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Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

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Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#61

Post by eru »

nihilocrat wrote: post #40

One of the main reasons I stick with QWERTY is because it is not uncommon that I will switch to a German keyboard layout when talking with German friends. Dvorak and Colemak are English-optimized and so switching to or from them has a much higher mental cost than switching from English QWERTY to German, which closely resembles QWERTY. I think I'll try it out, anyways. There's already a bit of re-learning that has to…

I do switch between US Dvorak and German Quertz --- everytime I have to type an Umlaut. (It's just one keypress.)

Works good enough for me and I have been to lazy to get a German Dvorak or try the NEO layout that was designed for German.

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#62

Post by eru »

macco wrote: post #24

I used a different layout based on dvorak optimized for the german language. You get very, but it sucks if you have to use a different computer, then you hack with two fingers. I switched back. If you only use your own computer go for it. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. Rockin Regards, Marco

I never had a problem switching between layouts I know. Perhaps because I do it often enough?

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#63

Post by silentbicycle »

Hovertruck wrote: post #16
a-priori wrote: post #9

I have used Dvorak full-time for 5-6 years now. Back in high school, a friend of mine discovered Dvorak and a few of us switched cold-turkey; everyone else switched back within a week, but I'm still going! It took about two weeks for me to be comfortable with it. If you're like me, it's the punctuation that will screw you up the most when switching. I'm an Emacs user, but I learned Emacs after I learned Dvorak, so I…

Is it wrong that I use the arrow keys in Vim?

Nah. The navigation keys on the home row are a throwback to when terminals were less likely to handle control keys correctly. If that's not a problem you have, then don't worry about it.

You'll probably benefit from getting the commands to move by paragraphs, functions, pairs of () {} ,

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#64

Post by silentbicycle »

mcxx wrote: post #35
mazer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went whole hog and switched to the Kinesis Contoured and to the Dvorak layout. I'm an Emacs user, and had been one since before the switch. I'd also touch typed qwerty before the switch. A few comments: * The first week or two is almost completely unproductive. You spend most of your time screaming at your fingers to just shut up and get used to the new arrangement. * Once you make the adjustment, although your typ…

That's one reason why I'm not so keen on learning Dvorak - you won't be able to write efficiently on any other computer than yours. Until now, it was just my assumption, that by learning Dvorak (or any other layout as a matter of fact), you'll lose your QWERTY-fu. Thanks for sharing. I'll probably stick with QWERTY and a Kinesis keyboard.

> you won't be able to write efficiently on any other computer than yours.

Not my experience, at all. It takes a second to switch gears mentally, but it's not at all different from people fluent in multiple languages. Context helps, though: I type Dvorak on my desktop, my laptop, and my computer in the office, but Qwerty on other computers.

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#65

Post by silentbicycle »

lliiffee wrote: post #53
jerf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And quite a bit of evidence that suggests that the "myth" arguments are recycled propaganda from a guy in the early twentieth century who had an axe to grind. Since nobody's actually done significant, unquestionable science on the topic, it's hard to know. The concept of somebody having an axe to grind about keyboard layouts strikes us as weird in the 21st century when switching keyboard layouts is one quick command…

> And quite a bit of evidence that suggests that the "myth" arguments are recycled propaganda from a guy in the early twentieth century who had an axe to grind. Really? Where? (I'm not being sarcastic-- you are being specific enough that you clearly have something specific in mind.)

I'm not the poster above, but the best-known example of propagandizing about them is a paper called "The Fable of the Keys" by Liebowitz and Margolis (http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html), which dragged the Qwerty vs. Dvorak issue into the middle of an academic holy war about the free market. Much of the resulting Qwerty vs. Dvorak arguments have really been about economics, not their actual merits as keyboard layouts. (The only argument about the layouts themselves in the paper concerns whether typing on Dvorak is inherently faster.) The two links lliiffee gave above are by the authors of "The Fable of the Keys" and a newspaper column including a refutation by marketing professor, respectively. (I'm not sure who the "guy in the early twentieth century who had an axe to grind" jerf mentions is, though.)

Now, I really don't care about economic ideology, but I like facts. The Dvorak keyboard places more frequently used letters on the home row than Qwerty* . Also, all of the vowels are on the left hand, which means that typing will generally alternate between hands.

If you agree that it is better to spend most time typing on the home row (to reduce finger travel and general hand contortion/RSI) and to not type several letters in a row on the same hand (compare "reverberated" to "antiskepticism" on Qwerty, for example), then Dvorak is objectively better by your standards. (All bets are off if you're typing in Czech or something, of course.)

* Specifically, "asdfg hjkl;" vs. "aoeui dhtns". Semicolon! I suppose Qwerty could have PrintScrn/SysRq there instead, though.

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#66

Post by jerf »

silentbicycle wrote: post #65
lliiffee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And quite a bit of evidence that suggests that the "myth" arguments are recycled propaganda from a guy in the early twentieth century who had an axe to grind. Really? Where? (I'm not being sarcastic-- you are being specific enough that you clearly have something specific in mind.)

I'm not the poster above, but the best-known example of propagandizing about them is a paper called "The Fable of the Keys" by Liebowitz and Margolis ( http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html ), which dragged the Qwerty vs. Dvorak issue into the middle of an academic holy war about the free market. Much of the resulting Qwerty vs. Dvorak arguments have really been about economics , not their actual merits as key…

That's definitely the biggest one I was thinking of. QWERTY v. Dvorak has gone in many strange directions, but if you look for the actual science, it is at best quite split, and at worst, all the relevant studies were done by people with very strong preexisting opinions, leaving us with not much to go on. (I include Dvorak's own studies here, for the sake of argument.)

But the claims that Dvorak has no advantages over QWERTY really don't pass the smell test. It's almost certainly more a matter of whether it's worth it for someone to switch, on which I'm very ambivalent.

There's also the interesting question of whether it would be better to start on Dvorak, which I'll have to ponder here in the future now that I have a baby. Personal experience would suggest that someone raised on Dvorak is much more likely to learn actual touch typing.

(I was on QWERTY for over a decade and still doing the same wandering-hands thing everybody else does, because QWERTY doesn't reward touch typing. Touch typing on QWERTY is like the official way to swing a baseball bat; everybody has to learn it, but hardly anybody does it and even at the pro level everybody does their own thing. Dvorak and most of the other alternate layouts reward it very strongly. You don't even have to teach it, it just happens.)

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#67

Post by silentbicycle »

jerf wrote: post #66
silentbicycle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the poster above, but the best-known example of propagandizing about them is a paper called "The Fable of the Keys" by Liebowitz and Margolis ( http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html ), which dragged the Qwerty vs. Dvorak issue into the middle of an academic holy war about the free market. Much of the resulting Qwerty vs. Dvorak arguments have really been about economics , not their actual merits as key…

That's definitely the biggest one I was thinking of. QWERTY v. Dvorak has gone in many strange directions, but if you look for the actual science , it is at best quite split, and at worst, all the relevant studies were done by people with very strong preexisting opinions, leaving us with not much to go on. (I include Dvorak's own studies here, for the sake of argument.) But the claims that Dvorak has no advantages ov…

> It's almost certainly more a matter of whether it's worth it for someone to switch[.]

Agreed. For programmers, I would say the odds are good - you'll be doing a lot of typing, and RSI is a real concern. For people who do a lot of typing on other peoples' computers, planning around what's widely available (qwerty & vi on Unix, for example) is probably a better choice.

> QWERTY doesn't reward touch typing.

Good observation! Dvorak seems more clearly designed with touch-typing in mind, I think.

(As a data point: I type "wandering-hands" on Qwerty at 95-105 wpm, and about same on Dvorak. The typing isn't the bottleneck.)

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#68

Post by GreggW »

justinchen wrote: post #18

I haven't tried an alternative layout, but I do use a Kinesis countoured keyboard and that has made typing less painful for me. My hands rest very naturally on the keyboard and there's less distance to travel when tapping the keys. http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage_pro.htm

A warning: I switched immediately to a Kinesis keyboard after first getting wrist pains. But Kinesis keyboard uses the thumbs (much stronger digit, right?) to press the modifier keys usually pressed by the little fingers.

Not a good move for me: despite eventually going off all keyboards and using voice dictation software, I have permanent damage in both hands and my thumbs are the first to start hurting.

What I've been told by experts is that the best thing to do is to switch among different layout keyboards every couple of days. Each uses slightly different muscles, and if you switch often enough, you may not fatigue any of them--but there are no guarantees on anything!

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#69

Post by tremendo »

nixy wrote: post #2

Sounds interesting... How do I change to the Colemak layout on Windows XP?

I've been playing with this Portable Keyboard Layout utility and it works nicely: http://pkl.sourceforge.net/

You can also try it online: http://blite.iki.fi/lab/alternative-keyboard-layouts/colemak

Re: Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts?

#70

Post by awfabian »

I switched to Dvorak about 10 years ago. I never regained my full QWERTY speed (which was 100+ WPM--from what I hear, the faster you type, the harder it is to regain your full speed. I type fast enough that I don't care that much, but it's still annoying), and always find it annoying when I have to use a QWERTY keyboard. I found no particular demonstrable benefit (more ergonomic, better speed), except that it's more aesthetically pleasing... your fingers don't fly around as much. If you type QWERTY after typing Dvorak, you feel like you're trying to make your fingers fly around some computer for a 1950s science fiction movie (exaggerated, pointless).

Overall, I don't really regret it or think it was a good decision. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't bother, but I'll be using Dvorak for life.

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