I first heard of the Dvorak layout the summer after my Freshman year of college. I was living in Ann Arbor and spring term classes had just wrapped up so I had plenty of free time to learn a new keyboard layout. I don't recall how I first heard about it, but when I realized the benefits of the Dvorak layout, and realized that I was probably going to use a keyboard the rest of my life I knew I had to learn it.
The QWERTY layout is the standard keyboard layout for nearly all modern devices, and one that I spent many hours practicing on in my youth with the help of Mavis Beacon. It was patented in 1878 for use on the typewriter. One of the issues with early typewriters was that if you typed too fast the keys would jam. So the QWERTY layout was developed to minimize jams by limiting the speed at which one could type. I mean, just look at your keyboard. The most valuable real estate is under your right index finger, and it's occupied by 'J'. J!!!!. The letter that's worth 8 points in scrabble gets top billing on QWERTY. Not to mention the reserved spot on the home row for the semi-colon. Clearly such a high-usage punctuation deserves a better spot than the comma or period key right?
By the 1910's typewriter technology had evolved to the point where jams were no longer a serious issue, but the layout had become the dominate keyboard layout. August Dvorak set out to use science to design a better layout. Through his research he found that people typed fastest alternating letters between the hands and that it was easier to reach up for a letter than down, and he spent a long time researching letter frequencies in text. Like 20 years later he came up with this:
 |
| The Dvorak Layout |
The Dvorak Keyboard Layout solved the biggest issues with QWERTY by putting all the major vowels on the left home row, and the major consonants on the right home row with the remainder going above the right hand. Above the left hand was reserved for the apostrophe, comma and period. It just makes sense intuitively.
Pros of using Dvorak
- Faster typing
- Less fatigue
- 70% of keystrokes are done on the home row, compared to just 32% on QWERTY
- Harder for people to steal your password. Alternatively you make make a really easy to type password in Dvorak that looks very complex in QWERTY
- In Windows you can switch between the two seamlessly.
- Adds to your mystique
- Confuses your enemies & Robert the IT guy at work
Cons of using Dvorak
- Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, are no longer next to each other.
- Sometimes you sit down and start typing in Dvorak but it's still in QWERTY. That's annoying.
- If you can't touch type it can be hard when trying to use a laptop or something else
- Gotta switch back when playing games that require WASD. Unless you have very nimble fingers.
It took me about two weeks to learn the basics of Dvorak and I had to print out a sample keyboard layout to refer to. Within a month I was equally as fast at Dvorak as I was at QWERTY. For many years afterwards I would use Dvorak at home and QWERTY at school/work. It wasn't hard to switch between the two, similarly to someone speaking one language at home and another at work. It wasn't until maybe 2013 that I decided to switch over to using exclusively Dvorak, although I can still type decently on QWERTY when I need to. Whenever asked about my favorite obscure keyboard layout I always recommend it, although I've never been asked.
If there is one reason to keep blogging it's to call people sheep. And you all are sheep for continuing to use an outdated, poorly designed system that continues to be used due to societal inertia and a resistance to mass change. So break free and convert to the
No comments:
Post a Comment