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On April 23 2011 12:04 Soulish wrote:
In my opinion, Dvorak is completely useless unless your job is to retype something. Any decent typer can get 100 wpm+ with qwerty, which is more than enough. Sure, you may be able to type at 120 wpm with a dvorak layout, but can you think at 120 wpm? I type ~110 with qwerty, but when I'm typing out an essay or something I suspect it's somewhere closer to 50 wpm.
I don't know if this would be true for anyone else but personally I type essays around 100-120 wpm and still end up leaving out tons of words because I'm thinking much faster then I'm typing and end up just assuming I've already typed something that I didn't because my mind just moves on.
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On April 23 2011 12:13 251 wrote:
Qwerty is designed to slow you down? really? I type around 100-110 with qwerty.....I don't see a point. I mean the standard is Qwerty EEEVERRYYWHERERERERERE
It's not cause its standard its better. Qwerty got designed in 19th century so typewriters wouldnt get stuck.
Dvorak is pretty old too though. If I would switch then it would be to COLEMAK
I'll quote wiki for this :
Your fingers on QWERTY move 2.2x more than on Colemak. QWERTY has 16x more same hand row jumping than Colemak. There are 35x more words you can type using only the home row on Colemak.
Your fingers need to travel just a fraction of the that they do in QWERTY. On Dvorak your fingers move 10% more (30% more for a 4% error rate), and on QWERTY 102% more than Colemak (118% more for a 4% error rate).
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On April 23 2011 12:02 acker wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2011 11:54 Crazyeyes wrote:
How is it that QWERTY causes carpal tunnel, but Dvorak doesn't? Does this make sense? QWERTy is designed to make each finger move as far as possible to type common words and phrases. DVORAK is made to ensure minimal finger movement.
dvorak was a computer dude in Splinter Cell fyi.
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at first I was like why would anyone want something different than qwerty. But then I read the thread and the responses make sense. However I've been typing qwerty for about 16 years and I don't see myself changing anytime soon.
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On April 23 2011 11:01 Lorken wrote:
My friend convinced me earlier to switch to the Dvorak layout and I have been using it for a day now. I have simply changed my input language to Dvorak English and its quite fun learning to type all over again. I love how I cannot look at the keyboard and cheat. The thing about changing is that you will forget your qwerty and need to give Dvorak a lot of time.
NO, you won't forget Qwerty! You will need to readjust after few weeks of doing Dvorak-only (which is strongly recommended).
You'll have to readjust, but you don't have to relearn. Once you're comfortable with Dvorak, it's fairly easy to go back to being fluent at both (it's uncomfortable at first, but Qwerty muscle memory comes back very quickly, it's nothing like relearning). But you really should be comfortable with Dvorak before switching back, or it'll be very frustrating.
Or you can just type qwerty on any other computer. There's no reason at all to not know both if that is helpful to you.
If you haven't tried it, give it a go if you have time!
I was wondering how many people have tried this and what their experience with this is and what happened.
I was also wondering how hard it gets for gaming with this layout.
Works great for me, all my friends who decided voluntarily to switch agreed that it is much more comfortable and enjoyable to type in. (And they are using Dvorak now. I didn't ask them to, they just got curious after a while of mocking me, tried it, and ended up preferring it.)
Personally, I tried it because I had wrist pain at one point (caused by excessive keyboard/mouse use, and Dvorak did help). The wrist pain went away, but I realized that I just enjoyed typing much more with Dvorak. I didn't do it for speed, but I did notice that on those online typing tests, after ~3-4 weeks of Dvorak, I was up to Qwerty speed (which I touched-type for >5 years by then); after ~2 months of touch-typing Dvorak, I was 50% faster than I ever was with Qwerty. And that's without trying to optimize Dvorak for speed (I had tried to train speed a bit while typing Qwerty).
Can't recommend it enough. Most nay-sayers I've seen never tried it, and almost who seriously gave it a try -- not just trying for two days then complaining about how hard it is to learn (while they're not at all interested in learning) -- ended up liking and switching to it. And no, it's not an issue to type Qwerty later on. *Initially* you should stick to pure Dvorak if you can, it just makes learning much more pleasant. Once the muscle memory is in, switching layouts is entirely thought-free -- I do it automatically if the first two characters come out wrong, before I even realize consciously that I've switched. I still touch-type Qwerty plenty fast, a bit slower than before, but that's only because I use it rarely.
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Also, for all the people who say it's useless, that's bull.
The main benefit to me -- YMMV -- is *NOT* speed. It's the fact that it makes typing much more comfortable.
This may sound like a douchebag argument, and it's hard to explain if you've never tried it. Even if you don't have any RSI, it just feels nicer to type Dvorak because you're doing so many fewer awkward finger/hand movements, and fewer moving in general. If you spend a lot of time during the day typing, this is in my mind a no-brainer to try seriously -- if you honestly dislike it, after trying for a few days (probably easiest to do during holidays/extended weekend if you have a stressful job), you didn't lose much. If you do like it and find it to make typing more pleasant, you gain a lot for the rest of your life.
If you rarely ever touch-type, and you have no particular intellectual curiosity compelling you to learn Dvorak, there's no good argument why you should bother learning it. You don't touch-type often, so making it faster/more pleasant/whatever won't matter much.
But keep in mind, you don't need to type all that much to make it worthwhile: The learning cost is one-time, the time you make use of it accumulates in the future.
If you don't touch-type at all and would like to learn doing so, I strongly recommend Dvorak. It's so much faster to learn, I've seen this with several learners. http://dvorak.nl and other sites are very helpful.
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in terms of integrating to a new keyboard layout from QWERTY, colemak is more efficient because many shortcut keys commonly used in windows remain the same. also, over time people who use Dvorak say although its better than QWERTY, there is a pinky strain. so if you're thinking of a switch from qwerty, go colemak.
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i have been using the "NEO" layout for over a year now. It is a special layout designed for the german languga. you have "uaieo" (all vocals) on your left hand homerow and "snrtd" on the right homerow (most common consonants in german). you can type over 70000 german words on your homerow alone.
in addition to this the layout has some other great features: capslock is no longer capslock, but another modifier: capslock + j = (, capslock + k = ), etc., so it is perfect for programmers.
i don't type that much faster than with qwerty, especially when i type in english, but it is so much more comfortable, i love it 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo
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A gaming forum that supports a keyboard layout that makes "lol" 300% harder to type. What has the world come to.
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If I heed this thread, I'll have to learn dvorak, NEO and the F keyboard (designed to make typing turkish easier).
I guess I'll stick to qwerty for the time being.
Glad I can't speak french :D
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First thing that came to my head.
![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/not_enough_work.png)
Source xkcd.com
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Im trying it now... jesus it's hard to do.. but I can definitely feel the simplicity of the way that it is set up. Gunna keep chuggin at it. If you guys want a nice site to practice on:
http://learn.dvorak.nl/
it's what i'm using.
-cLvPanda
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Honestly there is no point. What if by next year, they invent another keyboard layout that is even more efficient than dvorak? What if they discover that switching a and e increases your wpm by 20? There might be a reason to switch if qwerty layout suddenly goes extinct but I doubt it.
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Dammit I thought this was about the composer. Sad face.
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On April 23 2011 19:05 wxwx wrote:
Honestly there is no point. What if by next year, they invent another keyboard layout that is even more efficient than dvorak? What if they discover that switching a and e increases your wpm by 20? There might be a reason to switch if qwerty layout suddenly goes extinct but I doubt it.
The point of switching is because it's more fluid, easier, more efficient, and comfortable. This isn't a case of him creating a new layout to "stick it to the man." Have you ever just stared at your keyboard and analysed the Qwerty layout? It's horribly inefficient.
The Qwerty layout will probably never die simply because too many people are accustomed to it. Dvorak and Colemak may be better, but people don't want to make a switch simply because they don't want to change. To say there is no point is a little silly considering there are benefits to it. Whether or not they are significant enough for you is another question.
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Having switched to Colemak about three years ago, all I can say is that it's a matter of comfort. The speed can be attained in QWERTY as well as in Dvorak or Colemak, but the idea of hardly moving your fingers because the keys are more intelligently laid out is what really is appealing.
Every time I feel like playing SC2 or any other game I've got installed I boot up Win7 (I use Linux for all else) where I still use QWERTY. The first thing one notices is that the layout just feels... stupid.
Instead of having your hands comfortably parked at the home row as intended, I find I angle my hands, ready for keystrokes all over the place.
On April 23 2011 19:05 wxwx wrote:
Honestly there is no point. What if by next year, they invent another keyboard layout that is even more efficient than dvorak? What if they discover that switching a and e increases your wpm by 20? There might be a reason to switch if qwerty layout suddenly goes extinct but I doubt it.
A layout's effectiveness is just a question of which language you mostly type in and how the keys are positioned in relation to this. carpalx is a project that generates optimized keyboard layouts, using pure statistics to determine what key should be placed where.
There will be no "next year", the numbers have already been crunched.
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On April 23 2011 19:25 reprise wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2011 19:05 wxwx wrote:
Honestly there is no point. What if by next year, they invent another keyboard layout that is even more efficient than dvorak? What if they discover that switching a and e increases your wpm by 20? There might be a reason to switch if qwerty layout suddenly goes extinct but I doubt it. The point of switching is because it's more fluid, easier, more efficient, and comfortable. This isn't a case of him creating a new layout to "stick it to the man." Have you ever just stared at your keyboard and analysed the Qwerty layout? It's horribly inefficient. The Qwerty layout will probably never die simply because too many people are accustomed to it. Dvorak and Colemak may be better, but people don't want to make a switch simply because they don't want to change. To say there is no point is a little silly considering there are benefits to it. Whether or not they are significant enough for you is another question.
And you surely are happy to link to studies which back up your claims?
The only studies done on the Dvorak layout were done by dvorak himself, you can guess yourself what the conclusion of those was 
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On April 23 2011 12:13 Navillus wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2011 11:37 The_LiNk wrote:On April 23 2011 11:13 Crazyeyes wrote:
I dont actually see the point, though. I mean, I'd like to think that my QWERTY typing skills are quite good now. Been able to type without looking since I was like 14, can type pretty quickly when I need to...
Why bother?
I guess in this case you seem to be doing it omre for fun, but I've read mnay times that eventually the DVORAK setup will be standard... QWERTY is designed to slow you down. It's an archaic layout that typewriters employed so you don't jam the keys by typing too fast. Since you can't really break your keyboard by typing too fast anymore, there really is no point of keeping QWERTY. I've been looking to change to a more efficient layout, but then that would mean reassigning keys from games, and that's just damn annoying. Well not exactly to slow you down, it was because it jammed when you typed a bunch of keys that were close together so they changed it to spread out commonly used letters, but that amounts to about the same thing.
That may have been the theory, but then why do we end up with a-s-e-r-t pretty much right next to each other and all in easy and natural distance for typing with just the left hand? I'm honestly curious, because I've not heard that explanation, and while I've messed with typewriters and it would seem to make sense, the actual layout doesn't fit with the explanation.
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Dvorak & qwerty are for noobs, colemak is where it's at
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EPT
