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QWERTY, Dvorak and More
We've mentioned stuff related to this in the past, but
louridas sent us an interesting article called
The Myth of the Keys which talks about how Dvorak isn't really any faster than QWERTY, but the most interesting part is how this relates to the MS AntiTrust case.
Well of course "Dvorak isn't really any faster than Dvorak". You mean QWERTY?
Deja Moo: The feeling that
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This article contains some good background material, and they draw some interesting conclusions, but I can't help being sceptical because of the way they are arguing other political/philosophical points using the keyboard design as an example. It's hard to place much trust in anyone who so obviously cares that the result come out a particular way.
Unfortunately, everyone cares about keyboard design. We've all spent years learning how to type, so we have a large investment in a QWERTY layout, while those few people who've spent the even larger investment to relearn a DVORAK keyboard are extremely unlikely to turn around and admit (even if only to themselves) that this was a mistake!
It would be interesting to do a truly neutral study, using a bunch of kids who haven't yet learned either method, but despite all the research quoted in this article, it seems that nobody has actually done that! Retraining existing typists is a useful test in practical terms, but doesn't tell us anything about which is the best design in an abstract sense.
The short of it - the economic discussions might be fair, but the DVORAK argument is not.
"But always she's the spectre of uncertainty I first endured, then faded, then embraced..."
Mindcraft ran some bechmarks and concluded that NT is faster than NT, too...
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E2 IN2 IE?
Typing Errors in Reason magazine.
Network Effects, Path Dependence and Lock-In
DISMAL SCIENCE FICTIONS Network Effects, Microsoft, and Antitrust Speculation
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
That no-one seems to have ever conducted an unbiased test. Of course, doing that is a little problematic in my opinion, as I would think you would need people who cannot type, and then train them on the various keyboards. Also, the one you learn first you might possibly be better at, and so forth.
Learning is a bitch. Once you learn one way, it's extremely hard to go to another way. Take me for example. I learned QWERTY when I was around 8 years old, and I didn't learn the "five-finger" method or anything like that. My method of typing is basically hunt and peck, with the advantage that I know from memory where the keys are. I get around 50-60 words a minute with no mistakes. I simply know my keyboard. Almost all my typing is done with 4 fingers out of 10. It generally upsets people who see me type, especially if they learned "the right way".
But that's just me and I'm odd anyway.
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I agree, because in retraining someone to do something another way, you get one of 3 possibilities:
Such a situation incorporates the biases of the person, and ruins the empiricality of the experiment because the person as already been tainted by previous experience! As you suggested, they should take a group of people (children, most likely) who've never been presented with a keyboard before (never seen one, anything), and teach some how to type on a QWERTY keyboard, and some on a DVORAK keyboard, and see which group is faster, etc, etc.. And then they can begin to go back and do studies on
I think that once experiments like these were conducted, the greater part of the [computing] world would be eager to know the results... and we all know why...
My $0.02 worth
Insert mind here.
Well...I've been using computers for only about 15 years or so, and typing on QWERTY layout for a bit longer. I changed to Dvorak about 6 months ago or so...it took me about a month to be back up to speed, due to the fact that I didn't want to loose my qwerty, so I was using both layouts.
The only real difference I've found between em is that I make less typos with the Dvorak (the "teh" mistake disapeared almost completely) and my wrists don't hurt much anymore (they used to hurt with qwerty after 6 or 7hr of typing).
I don't think Dvorak makes you faster, but it does make for a better typing experience, since you really use all fingers with it.
Vox, a Dvorak convert
Pain is the gift of the gods, and I'm the one they chose as their messanger...
It is in the interest of pro-lassaiz-faire folk to deny network effects exist, since such effects point up a prime failing of the free market. Customers must be completely free to choose the best product. Unfortunately for them, I've heard far too much anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
Every time an article about applications for Linux comes up, for example, there are invariably a cascade of talkbacks and comments along the lines of, "Yeah, these are good applications, and I like them, but they don't have good enough compatibility with [Word|Excel|Access|Insert other here].
Deny as they wish, I'm already convinced.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
He pronounced it:
-=Maggie Leber=-
It starts out:
And then goes on to thoroughly examine and refute the cited points- Seth Finkelstein
If you follow the link at the top of the reference page, you'll see that these writings come from the Independent Institute, which had run full-page ads in the New York Times in support of Microsoft in its anti-trust trial. It was recently revealed, after explicit denials of such by the Institute's chairman, that the ads had been paid for by Microsoft. Draw your own conclusions.
That report was mostly blather about history and economics. Statistics are what matter in such a case. Why is it that the only test anyone ever cites about Dvorak vs. QWERTYUIOP is the Navy retraining? It's pretty easy to conduct another, more fair one.
All my friends who switched to Dvorak have increased speed from their QWERTY days. Personally, I learned to touch-type in school in a semester and maxed out at 60/70 wpm after a few years. Later, I taught myself Dvorak. In about two weeks, I had completely forgotten QWERTY and was basic in Dvorak. After not too much longer, I tested at 90 wpm in Dvorak. A significant increase. Because I was taking comp sci classes in school throughout, I was forced to accidentally remember QWERTY (it's not forgotten, just pushed aside). Now I can type at my previous speeds in that as well, with no switching time and only a little annoyance over punctuation, which is typed less frequently. I feel that if I wasn't forced to hold myself back by using QWERTY all the time, I could become even faster in Dvorak.
Anyway, I don't know about all the so-called "tests" that have taken place, but from personal and observed experience, Dvorak is faster and more elegant, and takes very little time to learn. QWERTY just feels jumbled to me. It seems fairly unlikely that a mostly random misplacement of the keys could be more optimal than a statistically developed one.
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Silly rabbit. Sleep is for class!
I feel about Dvorak the way a lot of people here feel about Linux. That is, that it is better, and I don't care what other people say or do or "prove", it is better.
I like my layout. It's faster, feels better, works better. No amount of study, scientific or otherwise, is going to change my personal experience.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Out of concern of developing wrist problems, from years of much typing, I learned Dvorak last year. I got up to about 40 wpm on it, where I pretty much peaked. Considering that I type between 100-120wpm on a QWERTY, that's not much of an improvment.
:)
I don't mean to say that it's not possible to type as fast on a Dvorak as it is on a QWERTY. But I found there to be little advantage to the Dvorak and, to be honest, I found it awkward. This is likely related to the fact that I've been using the standard keyboard layout for 14 years. Still, with all the time that I spent on Dvorak, I'd like to think that I found have found some improvement.
The idea that the most-accessed keys are on the homerow is a cool idea, but it slowed me down. I type with all of my fingers, but I don't always hit the keys with the textbook-correct fingers. As a result, Dvorak makes me use, say, my index finger for the QWERTY-equlivalent ASD and F. Theoretically, this would be faster if I could use all four fingers on my left hand with equal agility. But, because I can't type perfectly, I found that it was slower to use Dvorak.
There are other examples, but they're pretty much the same deal. Essentially, I'm used to QWERTY, and I've let my typing become less-than-perfect to adapt to it. Would be better on Dvorak if I'd started on it? Probably. But for most of us, QWERTY should do nicely.
(Sidenote: Dvorak is the best system security that you can get, especially if you switch your keycaps around. Ain't nobody can use your system.
Gosh, they make this out to be so complicated. The keyboard analogy has often been used as an example of "market failure," much like the supposed VHS-Beta example.
It's wrong, and you don't need to be a microeconomist to figure it out. It doesn't even matter which keyboard is "superior". People chose qwerty, end of story. True, there weren't many choices initially (one, I guess), but once that choice was made, nobody wanted much to change to another keyboard. The lesson? Standardization is more valuable than an "optimum" layout. People chose standardization, and the public settled for the first standard that came along. That's a valid market result.
How do you pronounce "dvorak"?
( ) de-vo-rack
( ) de-vor-jak
Actually, neither of the above. Dvorak (or Dvoøák, if you happen to have a Central European charset available), is originally a Czech name. The "r hook" sound does not exist in English, and to most English speakers sounds like either a "sh" or a "zh".
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
If you go up to their page about the MS anti-trust case, they put forward some evidence that prices of software products in markets where Microsoft compete have dropped much faster than prices in markets where Microsoft does not compete. At first glance this suggests that Microsoft is not a monopoly, since monopolies usually exert their influence to keep prices inflated.
However, the reasoning is fallacious:
So everyone's still arguing if it's faster. One thing's for certain, your fingers move a LOT less. Which in the end is all that really matters - more comfortable definitely.
I switched to Dvorak just about a year ago. I didn't get the supposed 50% increase in speed and accuracy, perhaps because I was already typing at 90 WPM on QWERTY. I did, however, end up with fewer typos and _much_ less stress to the fingers.
;)
My other problem is that there is a buffer underrun when my brain is providing the data to type.
Dvortyboards makes a regular keyborard that is switchable between dvorak and qwerty with the press of a button. The quality of the keyboard itself hasn't totally impressed me, though. You can buy one at www.dvortyboards.com.
Microsoft's questionable research papers
An excerpt:
-- Seth Finkelstein
I'm wondering if there isn't a BETTER keyboard then QWERTY _AND_ Dvorak.
:-)
i.e.
Instead of arguing which keyboard is better, why can't we design a better one? (with respect to key layout)
Come on you people in kinesiology, do some ergonomics studies, and design a better keyboard.
If we already have a better/new keyboard, does anyone have any links? (I'm intereseted in NON QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards.)
Cheers
The article talks about these two things as though they were hardware standards from competing vendors.
When in fact you can remap your keyboard using software, and put stickers on the keycaps. (Shuffling the keycaps around won't work all that well because on most keyboards, the keycaps from different rows have different shapes). (Some of us wouldn't need the stickers; it would not impede me at all if the key labels were sanded right off).
Moreover, choosing a keyboard layout is personal preference. If you choose a Dvorak layout, you won't suddenly be a technological outcast who is unable to use computer software. (Except that, you will be stuck to having to implement your customization in every environment, whereas if you type QWERTY, you don't need to customize anything).
The Dvorak/Qwerty debate is getting rather old [0]. What's more interesting is how the authors of this article progress generalize from this single extremely particular QWERTY example onto more general economic grounds-- specifically, the Microsoft trial.
Laissez-faire economists like to say that the cost of switching to another office suite, rather than staying with Microsoft, outweighs the benefits of switching to another suite; and therefore, there is no market failure. They ignore the huge and ruinous long-term costs of staying with Microsoft.
If Microsoft did not have a monopoly position that enabled it to exploit "network effects", would everyone bother upgrading to the latest version of Office every single time? The most commonly used Office application, Microsoft Word, has not changed appreciably since version 6.0.
However, since Microsoft is fond of making their file formats non-backwards-compatible (often with automatic conversions whenever someone opens a document), people using Microsoft products to exchange documents with each other are effectively coerced into switching whenever one employee, department, or client in the network upgrades to Microsoft products. No user wants to deal with this, but they must upgrade anyway; not when they feel the need for more features (which almost nobody does, for Office) but whenever Microsoft feels like releasing a new edition of its viral applications into the market.
Of course, according to the laissez-faire people, the present cost of staying with Microsoft is still lower than switching, so there is no such thing as network effects. But that's the very definition of network effects: the result of using a greedy algorithm over a network where such an algorithm is non-optimal.
This whole issue shows how dangerous it is to take advice about technical issues from people who have a vested interest in supporting a particular economic model.
~k.lee
[0] Maybe the authors are right, and maybe they aren't; I type at 100+ wpm, and unless I am going to get a huge speedup (> 200 wpm) in typing speed I am not going to bother switching one way or the other.
(remove nospam for email)
"C. The frequency of alternating hand sequences is maximized and the frequency of same-finger typing is minimized."
As somebody who's been playing the piano for about 15 years I find it quite hard to believe that alternating hand sequences is the optimal typing pattern - it's one of the hardest things to do quickly!
Take for example typing the four keys on each hand in their natural resting position. You can probably type "asdf;lkj" about 4 times a second, but you'd be hard pressed to type "a;sldkfj" more than 1.5 times a second. This is why in all your early piano lessons you put those finger numbers over all the notes - you find the optimum pattern that flows easily (and usually sequentially) across fingers in the same hand.
Most articles of this type also assume a standard "touch typing" style. Touch typing may be the optimal pattern if your hands are to stay in the same position, but who says you have to keep your hands stationary? I tend to type with my hands drifting about the keyboard slightly depending on the sequence to be typed.
After trying Dvorak for a few months, I decided there was no way I could match the 150wpm that I currently manage with QWERTY. QWERTY suffers less from the alternating hands syndrome than Dvorak, and as such I'll be sticking with QWERTY. The one thing I can say for Dvorak is that it does put less strain on the hands overall.