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intrigue
Washington, D.C9935 Posts
for those of you unfamiliar with the story, the keyboard we currently use was made intentionally inefficient so as not to jam typewriters. it's called the Sholes keyboard, after their inventor. however, another well-known one is called the Dvorak keyboard - here is a short wikipedia excerpt:
Dvorak studied letter frequencies and the physiology of people's hands and created a layout to adhere to these principles:
* Letters should be typed by alternating between hands.
* For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters and digraphs should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest, and under the strongest fingers.
* The least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach.
* The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.
* Digraphs should not be typed with adjacent fingers.
* Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that, for many people, when tapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.[3]
it has always bugged me immensely that i'm expending much more energy typing things out than is necessary. now that we don't use typewriters, it's really dumb to keep this archaic system. how many unnecessary kilojoules a year do i waste with this keyboard?
you may switch keyboards in windows xp by going to control panel => language/regional settings => language tab => clicking on the 'details' tab, clicking 'add', and checking the box with dvorak in it. it also helps to turn on the language bar to switch back and forth easily. i've also written the dvorak keys with a sharpie on my laptop keyboard, though it's probably smarter to print it out and stick it on top.
i'm heading out for food right now but the next time i get back, i will be using only dvorak until i get the hang of it. i'll still have to switch back for starcraft but it'll be pretty cool being 'bilingual' in keyboard knowledge. or so i think. preemptive apology for those who talk to me on irc/aim/msn, because i'll take forever to respond in the first few days.
anyone wanna join me in this noble quest for efficiency? i think i'll type out the time it takes me to make each post in seconds at the bottom of my posts for a few days.
 
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I would like to switch over to dvorak completely, but I don't think I could be a "bilingual typist" without a lot of time spent practising both for a long time.
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Takes a week or two to get used to it, I switched back after a while cause I couldn't get used to the punctuation being in weird places.
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Do they sell actual keyboards that are laid out this way? I remember reading something similar awhile ago. The guy that created bittorrent was advocating the keys being perfectly uniform and adjacent, instead of staggered.
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United States11637 Posts
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I think this style sucks for turkish or maybe i'm just not used to this dvorak thingy but i like the archaic system and i'm used to it so it will be so hard to change whole keyboard imo
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god switching to this would ruin my sc abilities.
not like i have many but they would just get worse.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9935 Posts
[][][][] oh the brackets are up there now what the hell where is my question mark oh???
4 minutes to type 8(
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i learned dvorak when bored at work one term... i still use it for msn sort of conversations, but not for programming or starcraft.
i'm about the same speed in both now, but dvorak does feel like less effort than qwerty, your fingers don't have to dash around the keyboard as much
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lol keep posting progress!!
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United States7488 Posts
I'll take any workout I can get... can we try to find the least efficient keyboard layout for typing to maximize the amount of workout I get while hardly doing anything strenuous?
I might be on board to try that.
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On March 15 2009 05:25 semioldguy wrote:
I'll take any workout I can get... can we try to find the least efficient keyboard layout for typing to maximize the amount of workout I get while hardly doing anything strenuous?
I might be on board to try that.
Well you can always keep a can of beer handy to work your biceps lifting it to your mouth.
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On March 15 2009 04:54 intrigue wrote:
i've also written the dvorak keys with a sharpie on my laptop keyboard, though it's probably smarter to print it out and stick it on top.
Alternatively, you could remove the keys on your keyboard and move them into the Dvorak positions. Just hope you don't break a key if you decide to do that.
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CA10835 Posts
On March 15 2009 05:06 intrigue wrote:
[][][][] oh the brackets are up there now what the hell where is my question mark oh???
4 minutes to type 8(
noob
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Yep ive heard of this. My friend uses and he once tried to convince me. I do believe it drastically improves typing speed but out of habit I'm too lazy to change. Plus i think if u use someone else's computer or at the library's computers u can't really use this layout anymore.
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On March 15 2009 06:47 Exteray wrote:
Yep ive heard of this. My friend uses and he once tried to convince me. I do believe it drastically improves typing speed but out of habit I'm too lazy to change. Plus i think if u use someone else's computer or at the library's computers u can't really use this layout anymore.
it's not like dvorak is replacing your knowledge of the qwerty keyboard rofl
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On March 15 2009 06:47 Exteray wrote:
Yep ive heard of this. My friend uses and he once tried to convince me. I do believe it drastically improves typing speed but out of habit I'm too lazy to change. Plus i think if u use someone else's computer or at the library's computers u can't really use this layout anymore.
If everyone jumped of a cliff I guess you would too? Sounds wierd but you know what I mean 
My friend uses this and I guess it's better, I've just been too lazy to try it yet, maybe I'll do it soon.
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I'm way too used to qwerty now, although the dvorak layout does look appealing.
I'll try it out someday.
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argh this is tough at first
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EPT![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/KB_United_States_Dvorak.svg/400px-KB_United_States_Dvorak.svg.png)
