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Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout For Swype
New submitter Analog24 writes: The QWERTY keyboard was not designed with modern touchscreen usage in mind, especially when it comes to swype texting. A recent study attempted to optimize the standard keyboard layout to minimize the number of swype errors. The result was a new layout that reduces the rate of swipe interpretation mistakes by 50.1% compared to the QWERTY keyboard.
the QWERTY layout was designed to SLOW down typists of the day,
Just so you know, that's a myth.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No, no it wasn't.
It was designed so that the hammers for successive key presses came from different areas of the typewriter, and hence reduce jamming (speeding up typing).
It happens that this is slower than the optimal layout if you ignore jamming, but much faster if you don't.
The result is that several layouts are better now for keyboards (which don't jam), but the design intention was not to slow typists down. It was to reduce jamming, and in doing so speed them up.
Just so you know, your myth is [possibly] a myth
LG Optimus F3Q, February 2014.
No idea if it's any good or not, but it's a five-row QWERTY that came out last year.