasons why I switched back:
It's been maybe 2 years since I switched back, and surprisingly I can still type fluently on Dvorak. Probably because I learned "proper typing" for Dvorak, whereas with QWERTY I was just winging it.
I am not a doctor, but here is what has helped me concerning pain while typing: learn to type (your country's native layout) PROPERLY. Use BOTH sides of the keyboard when chording. You have two shift keys, two ctrl keys, two alts, etc. Don't try holding down ctrl with your left pinky while you press another key with the same hand. I think programmers are notorious for this kind of behavior (even to the point of turning caps lock into a 3rd ctrl key.) And use your caps lock when typing more then 2 capital letters in succession. All of this will slow you down a lot in the beginning, but I think the end result is well worth it.
to prevent RSI -- in addition to getting a keyboard tray and using a Kinesis keyboard, switch to mousing on the left, sleep plenty, nad do chest workouts. the blood flow through the wrists prevents soreness.
It seems that my fingers remember which keyboards and qwerty and which are dvorak. That is, whether switching between dvorak and qwerty is hard or easy depends on this:
Not sure if everybody else is the same as me, but overall if I just manage things properly it's not bad at all to switch back and forth. This has been the case all along for me. I'd recommend you give dvorak a try, but realize that for the first few weeks typing will suddenly become very difficult, so don't do it when you have a deadline looming!
Last summer, I started developing pain in my wrist due to what I guessed was RSI. I took advice from my friend and visited a chiropractor. Believe me, it helped a lot. I had to visit him once a week over three months, but the sessions were short and cheap (around $10, insurance took care of the rest). After that I ensure that my wrist is elevated while typing and using the mouse. This seems to work for me.
My primary way is QWERTY, but a while ago I learned Dvorak just to see what it was like. I can switch back and forth more or less at will, and have about 100 wpm QWERTY, and maybe 30 WPM Dvorak, although I'm sure I could bring that up if I tried. My advice: Just use both. You'll get the hang of it. Once you learn where the keys are with Dvorak type on everything -- your lap, a desk, in the air. It'll drill it in. I did that so much that for some reason, I am unable to type QWERTY now, except when my fingers are on the keyboard. When I imaginary type on a desk it's Dvorak all the way. Oh well. You can do both.
"True dat with a wiffle ball bat." -- kabrakan
I have to stick with QWERTY keyboards since I type with two fingers from each hand and my right thumb is used for the space bar. I typed this entire post without looking down to my keyboard once, and only had about 5 mistakes, and completed it in about 60 seconds. However, typically I look down with quick glances when I type and get an excellent speed and accuracy rate. I'd have to start all over again to learn another layout. Sheesh... I don't want to go back to all those BBS chat rooms at 2400 bps again...
OJ
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."
between QWERTY and Dvorak, or rather between QWERTZ (German layout) and a Dvorak variant that includes umlauts.
I have switched all of "my" computers to Dvorak 2 1/2 years ago; I used to type ~450 chars per second on QWERTZ before that (I am a hobby pianist, guess that helps, too); I am not yet up to the same speed on the new layout, just to put into perspective how long it will take to get proficient with a modified layout.
I have to switch layout frequently because I have to use other persons' computers. I have no trouble typing QWERTZ for prolonged time, though it sometimes takes half a minute getting used to it again. I don't know how fast I can currently type on QWERTZ, but it is still considerably faster than most persons who use it as their primary keyboard layout.
What is very straining though is to switch back and forth several times per minute (e.g. I have to operate two computers simultaneously, one with Dvorak, one with QWERTZ) -- in fact I get severe headaches if I do that.
In summary I would say tha from my experience there is no trouble switching and using both the old and new layout, but expect at least a year to get used to the new layout.
"my userID, which I have to enter in QWERTY mode on occasion before my layout preference has taken effect"
I had the same problem, using Windows XP at work, and finding that the initial login (naturally) did not follow my personal prefs. My peeve was not so much the userID; rather, it was annoying to hunt-and-peck a *password* on qwerty.
To change the initial Windows XP login window so it uses Dvorak US instead of the standard (qwerty) layout, change the registry key "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload\1" to "00010409". (Actually, in order to support æøå, I've had to replace the Dvorak DLL file with a custom Norwegian variant, so what my XP calls 'Dvorak US' is in effect 'Dvorak NO'.)
"Good news, everyone!"
Rather than practicing masturbation with silly putty, you could just put down the keyboard and practice putting your hands on a female...
1) Less finger movement for typical English sentences. This is easily verifiable, and not questioned AFAIK.
2) The keycaps on typical keyboards don't match the letter assignment, so you aren't tempted to look a the keys.
3) It is supported by modern operating systems and can be used with readily available keyboards.
ad 1)
True and excellent. I'm a Dane, but most of my typing is in English anyway.
ad 2)
True, but not a 'benefit' unless you are taking a blind typing course. For daily work that gets annoying and I have made custom caps for my (standard) keyboard. Also, I am (just as the story submitter) a programmer and occasionally need to find certain caps (say, or ^) and you don't want to go on an adventure to find those.
ad 3)
True/false -- it's debatable. The supposedly modern OS that I use at work only supports Dvorak US, so I had to use an ugly hack to replace a DLL in order to use Dvorak NO (with æøå).
"Good news, everyone!"
I have no commented about the RSI~~But I would like to share my changing experience here.
:)
Of course I were also an QWERTY user for more than 10 years, and I decided to change to Dvorak two years ago for fun. Now I can type in both layout, without any speed loss. I dunno if I do type faster in Dvorak or not but I feel that it gives much less loading on my hands. However, it takes some time to adopt the Copy and Paste shortcut, because the CXV combination were designed for QWERTY, now I prefer using Ctrl/Shift+Ins/Del more than Ctrl+CXV for that.
Some word for Changjie Typist: BTW, I am a Chinese (Cantonese to be exact) speaker living in Hong Kong, and of course I do type Chinese (Traditional) a lot too, using the famous ChangJie IME. At almost the same time, I changed my Chinese IME from ChangJie to http://www.array.com.tw/Array, again for Fun and geeky feeling...However things doesn't happen like QWERTY->Dvorak, I have a long period forgetting/messing up with my ChangJie skill. I would conclude that because the fundemental idea of ChangJie and Array is similar, and we learn Chinese IME by remembering the building blocks but not by key and hence the result. It takes almost a year for me to be able to type equally fast with ChangJie.
Anyway, I would encourage everyone to change to Dvorak, and in fact three more people have been a Dvorak typist since then
I switched to Dvorak in,.. hmm.. 1998, I think. Anyway, I find switching between those two quite cumbersome. What I usually do is that I type on a keyboard where the visual keys on the keyboard are setup in the ordinary Qwerty manner, but my keys are mapped Dvorak. This enables me to type fast without looking at the keys, when the computer is setup to type Dvorak. It is, however, impossible for me to look at the keys while I type, if I do, I start typing Qwerty (which is bad with a Dvorak setup) Another interresting this is that I really can't say where most of the key are. I have to type them. Kinda like when people have to dial a phone number to remember it.
The problems I've encountered by going over to Dvorak is, by far, insignificant compared to not changing:
- Entering the BIOS can be a problem, leaving the keys Qwerty gives you the ability to search-find-press the keys. For me this is slow, but adequate for rare BIOS changes.
- None of the Qwerty people can use your keyboard.
- If you change jobs, or enter a more restricted environment, you may be forced to type Qwerty.
It took me about 2-3 weeks to fully convert to Dvorak, after 1-1.5 week I was just as quick with Dvorak as Qwerty before I changed.
Dvorak has enabled me to type a bit faster, but the real advantage with Dvorak is that you move your finger's less, causing less stress on your fingers.
Another thing, if you are going to change, make sure you do it the proper way. Start by covering your keys (you don't want to sit there staring at the keyboard,) don't cheat and make sure you are using the right fingers for the right keys. I had a few "shortcuts" when I used Qwerty, those I managed to get rid of when I converted.
And... you'll definitely not want to turn back once you've chosen the path of the Dvorak.
If you're serious about RSI, there are two serious moves you can make:
1. Get a FingerWorks TouchStream keyboard. Dvorak layout, if you like, but it really doesn't matter. What matters is the wrist position and the stress placed on your joints. You can't touch type on a TouchStream if your hands are not in the perfectly optimal position -- you end up making too many errors. So it forces you to maintain proper position.
2. Get Dragon NaturallySpeaking (under VMware or Crossover) and start dictating.
If you don't want to spend on a TouchStream, get the Microsoft Natural keyboard. It's the cheapest way to straighten your wrists while typing.
All the other moves are just substitutes and won't
help in the long run. Take it from someone who knows.
It was designed for typing words. In english. Common characters are easiest to reach. Uncommon ones (such as curly braces, brackets, other symbols used in programming) are the least convenient to reach.
If almost all of your typing is really programming, I doubt dvorak is what you want.
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
if ($you == "programmer") {
_do(!BOTHER);
}
Coding is a very special case of typing. I'd say that probably a fair deal of tech-writing is too. Now - if you were a fiction writer then Dvorak would (probably) make sense for you.
I switched to dvorak for a couple of weeks, just to see how it was. It is ok for typing letters, and such things, but for programming it's really anoying. For example, the > chars for html are not so handy, and *all* shortcuts are messed up...
If you take your time to fix all shortcuts and such things, then perhaps you gain something...
It's very simple.
If you don't want severe RSI do not use Emacs, and certainly do not use Richard Stallman's default key bindings. Stallman has some of the worst RSI in the industry but apparently no-one has thought to put it down to Emacs. My friend Andy Gavin also has severe RSI and he's a long-time Emacs user. I used Emacs for 2 years and developed RSI. It went away again when I switched back to Dev Studio.
Ctrl+X as the first combo of two is a killer for anyone with a human hand.
I've tried switching to Dvorak layout. It worked really well with English, but I'm Polish and it turned out that QWERTY works better for Polish language.
BTW: Beware - Microsoft's "Dvorak" layout is not the real one. They have Z painfully misplaced.
"This applet compares the standard Qwerty keyboard layout with the more efficient Dvorak layout. Type in or cut and paste some text and hit the calculate button. Get ready to be shocked at the difference!" Link But it wouldn't work on my visit! Dvork might be a myth, but the description of the myth provides no evidence that qwerty is the best. I find it easy to swap.
The ASERTH keyboard layout has all the advantages of the Dvorak layout, but makes switching layout MUCH easier.
http://aserth.com/
What about a Velotype?
I use Dvorak mostly, on my computer, and Qwerty occasionally, on other computers. In general because I used GNU/Linux on my computer and Windows on other computers, I find that the environment makes me switch mentally. Recently I've had to use Windows on 'my own' computer so it's had Dvorak on it, so that default's broken down a bit. When it fails, if I start typing and get gibberish, I mentally switch layouts, but I don't necessarily know what from/what to until I notice that my fingers are flying all over the place in Qwerty.
I find I pseudo-touchtype as fast at Qwerty as Dvorak if I can glance at the (Qwerty) keycaps, otherwise my typing's a little slower, but not painfully so (painfully flying all over the place, yeah, but not painfully slow!).
On the other hand, I can't use VIM in qwerty. It makes no sense whatsoever to my fingers. My fingers have totally and 110 per cent accepted things like having hjkl in very different places from in Qwerty and it seems so perfectly intuitive. I've never understood the common complaint of it being unintuitive in Dvorak. They're just keys. In Qwerty, O isn't two lines above o, between which is i, after which is a. In fact, o's got nothing to do with inserting in a new line. And similarly in other programs, Ctrl-X has nothing to do with cut or paste or whatever it does (you don't know, you just do! me a little different from the rest of youse).
As for learning the layout, I recommend against any uglyfications like rearranging keys or putting on extra labels. I mean, you're learning Dvorak so you can touchtype well, so while you're learning just look at a sheet of paper with the layout next to your screen or something. Also, its really useful to have Qwerty keycaps on your keyboard, so that when you see a really weird tyop like pwn, you can look and say "oh, the P and O keys are next to each other---he probably means own". (Honestly, for the novelty value, admittedly having used Dvorak for a few years now, yesterday I rearranged the keys on my keyboard (the keycaps are all the same height so it wasn't a big deal with feel). I promptly put F and J back beneath the index fingers, and I'm considering putting the others back---it's really weird!
Look out!
I strongly belive RSI is just another mental illness that manifests in a body disease.
The vipasanna organization http://www.dhamma.org/ organizes free courses arround the world. I'm an old student pracicating since 2 years and can really recommend this meditation for nearly everyone. You will benefit greatly and I guess RSI will also fade away.
kindly regards daniel
The real problem is that the standard cut, copy, paste, undo keys (ctrl+ZXCV) are scattered in the Dvorak layout. They cannot be effectively typed while holding a mouse in your right hand.
That is why I made up my own modified Dvorak layout, combining the Dvorak home row and the Qwerty bottom row. Its works pretty well since the Dvorak bottom row is statistically the least important anyway. And since there are only 15 keys that have moved from qwerty, I found it easier to learn.
Here is the layout I use.
QWGRFYJKLP
AOEUIDHTNS
ZXCVB;M,./
I have RSI--I don't have Carpal tunnel syndrome--they are completely different ailments. I have been using a keyboard since I was 7 and now i'm 31. Over the last five years, working in IT support and later as a DB programmer, I developed RSI, and it has nothing to do with my wrists! Using a Dvorak keyboard, qwerty keyboard or any other conventional/'natural' keyboard does not help/relieve real RSI. Real RSI, I suspect, is down to holding your arms and you're upper body in the 'locked' position needed for keyboard typing, and is also made worse by the small finger movements needed to type on any keyboard. This has led to my upper neck muscles, shoulder muscles, inside upper arm muscles and inside lower arm muscles especially, becoming extremely taught and fatigued all the time. After a day at work where it's been stressful and i've done a lot of fast typing, I can really feel the taughtness, and it doesn't disappear after massaging--I can sit in the sofa doing nothing but relaxing and still feel uncomfortable in my arms, especially around the inner muscles of the elbow. The only relief I now get is by *not* using a keyboard or mouse. It has been suggested by my physio that I switch industries, but almost all jobs require computer use these days. Having been unemployed for a 3 month stint, and hardly using the PC during that time, did not help! My RSI re-appeared again when I found a new job. To be honest, I think most of the solutions on the market are a crock. I cannot see how they will help, because you still need to place the thing on the desk in front of you, and you're fingers still need to punch the keys, whatever layout they have. The only good solution seems to be a split keyboard where both sections can be placed to either side of a chair at an angled position so that the arms and shoulders are as relaxed as possible, and don't need to 'stretch' to the desk. Then, to minimise finger strain (which causes the much greater strain in the forearm muscles near the underside of the elbow), it would be good to have a key layout that minimises movement espeically when SHIFTing or CTRLing, like maybe having a standard layout, but with the shift/ctrl and ALT keys central to the layout, like in the thumb position for example. I have tried everything suggested by my physio, like having arms at 90 degree angles, sitting straight and close to the keyboard, but for some people like myself, there is a natural tendency to strain when working, which is probably why some people get RSI and others, having worked the same number of years, don't get it. By the way, if anyone knows of such a keyboard, *please* link to it!! And until we get to the point of plugging ourselves in and using thought to control the PC, I will have to live with RSI.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
1. Just stick to QWERTY
/. crowd: you don't have to quote this and come up with some daft sex pun :-))
2. Get some sort of ergonomic QWERTY keyboard that favours your hand positioning more (i.e., your wrists are relaxed and you can move across the keyboard with ease)
3. Get a soft rubber ball or something, and force yourself into the habit of taking a 5 minute break every 1-2 hours squeezing the ball in your hands or throwing it back and forth with someone else at the office.
You don't necessarily need a different layout of the keys - the important thing is to avoid strained and static finger/wrist motion. Your body doesn't like doing the same things over and over again for an extended period of time, no matter which body parts are involved (note to the
I do software development for a living and a hobby (no t.v.). So I spend a lot of time on a keyboard.
I've been interested in Dvorak for awhile, and I keep a printout of the layout and hotkeys active to flip between QWERTY and Dvorak for practice. I do 100 WPM on the former (measured) and about 20-30 WPM om the latter (guesstimate). I did some typing practice with Dvorak, similar to what one does for QWERTY in typing class, but only got as far as the home row and never got around to doing the rest. I'm still a dabbler in Dvorak.
I find it's not particuarly hard to switch if you don't think about the layout too much. Just like when I type QWERTY, it works better if I think about the words and the fingers and letters take care of themselves. I find that for both Dvorak and QWERTY, if I start thinking about the keyboard layout, I confuse myself. Of course, it's much more pronounced with Dvorak.
Dvorak and vim don't mix well for me. Mentally, vim is more like another keyboard layout that I've learned, rather than atop QWERTY. I think even if I get good at Dvorak, I'll have to use QWERTY for vim. So Dvorak will be more useful for "mass" typing, like a Word document. Relearning hotkeys will also be a pain, so I'll probably always keep a really easy and fast hotkey (e.g. Ctrl-Shift-1) to toggle keyboard layouts.
Expanding into the broader RSI topic, I've done some research and experimentation in that area, too. My original wakeup call was shooting pains from my elbow to the pinkie, while just walking around far away from any computer.
Originally, I found that a split keyboard (original Microsoft) helped. Then pain started coming back (just the wrist area).
I tried out the Smart Glove (http://www.imakproducts.com/products/smart_glove. htm) and got good results from that (it also helps with using laptops, where other ergo products can't be used).
I've tried various wrist support products, and I found the best one I've used is a gel-like product that deforms from your pressure on it and stays mostly deformed when you take your hand off. (http://www.gaylainc.com/WristRst.html)
Once I had the money to, I decided that just for the chance of improvement, it was worth sinking the money into possible hoopla. So I bought a couple Kinesis Maxim keyboards (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/max-spec.htm) and an Aeron chair (http://www.hermanmiller.com/CDA/SSA/Product/0,159 2,a10-c440-p8,00.html), as well as a keyboard tray from Kinesis (I also have a contoured Logitech mouse, if that makes a difference).
My current opinion is that the Aeron chair is good but pricey, the Maxim keyboard is excellent, and the keyboard tray is a necessity.
The Aeron chair is unusual, because you need to sit "just so" for it to feel comfortable. "Just so" happens to be good for you, so it's like continuously being encouraged to sit properly. If you're stubborn, it won't ever feel comfortable (I often still don't sit properly). The mesh fabric is quite nice for keeping your backside cool.
The Maxim keyboard is very comfortable. The adjustable split isn't a big deal, once you get what you want (they recommend a certain setting anyway). However, the keys have a short depth (discourages the habit of killing a key and having the excess force bounce back on you through your fingers) and are quite sensitive (I've tried without success to depress it gently without actually registering a keystroke). The key layout is still familiar (unlike some other keyboards which shrink the backspace, align the key columns differently, etc.). Best keyboard I've used (out of about a half dozen Microsoft and Logitech keyboards personally, as well as old cheap ones at university computer labs).
I switch between Dvorak and Qwerty very often (usually two or three switches per day). Qwerty is literally painful to use.
I've noticed, though, that while I can type faster with Dvorak, I'm less likely to be accurate. Overall there's a speed increase, but if I concentrated on fast typing in Qwerty, I'd probably get the same results. It's mainly wrist strain at this point--and the fact that I don't accidentally press Control+V rather than Control+C and lose data.
Sarno is a genius and he's right.
When there's an "injury" that no one can point to and say "ah ha, this is what's damanged", that means its in your head and likely stress related.
I learned Dvorak and used it for several years. Don't bother. It's not any faster, and it just causes too many problems, especially if you aren't the admin for your PC. Windows in particular has a frustrating keyboard layout switching scheme, such that you have to reboot to get your screen saver passwords to go back to the other layout.
It was too much headache for me, so I switched back to QWERTY at the beginning of this year and have been happy with it.
Get some physical therapy for it - look into http://www.google.com/search?q=ACtive+Release+Ther apy&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf -8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:o fficial">Active Relase Therapy. Seems to work wonders according to many accounts, and is used quite extensively in the NFL for faster recovery from certain injuries.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
The keyboards in western Europe mostly follow the qwerty, France has an Azerty, Germany has a Qwertz, and other countries have other variations. I found that switching between them while travelling was troublesome at first, often frustrating me to the point when in france to leqve my emqils qs they were.
After a while, though, you get the feel and now whenever I'm in France after a few sentences I'm back up to speed. I think you'd learn to intuitively switch between your own keyboard and anyone elses. I also had a U.S. laptop in France, so it was a similar situation.
Habit develops quickly in repetitive processes like typing.
Go for it. Though I'm not sure one isn't just better off adopting a better typing posture or getting a better seat that forces you to type 'safely'.
"When the solution is simple, God is answering." -- Albert Einstein
test the dvorak keyboard layout with out changing your os configuration
online Dvorak test
- - - - - .
Well, going on the basis that I spend most of my comp time typing in DVORAK and only a small amount in QWERTY, I find that, although I've lost some of my ability to type in Q, you don't forget where the keys are. What I *do* lose is the muscle memory that guides the fingers. So when I do Qwerty, it's something of an odd pecking way of doing it, but it's not hunt and peck. Slows me down some, probably down to about 30 wpm (top speed in Qwerty was about70). I don't know what my speeds for DVORAK are, since I haven't had access to a typing program since I switched. The annoying thing, I've found, is a number of games that hard route the keyboard, so they aren't actually listening for the "s" key (for example), but actually listening to the 2nd key to the right of caps lock. (at least that's how I figure it). Either that or they force interpret the keyboard as Qwerty regardless of settings. Kinda annoying.
Z
Hi.
I'm currently using dvorak only. As I'm a windows user, only version of dvorak that comes with the OS is the US standard one. So when I get to a computer which doesn't have the norwegian layout, I use alt+shift to change between the layouts (norwegian qwerty US dvorak). This way I almost never need to use qwerty.
Though, when I'm forced to use qwerty, on public terminals etc, I'm pretty much a gimp. Typing with three fingers, looking down a couple of times, and really not having any coordination at all.
But that aside, DVORAK is excellent. I changed three or four years back, and haven't regretted it since. Except the two week torture of trying to figure out where the keys are located.
Now I'm writing excellently on dvorak, with almost 0% wrong hits, and I also write alot faster than I used to do.
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I do the same between AZERTY and QWERTY; in Belgium, AZERTY is the default keyboard layout, but some friends swear by QWERTY for coding and sometimes I have to use their comps. And what's worse: lots of games even in this day and age have the keyboard layout hardcoded to QWERTY instead of just asking the OS what character corresponds to the pressed key, so this means I have to switch between the two fairly often. Although I'm not as fluent in QWERTY than in AZERTY I can type on a QWERTY board pretty well.
So I wouldn't bother too much; your QWERTY skills are pretty much hardcoded in your brain by now, and it's like riding a bycile... You may not ride it as well as ten years ago if you haven't ridden a bike during that time, but you'll still be able to get to where you wanna be.
I must admit though; the difference between AZERTY and QWERTY is of course a lot smaller than the difference between QWERTY and DVORAK, so YMMV. For me, the trick is to type in a made-up language: type a Z wherever I want to type a W, type a Q wherever I want to type an A, switch the M and the ","... This trick would probably not work to make the switch between QWERTY and DVORAK.
Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?
Using XP's built-in keyboard switching feature I have been easing into the Dvorak for about 6 months. I made it the default, so that using my old comfortable QWERTY would require extra effort -- and to tell the truth, it was annoying as hell for a while since I almost always felt the need to switch back to QWERTY every time I launched an app (in my profession, it's embarrassing to be typing slowly while bosses are tapping their fingers)
Over time, I have reduced the amount that I feel the need to switch keyboards as my Dvorak has steadily improved. While I did not see the dramatic speed increases promised by Dvorakophiles, my speed is getting better and better. I think the fact I've been typing fast on QWERTY since the age of 6 is a major handicap. But I will say that Dvorak is much easier on the fingers and my hands hurt less after a session. I am looking forward to the day when my Dvorak speed will overtake my QWERTY speed.
The hardest thing to learn in Dvorak (without a properly labeled keyboard) is punctuation and control keys, so I rarely program in Dvorak. But I am finally getting the control keys. It was really fun for a while invoking random commands!
The thing you are most worried about -- that working with 2 keyboards would be counterproductive -- is not a huge concern for me, it just means a longer process. Hilariously, when I was first adapting to 2 keyboards there would be times I would sit down and start typing and some weird gobbledy-gook that was NEITHER Dvorak NOR QWERTY would come out! But this stopped happening after a month or so.
I was one of those people who was completely tense regardless of my posture. Wrist supports, keyboard changes, height adjustments, etc., didn't help, since the tension was always there regardless of the posture. It had reached the point I had sharp, constant pain in my arms and hands from nerve impingement by my muscles. It was being treated as RSI and not getting better, even on huge amounts of muscle relaxants.
In my mid-30s I started actively working on this using imagery (for example, imagining tension washing away when showering), breathing relaxation techniques, and regular massage the first year or so. Massage sounds expensive, I know, but cutting out fast food gave me enough money to manage it at least once a month. Now I'm 40 and formerly constant pain is no longer there at all, except during particularly stressful times. I don't need muscle relaxants any more. Perhaps this might help you?
Instead of Dvorak bashing I'll answer you:
:)
I started typing Dvorak about a year ago after my wrists hurt from rock climbing really hard and the pain was exastrabated by typing. It took about a month to regain my previous qwerty speed. After I was back up-to-speed I had forgotten qwerty significantly, so I was back to lots of mistakes, 20 - 30 WPM with it. I think the problem was that I was thinking about Dvorak and it interfered with my qwerty.
I started using qwerty on shared machines, Dvorak on my machines, and got very fast on both again - I'm about 75 or so WMP (my original speed) on qwerty and a bit faster w/ Dvorak.
The thing that is really cool is that I'll be typing a few short lines on a shared (office / lab machine) and start in qwerty, get frustrated, and switch mid-sentance to Dvorak and not miss a letter. No more thinking, brain just does it! cool
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
didn't help me.
:) As another bonus people can't play jokes with my computer if I take a 10 foot jaunt to talk to a co-worker and don't feel like locking my screen.
<anecdotal evidence>
I took a typing class in high school specifically to learn how to type quickly and correctly and it didn't help my wrists at all. After several years my wrists started to bother me so I did some research and learned about Dvorak. It didn't take me long to pick it up and my wrists haven't bothered me except on rare occasions I've had to type in qwerty for a long time.
The braces aren't that far from where they are in qwerty and I find it doesn't get in the way of programming at all if you can touch type.
As far as other people using my computer: in every OS I use I have a one click or click-drag box where I can change the keyboard layout for the current window so I change it for them if they need to type something. I prefer for them to tell me what to type though so that I can learn what they're doing and why.. and I don't like other people's hands on my keyboard.
</anecdotal evidence>
There are two kinds of people: 1) those that need closure
I've been a Qwerty touch typist since I took typing in high school (~'88), and decided to switch to being a Dvorak touch typist when I had wrist problems (~'98). In both cases, I'm a touch typist, but I still need to see the keys of the Qwerty layout, which, I guess loses one of the major points of being a touch typist, but oh, well.
Oh, and because I was a touch typist, I got 2 Kinesis Classic QDs for the dual key labels (Qwerty in upper left, Dvorak in lower right). [And since I'm a vi nut, I re-programmed CapsLock to Esc and vice-versa.]
I've heard it said for years that you can't go back and forth between the two. Don't even try is the accepted wisdom. That and the ever-present necessity of sharing machines with others are what's kept me from switching lo these 20-odd years.
:/
I've ALWAYS wanted to switch to Dvorack and still do. But the real world has never let it be an option.
Astro
http://ktouch.sourceforge.net/ is great piece of software to learn either qwerty or dvorak. it has big layout at the bottom of the screen so it'even better than regularly when your fingers hide letters on the keyboard. you type letters in automatic scrollin bar... it is fun and effective...
dvorak lesson for ktouch could be find at:
http://www.lnxsys.ca/software/ktouch/
What I have found is that by simply moving the keyboard several times a day, thus changing all the angles up, all my problems just went away. It really doesn't take much effort... Just move it a few inches to the right... then away... then towards you, then to the left... repeat...
A Nano Mouse
I used to work with a guy who could switch between QWERTY and Dvorak at will. This guy had the most apauling eyesight, so used to have his nose pressed to the screen while typing. Added to that, he also has a twitch in his eyes, causing them to constantly scan horizontally. The upshot of this was, in order to see the words a few inches away from his eyes, he had to shake his head constantly to counteract the twitching.
Anyway, because of this, he could touchtype very well.
Because our company did hardware support, it wasn't uncommon to find that components from the office would go missing to replace broken parts on the customers PCs... you'd find your mouse had gone, or your monitor and sometimes your keyboard. (and this was when we mostly had IBM Model Ms!)
The guy above got round this problem by making his keyboard "undesirable" to the hardware thieves. He did this by re-arranging the keys into the Dvorak layout and hacking together a DOS keyboard driver for his creation.
The problem was, the curve on the keycaps only met correctly when in the QWERTY layout. When "converted" to Dvorak, the top of this keyboard was just amazing - bumps and ridges all over the place.
Still, he continued to bash out stunning work on that bastard-son keyboard for months...
I've considered switching myself, started to learn the keyboard layout, and then I began using Vim. Unfortunately, dvorak and vim's keyboard layouts conflict a bit. I found it ironic that two of the geekiest things out there didn't work so well together. Has anyone found a way around this?
Because you have been typing qwerty for 20+ years you are unlikely to just forget it once you switch to Dvorak. I taught the Dvorak layout to myself in a few hours and I can easily switch between the two.
Any recent Windows system can switch to Dvorak via a simple change to the Regional settings. (languages>add keymap: US Dvorak) You can even set the hotkey (ctrl+shift) to swap key-maps on the fly.
The only trouble arises from programs that bypass the regional settings. Your keyboard is still sending qwerty signals but they are interpreted differently by the OS. When in some programs (like WoW) it bypasses that setting and you're stuck with qwerty. The only other option is to buy an actual Dvorak keyboard and haul it around with you.
The only trouble I found with switching to Dvorak was that all the shortcut/hotkey combos that I learned from Qwerty were all screwed up. Ctrl+c, ctrl+v are no longer conveniently placed and all the other combos are in different places. This is the main reason that I still use Qwerty at work, but I like to dabble in Dvorak.
Datahands are not that expensive compared to missing a week or two of work. I was typing 100% with Dragon Dictate (speach software) and couldn't even brush my teeth when I got my first Datahand. Within a week I was typing as fast as I ever had and within a couple months all my pain was gone.
I have 4 Datahands I've purchased over the last 8 years. 2 I purchased and 2 employers purchased... for $2000, $1300, $1100, and $650.
The first one ($2000) still works fine, but the newer models are better enough that when I saw the ProII for $650 a few months back I had to replace it.
Note: Rolfing has allowed me to go back to using a normal keyboard/mouse as much as I like.
I want to throw in another post on the positive column...
I am not only a programmer but a classical musician as well and I am hypersensitive to wrist issues. After years of subtle pains I learned Dvorak and haven't had any problem since! My main concern at the time was that I still had to take the GRE and no number of phone calls was going to get me permission to change the keyboard layout on one of their computers (unless I could prove my physical handicap). So I maintained the ability to switch with great success.
At the moment it takes me about 30 seconds to remember the other pattern but then I'm back up to speed. And taking the time to learn proper chording technique (i.e. use different hands for chords - don't try for the stretches) sped up my old QWERTY typing too.
To the people that argue that Dvorak is a waste of your time: There is nothing that Qwerty can do that Dvorak can't do better! My brother-in-law is always arguing that emacs key-commands were made for Qwerty and can't work on Dvorak, but that hasn't slowed me down any. Qwerty was designed to slow down secretaries and keep the keys from jamming in those old ribbon & paper computers. Who wants to type on a layout that was created to slow you down??
All of my computers have Dvorak keyboards now. My new PB G4 took about half an hour to carefully pop off all the keys and reset them. The only thing lacking is the two little bumps that mark your index finger location on the home-row, which are now in different places...
-ben
_______________________
http://benjamindaysmith.com/
i decided to try to switch to dvorak a few years ago, partly to see what it was like, partly to improve my typing speed (which is already 95wpm) and perhaps just to be obtuse.
:>
i'm 30, been typing as well since i was 8, i can't touchtype properly, and i've never had RSI.
i changed my keyboard around and tried to immerse myself in dvorak for a week or two. part of the problem is "deprogramming" yourself of qwerty. i found that i was doing okay on dvorak after a week (at about 30-40wpm), however whenever the keyboard layouts intersected (eg "a" ia in the same position on each) it threw my brain out of whack and i thought i was in qwerty again.
for this reason, i think maintaining both will be VERY hard, especially if you've got qwerty that ingrained. i know one person who can flip between them almost at will, but i think that's rather uncommon
it's a more sensible layout, whether it works or not, it feels a lot nicer to type in it. good luck!
It's been a while since I was going back and forth between the two, but in my college days I worked for a state agency doing word processing on the side. The agency had some Dvorak machines, and back then they were physically converted to Dvorak. I learned Dvorak with a "test group" (where's that banana), and although I didn't really achieve any higher speed on Dvorak, it was more "restful" typing Dvorak. Anyway, being part time I did have to fill in on a number of workstations, and having being able to type BOTH Dvorak and Qwerty enabled me to fill in more often (i.e., more work hours). I found that if I typed a common sentence a few times (e.g., now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country), I could switch back and forth within a few minutes. I recently tried my hand at Dvorak again, and it took a bit longer, but I was getting it again after a while.
After typing Qwerty from around age 7 until I hit college, I switched to Dvorak. It took about 2 weeks to feel comfortable and maybe a month to reach my current ability. I've been typing almost exclusively Dvorak for the last 10 years. My typing speed in Dvorak is faster than it previously was when typing paragraphs and about equal when typing code.
When I try to type Qwerty now, I feel like an experienced hunt-and-peck typer. Touch-typing is out.
Recently, I tried a 1 week experiment of typing exclusively Qwerty again. By the end of that week, I was able to touch-type ok, but not back up to my previous Qwerty speed. I think I could have retrained myself fully given another week, but I decided it wasn't worth it to me.
I like to describe typing Dvorak as "more comfortable" rather than talking directly about speed or physical stress. While comfort probably helps with both of these in small ways, in the end it's more about personal preference.
If you want to maintain your Qwerty typing abilities, I would suggest practicing it from time to time. I disagree with what others have said about it being like another language. It's more like playing a musical instrument, where you need to continue practicing to maintain your proficiency. You don't completely forget, but ability does definitely decline the more you don't practice.
I had to switch to Dvorak specifically for RSI reasons. One (1) subject does not a statistically significant population make. However, before Dvorak, I had to wear wrist braces when attempting to alleviate stinging shooting pains from my forearms up into my palms and fingers. After Dvorak, the pain and the braces went away. The change was that dramatic.
I often have to do the switch between Dvorak and QWERTY and it isn't always instantaneous, but it isn't rocket science either. I am bi-keyboardal. I can touch type on both systems (as soon as the brain makes the switch).
Both Linux and Windows support switching keymappings out easily. So I have a QWERTY layout keyboard (that is, the *printing* on the keycaps says QWERTY....) for the sake of visitors and I can swap back and forth with keyboard short-cuts. The brain goes along, if sometimes reluctantly.
As far as speed and accuracy are concerned, I am significantly faster with Dvorak, as long as I know exactly what I'm gonna type. Coming up with content is the constraining factor for me, not typing. I am also more accurate with Dvorak, though that might be solely due to it being my favorite layout.
I've tried other keyboards that are specifically for ease of use or RSI considerations (like the Natural keyboard). But I haven't seen any change that is as drastically useful as just switching to the Dvorak keymap.
Drew
Be careful what you wish for...
Where your treasure is there is your heart also...
No, this is not true. The original marketing of Dvorak concerned speed and accuracy. The question here is about RSI. And my specific experience is that Dvorak makes a dramatic difference in the ability to use a keyboard constantly without RSI becoming an issue.
I am a programmer and, while in college, was a data-entry droid on the side.
About 5 years into my profesional career, carpal-tunnel took over and I could no longer user my hands and wrists without significant paint from my forearms up into my palms and fingers. I had to wear braces nearly 24-hours a day to protect my wrists.
Switching to Dvorak ended the pain within two weeks and I've not had the pain or the braces since. The change was absolutely that dramatic.
In western society, we live under a fallacy that some research can quote a statistic and that somehow that statistic will make a difference in your life. If some research finds that 50% of respondents had an overage reduction in pain of 65%, that in no way means that half of me is going to feel 2/3rds better. Nor can you quote the statistic and say with certainty that I will or will not feel better. Neither approach is truthful or accurate.
Every single reader of this thread has a different structural set-up of their arm/wrist/hand bones. Everyone has different sensitivities in their neural sheath in the wrist. Really, the only way you are going to know if this will help is to try it. The test on you is the only one that matters to you. You might also want to try some of the other suggestions in this thread. Find something that works for you. Dvorak worked for me.
But to tell anyone that any particular mechanism is bogus or is your salvation is inaccurate at best and irresponsible at worst.
Find something that works for you. Dvorak worked for me, and it worked dramatically. And it might be a waste of time for you.
Drew
Be careful what you wish for...
Where your treasure is there is your heart also...
It's unlikely that Ramanujan made such a claim. It's close to an integer and there are are some deep reasons for for this. See here for some more info. He most certainly wouldn't have discovered this result by a long hand calculation of its value.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I switched over to Dvorak about a month ago and while I like it, I miss the ability to write accented like with the US International layout.
Anyone has any tips?
I have been using Dvorak and QWERTY in a multiuser environment for about 3 years, 2 of those years in the work environment. I have to say, if your're not consciencious of your fellow users, whether the be your wife or your co-workers, you're going to freak them out (the first time they expect QWERTY and get Dvorak instead) and then anger them when you for get to switch/warn them of the changes.
The easiest control I have found so far is by enabling keyboard layouts in KDE (Control Center->Regional & Accessability->Enable Keyboard Layouts). If you don't use KDE, OS X has an easy way of changing it, but I don't know about being able to change it on the fly/at will.
While Windows has means of changing it, it varies in how to change it between Win2000 and XP. I can't really go into the details about what a pain in the ass it is to have a consistant changing environment in XP, but Win2000 is fairly consistant. The problem with being a Dvorak user is that you have to go in a change the environment every time you go to a new computer; especially a GUI-only OS *cough*Windows*cough*sucks*cough*.
For instance, in XP, if I login, set my default keyboard layout to Dvorak, forget to logout, and then XP locks the session where others can then login: the layout will stay in Dvorak instead of defaulting the the login window's default keyboard layout. This is the hight of stupid logic: sure, I having been using Dvorak might prefer to log back in using Dvorak, but I sure didn't need any help getting in the first place with QWERTY, so why do others have to work around me to try to login? What if I were using a Spanish layout (I also speak Spanish) on a computer in a public place (where the admin would hopefully disable that stupid locking/switch-user crap)? The result is that I have to either be perfect in loging out, even if I expect to come back to that session later in the day, or have my default keyboard layout set to QWERTY. (which brings up using the X-windows setting in TweakUI and MSDOS windows - hellatious).
Thanks for the reply! I've tried some weird stuff over the last few years--from having ultra-sound treatment, which worked pretty well actually, as long as you keep it up, to having a special massage called the Bowen technique, where there is very little massage, but the long term effect can be quite effective. I've never tried imagery, but I have like 10 different stretching techniques that I'm supposed to do every few hours--yeah--you can imagine how often I actually do them when it's a tough schedule at work.
But at the end of the day, they're all techniques to relieve a problem, but it's not fixing the actual problem of using a standard keyboard/mouse combo. A solution would be to stop using a standard keyboard/mouse combo and to start using alternative input devices.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
I switched because my wrists bothered me. My fingers do not travel as far and I am less tired by Dvorak. My hands tell me it is easier and that is enough for me.
I have nothing witty to fill this space with yet.
When you use Linux, this isn't a big problem since it has the superior highlight-and-middle-mouse-click cut-n-paste. I rarely use ctrl-XCV any more.
BTW, I'm a Dvorak user too. I haven't had any serious RSI problems yet, but the part about moving your fingers much less, and not having to contort your hands, is all true. I can certainly see why that would cause less strain on your wrists. Why all the naysayers are so outspoken against this, when they haven't even tried it, is beyond me.
I do 10 finger blind on U.S./International, French, and German kbds.
I use one physical 110 or so key kbd (I don't care what's written on the keys, I do have a spare one that has them marked for Portuguese)
Clicking between kbds (yes, Linux....) will become just as 'normal' to you as clicking between desktops. The language context makes you stay within the kbd topology.
And sure, why not type on a Dvorjak for qwerty, once you have multiple kbds down you will skip the switch button and run English texts from one of the other kbds. Only the other way round is then requiring some switching action, latest at the first cedille or umlaut ;-}
screw dvorak. If I ever change I'm going to make up my own damn keyboard layout. I think the way to /alternating-hand-and-finger analaysis. I guess the dvorak layout is done along the same lines, but why would I expect a layout optimized for typing english text to be that good for writing C or perl in an emacs bufer. get me all the '{}[]()' somewhere easy and make underscore not even require a shift.
do it is to dump the undo contents from a few programming sessions (so that I include all the emacs Ctrl and Alt combos). Then do some kind of relative-frequency / markov-chain
hell just moving the ctrl key up to the caps lock position (a 100% useless key) would be a good start.
Question:
anybody know of one of these fancy keyboards where the keys emit via LED er somethin what key they are? so that if I change on the fly I can look and see what the hell is assigned where? I know yoda advises a pure blank keyboard, but Im sorry I've got to have the damn things labelled correctly if/when I try to every move to a new keyboard.
While this is all interesting, there has still been no mention of the PLUM Keyboard (www.plum.bz) I have yet to find a good article comparing it to both the qwerty and dvorak keyboards. Do Any of you have any insight on which is best? (For typing speed, i couldn't care less about rsi at this moment in my life)
I tried doing both, but 10+ years of qwerty were too tough of a habit to break effectively if I was doing half of my typing in qwerty. This year, I finally decided it was feasible to be Dvorak all the time.
All of our servers/desktops have operating systems that support easily changing the layout with a simple key combination. As a curtesy to my co-workers, I leave the default layout as qwerty and only change it for myself when needed.
As for the even older machines, I run into, I hunt and peck. Even one sentence in qwerty will screw me up for days. IMHO, anyone who says they can switch back and forth no problem is looking at the keys when they type(which I do NOT do). When you don't look at the keyboard, you can't possibly know by touch alone which layout is under your fingers. Furthermore, the scarcity of keyboards which can be reconfigured so the keycaps show Dvorak is very few/far between, so looking at the keys when they are in the wrong place is very confusing. One look at the keyboard, and I can't type for crap - I revert to qwerty in an instant if I do.
Now that I have switched, I tend to like the layout a lot better than the qwerty layout. I genuinely find that typing on Dvorak is a lot less effort and worth the time it took to learn it!
switching between Qwerty and Dvorak keyboard layouts.
I find when you do this you get confused for a few days at most. But if you learned to touchtype with Qwerty, it might behoove you to get a Dvorak typing software game to hone your skills and make it second nature so that you don't have to hunt and peck.
My guess would be that if you were an 80 words per minute Qwerty typist on your keyboard, you'll probably turn into a 40-50 words per minute Dvorak typist without such typing software games to bring you back up to speed fast, since you're using finger-to-brain pathway neural networks that were forced to type quickly with one schema.
It's kind of like thinking in a foreign language - you can wait 3-5 years until you start to do it and suddenly are good - or you can force it more quickly by moving to a foreign country, falling in love with the appropriate gender native speaker, and learning by constant daily usage and some formal classes how to speak and think in that language.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm a french speaker, and given my condition, was always used to type on a ,so called, 'AZERTY' keyboard.
...
When I lived in Ireland, I quickly became proficient with the 'QWERTY' layout. And for me now, there IS NO TURNING BACK.
You can say wathever you want on the QWERTY layout. To write CODE it is one of the most efficient. Do you know how complicated it is to type {}[]() that are so much used in modern computing languages on any other kind of layout
This is so much of burden for us, french speakers, when we want to write code.
I even think that some people give up learning to program because of all those weird characters that they nearly never used before and for wich they need 3 fingers a 3 different and opposites places on the keyboard !.
Check out the Dvorak Zine!
Personal experience - it took me about 6 weeks to switch. I increased my typing speed about 30% (from 60WPM to 80WPM) from the switch. I switched after touch typing for 10 years, and can switch back and forth. I find the most common error I have when typing qwerty is when I have to type words I don't think about like 'the'. It seems to me that when the full word is considered an object and just sent to my fingers whole (I never think about hitting 't', 'h', and 'e', it's just 'the', whereas I do think about the w, h, e, r, e, a, and s of 'whereas'), it comes out subconsciously and entirely in dvorak (so my works are peppeerd with kjd) rather than qwerty.
I'll never go back. I feel the same soreness come back every time I go back to qwerty - the tension from streaching to reach such a higher percentage of the keys.
I too, was blazingly fast typing on a qwerty layout. (I was a COBOL programmer. 'nuff said.)
.
I switched to Dvorak about five years ago. The first week was excruciating, but in a month or two the words now just stream out--smoothly and quickly. I was fast before, but now it is just like watching the words appear on the screen almost as fast as I can read them.
I rarely have to mess with a qwerty layout anymore. It might be an occassional URL, playing with a computer in a store, or typing a label on a label-making machine.
I can't TOUCH-type Qwerty anymore. But I still know the Qwerty layout like the back of my hand.
If I'm at a Qwerty keyboard, it's not "hunt and peck", but it is "peck". I know where the letters are, but I have to consciously type them.
So, if you so saw me at a Qwerty keyboard, you would think that you'd be watching someone that isn't a beginner, but not a touch-typist, either.
If you saw me using a Qwerty layout on a label-making machine or a touch-screen PDA, you'd think I was one of the fastest you'd ever seen. Using these sort of miniature "keyboards" is as easy as it has ever been.
If you watched me type Dvorak on my split keyboard, you'd switch to Dvorak and never look back. It's wicked fast, and it feels very natural.
The bottom line? Dvorak is the real deal. But do not do it if you have to go both ways. Do not do it if you're afraid of looking like a newbie in front of clients. Do not do it if you will get fed up with explaining what the Dvorak layout is to people.
As much as I hate this thought, I can't really argue with it: sometimes "standard" really is better than "better". For most people, anyway.
But for those that fly solo . .
type different(ly)!
Let me tell you a litlle story...
When asked about the Washington secretarial pool, the boss said that 30% could type 60 wpm, and that 60% could type 40 wpm, and the rest were huntin' peckers. Biddy-bing! Biddy-boom!
What?
To try out a Dvorak layout I took a decent, regular Dell keyboard and rearranged the keys. This isn't quite as trivial as I had initially expected because the "home keys" in the QWERTY layout had a tab on them that was unique to the receptacle.
A little filing and the keyboard works well enough for the experiment. The keys are slightly disoriented due to being specifically maufactured for the QWERTY layout (after rearrangement, the key heights are inconsistent). Incidentally, the only key that stays in the same place is the "a" so you'll type words like "avalanche" much faster than other words. Aardvark isn't as easy as you might think.
This is Week 3 of the switch. I type solely Dvorak at work and QWERTY everywhere else.
I don't have a problem going back to QWERTY right now, and my Dvorak abilities are getting better. I still have problems with the m, w, and n keys. I wish that w and m were further apart.
My observations so far:
If you use Windows, be sure to set up a hotkey to toggle back and forth between Dvorak and QWERTY for 2 reasons:
1. Windows doesn't always remember a global setting for the keyboard and so many of your first sentences will llok like this:
Jg kjdod! Js, aod tsf hsglu{
I've sent many an instant message like that.
Reason 2: If you have a laptop, and you set it permanently to Dvorak, you might have some issues typing your password (unless you rearrange your keys... not recommended and potentially not possible). You could get yourself locked out from your system in a hurry.
My impressions so far:
I'm not a programmer, but I do write about technology all day. Acronyms and tech speak are not any easier on Dvorak vs. QWERTY. TLA's with "obscure" letters in them might be harder to type. Dvorak is based on common words in English... most technology isn't concerned with the common words that Dvorak was anticipating.
Plain English like you would write to your parents or other normal person who thinks Dvorak is a composer rather than a keyboard or tech columnist is "easier" than QWERTY. I put that in quotes because, until I get faster, nothing is "easy" yet. But words like: through, this, that, the, should, numbnuts, etc. are easy to type.
Instant messaging is very hard. People ask you if you're on the phone or if they should bug you later due to the time it takes you to compose a sentence. Typo's are totally foreign. You get a lot more vowel substitution in this layout than in QWERTY.
Comedy through instant messaging is very hard because you can't "carpe momentum*" (*not latin), or "sieze a moment's opportumity to type something funny as a reply before you victim can type back at you."
You get a lot of time to ponder your messages while you hunt and peck for keys. All the while, you think to yourself "is there an easier way to type that?" "Maybe I can use a word with less j's in it..."
It also will make you think about using mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts (CTRL-S, C, X, V, and Z are no longer convenient). I have reverted to CTRL-Ins. / Shift-Ins. for copy / paste. You also begin to consider the merits of training Word to use Auto Complete intelligently (or at least moreso).
Overall, it's a flashback to the year you first struggled to touch type... for me that's 4-6th grade. That wasn't pleasant in general, but typing papers was excruciating in Fleet System 3 and later GEOS on the C=64, mostly due to learning to type. You gain a new appreciation of how nimble you are on the QWERTY keyboard and how fluid the expression of your thoughts actually is.
Going from 80-100 WPM on QWERTY down to 10 WPM (now maybe about 20 WPM) has been an interesting experience. I've not lost productivity necessarily, but my emails have become more terse and people think there's something wrong with me (more than usual) when I IM them.
Oddly enough, one of the hardest things to type is QWERTY...
Good luck!
TTFN... not switching back yet...
(about 18 WPM on this post)
I doubt that switching from QWERTRY to Dvorak will help RSI much. The problem is hand and wrist position, not finger usage. When I started to get RSI, I got a Kinesis keyboard and have never looked back. It's half the price of the Maltron, has keys for each had in a cub shape to match finger lengths and has a great key feel. The only thing lacking is a separate number pad, but it has one embedded. The key rows are vertical rather than diagonal, as on a standard keyboard, which takes a couple of weeks to get used to. I switch easily between the Kinesis and a regular keyboard. I'm also a clarinetist, oboist and recorder player, and I switch among them easily. You already know the basic movements. You just plug into a different set of movements. Dvorak sites say you don't forget QWERTY, and my experience is they're right. You learn a new set of similar responses. Switching back is easy.
I have been using Dvorak for several years now and find it much more comfortable than Qwerty. I really notice that there is less awkward hand-stretching in Dvorak, although I can't say I'm necessarily a lot faster now that I use Dvorak.
To answer the original poster's question, I don't find it too hard to go back to typing Qwerty when I'm visiting someone else's computer. I definitely feel a bit clumsy, but I'm not sure whether I actually feel clumsier than I used to feel when I typed Qwerty full time, or just clumsy relative to how smooth I am used to feeling now on the Dvorak.
Even now that I use the dvorak, I definitely experience some hand strain from time to time. I've pinpointed the main source of this strain -- my left hand gets sore because it tends to be the one that does all of the two-key combinations. I always use the left shift key, so whenever I'm typing a capitol letter on the left side of the keyboard, it involves pressing two things with the same left hand. I think this hand-shape is pretty unnatural, and it seems to stress the the muscles on the top-outside of my arm and hand quite a bit (the ones that pull the pinky down to the shift key)
A few weeks ago I was thinking about this, and wondering if there was some solution to this. The best idea I could come up with is to use a foot pedal for doing Shift, alt, and ctrl. As though Dvorak was not geeky enough, this would surely be an uber-geeky setup. But I imagine once you got used to using a foot pedal for shift, it would probably feel really good on the hands.
I did a bunch of searching on the net, and there are a few ergo-companies that sell pedals designed with this in mind, but the prices are outrageous -- 150 bucks and up, for 3 switches connected to a USB cable!
If anyone else has any bright ideas for getting around the stress of shift-alt-ctrl combos, I'd love to hear it. Probably training myself to always use opposite hands for the letter and the modifier key would work, but it might be a tough habit to break!
I'm 50 years old, been programming since I was 14, first on keypunches, then IBM 2741's, various dumb terminals, and finally PC's. My average typing rate is 60 WPM on QWERTY, and not a hint of RSI anywhere. Superman? No, regular (monthly) theraputic massage and daily stretching.
I cold-turkied from QWERTY to Dvorak in 2001, at
the tender age of 24, after having been a QWERTY
touch-typer since age 14. I read about
"extinction" (forgetting QWERTY) on the 'net
before doing the switch, but dismissed the idea
as never-going-to-happen-to-me.
Well, it happened to me. BEFORE I got up to
speed on Dvorak = 3 weeks of total hell. And
weird. I could feel the signals being sent, but
my fingers wouldn't move. "This is a trick," I
thought, "I'll just move my fingers and the
signals will hook back up." Wrong I was; only
gibberish came out.
Apparently, if new training is similar enough to
something you've already learned, and the thing
you already learned isn't being used, the neurons
that were doing the original thing are likely to
be retrained for the new one. Reports indicate,
and it seems reasonable, that this can be
prevented by continuing to practice the old while
learning the new. For me, though, being unable to
type is such unbelievable hell that I would never
have practiced Dvorak if I hadn't forbidden myself
QWERTY.
Re. Maltron: hands-flat isn't as good as hands-
vertical. Ultimate is probably DataHand, with
each unit mounted vertically (though I haven't
tried one myself).
Re. the straightdope article. Don't fall for this
tripe.
Re. RSI -- mousing has been more damaging than
typing to me, but my condition did improve when I
switched to Dvorak.
Three posts on my blog give more info:
http://www.lumma.org/microwave/#2003.07.21
http://www.lumma.org/microwave/#2002.10.08
http://www.lumma.org/microwave/#2002.07.09
-Carl
Thank you for the helpful suggestion. My ex-MS brother already suggested it and even provided a sample. Alas, the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator doesn't allow you to properly remap *everything*; even though it seems to, the end result just doesn't work right. [Ctrl]+(whatever) hardly works, [Windows]+(those few keys) are broken, and it's a mess setting up all the int'l characters (ä[a umlaut], ñ[n tilde], [euro]). There are *a lot* more non-USian combos than you'd ever figure.
Thanks, but no go. The hacked DLL works like a charm, however. That is, with the two caveats that (a) all users on my system get Dvorak NO when the system thinks it's "Dvorak US", and (b) I had to kill that tedious Windows-protects-its-DLLs "feature" to make it work.
"Good news, everyone!"
Typical, ran out of mod points on Friday and here's a comment that needs some ...
Here's the Wikipedia link for those wondering what RSI stands for:
There are a lot of replies already, but I'll replay anyway since I am probably one of the very few people who can actually answer the question.
Many years ago I switched to DSK on my own computer (Apple II), but still had to type on QWERTY keyboards everywhere else. After I learned DSK, I found I could switch back and forth with no effort. I didn't even need to think about it. My mind automatically switched each time I switched computers. I see no reason why this shouldn't work for everyone, but I don't for sure.
I prefer having Dvorak enabled by default, but there's also a "Show input menu in login window" option in the Accounts preferences panel (it's listed under Login Options).
RSI was really beginning to affect my ability to type. I had experienced no symptoms, right up until about 6 months ago. I remember attending a lecture at University about RSI slightly beforehand by two students who had all but lost their ability to type due to RSI. I remember thinking "Thank god that'll never happen to me..". How wrong I was.
:)
It just sort of happened - slight pain at first, but quickly got worse. The biggest pain was in my wrists where your arms meet your hands, with some slight pain in the lower arms. I don't believe it was related to the use of the mouse, although some days using the mouse did agrivate it.
I had tried giving typing a break - doing no typing for a few weeks. This didn't seem to help much.
However a month or so ago we decided to do up one of our houses, and I spent a week doing nothing but intense DIY. This involved using my hands a lot - lots of lifting, squeezing, twisting, etc. Each day I could feel the muscles in my hands ache - but was it RSI pain? Surprisingly, no! It was the same muscle pains I was getting all over, I was getting a real workout.
And the result? My RSI was temporarily cured.
It has started to get slightly worse, but not nearly as bad as it was. I intend to find ways to ensure I'm getting plenty of hand-based exercise. Infact, I just ordered some heat sensitive putty from http://www.puttyworld.com/
In conclusion - exercise your hands with a real workout. Build up your hand muscles. Hopefully it'll help you as much as it did I.