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How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

erichgrunewald.com

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Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#51

Post by wyattpeak »

erwald wrote: post #28
wyattpeak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but the article is pretty cagey in its retraction (including following up with the comment "Though on the other hand, jamming is really bad for typing speed!"). The author seems to me to at least partly still believe its true, merely acknowledging that it's a difficult position to maintain.

i am the author and i didn't mean to be wishy-washy about it. i read several of the papers involved and think it's more likely than not that qwerty was designed for fast typing, or at least not designed to type slowly. but i wouldn't say it's a done deal -- the paper i cited gives the most convincing argument, imo, but it didn't move me up to 100% confidence or anything. i didn't want to give the appearance of being…

Ah, my mistake I'm sorry. Thank you for clarifying your thoughts.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#52

Post by Findecanor »

jacobolus wrote: post #44
hnlmorg wrote: post #16

> In other words, the idea is that QWERTY was designed so that humans would type as slowly as possible in order to prevent mechanical jamming. Nope. That's an oft cited story but it's not true. The point of QWERTY was actually to increase typing speed. The debunking of this is pretty well documented these days (there even a note on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#Properties ) so it's disappointing an…

The point of the QWERTY layout was to prevent jamming; the prototype layout was roughly alphabetical on the keyboard and jammed constantly, so it was refined to fix that mechanical problem. The part that is a myth was that they prevented jamming by “slowing typists down”. What they did is moved commonly adjacently pressed letters apart from each-other so they wouldn’t be pressed at about the same time. This was not d…

The story about marketing and "TYPEWRITER" on the same row is also considered a myth by some historians, simply because Remington spelled it "Type-Writer" and - was not on that row.

That the layout was intended for typing at speed is corroborated by the fact that early users of (pre-Remington) typewriters were telegraphists who used them to transcribe telegrams from Morse code at the speed at which it was being received.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#54

Post by jodrellblank »

slobotron wrote: post #47
rsfern wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s interesting. I guess I never really thought about it, but on dvorak `ls` is a double tap with the right pinky, and it’s often immediately followed by [enter] with the same pinky… I type that key sequence a lot

Highly recommend you look into keyboards that have "Enter" and "Backspace" reachable by thumb/index fingers. I've been dailying a TECK for nearly a decade, and it's helped immensely with RSI. Their new Clevo keyboard is a bit different, so can't vouch for it, but my SO likes it so far as first foray into ergo keyboards: https://trulyergonomic.com/

Plover[1] and stenography has come up occasionally on HN, but I haven't seen anyone say they've given it a serious try.

I keep feeling like it would be good for emails and documentation, if not code. More text for fewer keypresses.

[1] http://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#55

Post by bsder »

ericbarrett wrote: post #25
chillacy wrote: post #12

> One week or so ago I switched from Colemak to typing on QWYRFM due to the reduced load it places on the pinkies. I typed Dvorak for 10 years before I started getting RSI again in my right ulna. It turns out that the 'S' key being hit by the pinky in Dvorak caused me a lot of pain. I ended up switching to BEAKL, a pretty obscure layout which is specifically made to alleviate stress on the pinky. It moves the relativ…

A friend of mine used his pinky and ring finger to open the door of his pickup truck. But it was frozen shut and he snapped the tendons (ligaments?) and that was that, he couldn't curl them shut on his hand anymore.

What? Did he not go to the doctor? That's a fairly straightforward surgery to repair even though the recovery and therapy sucks.

It's way easier to repair a "snap" than a "slice". However, you do have to get to the surgeon before 14 days are up because everything starts shrinking immediately. If you don't, then they have to graft a piece of vestigial tendon from your arm (apparently about 85% of people have it) to make up the length.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#56

Post by tom_ »

ericbarrett wrote: post #26
desireco42 wrote: post #21

In my modest experience, most people who have issues with RSI and especially carpal problems, they almost universally use Emacs! It is such obvious thing. I know you can remap keys or whatnot, but if you look at people experimenting with layouts and trying to resolve RSI problems, it is always Emacs. I used emacs briefly, not long enough to say, but it seems pretty obvious where the problem is. I understand why peopl…

If I were an Emacs user I'd swap CapsLock and Control, since that's the layout used when Emacs was first written.

What sort of keyboard was that?

The space cadet keyboard is often cited as inspiration for the Emacs combos. The Wikipedia article suggests its layout had mostly-symmetrical meta keys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#57

Post by jacobolus »

Findecanor wrote: post #52
jacobolus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the QWERTY layout was to prevent jamming; the prototype layout was roughly alphabetical on the keyboard and jammed constantly, so it was refined to fix that mechanical problem. The part that is a myth was that they prevented jamming by “slowing typists down”. What they did is moved commonly adjacently pressed letters apart from each-other so they wouldn’t be pressed at about the same time. This was not d…

The story about marketing and "TYPEWRITER" on the same row is also considered a myth by some historians, simply because Remington spelled it "Type-Writer" and - was not on that row. That the layout was intended for typing at speed is corroborated by the fact that early users of (pre-Remington) typewriters were telegraphists who used them to transcribe telegrams from Morse code at the speed at which it was being recei…

My understanding is that Morse code is like 15-20 words/minute. http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/x9004008.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#Speed_in_words_per_...

Fair enough about the Remington 'TYPEWRITER' story; I don’t have direct evidence there, only what I have read elsewhere (which could be apocryphal). Someone at Remington might have swapped R with . because they wanted to keep letters separate from punctuation, or the like.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#58

Post by [deleted] »

jacobolus wrote: post #57
Findecanor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story about marketing and "TYPEWRITER" on the same row is also considered a myth by some historians, simply because Remington spelled it "Type-Writer" and - was not on that row. That the layout was intended for typing at speed is corroborated by the fact that early users of (pre-Remington) typewriters were telegraphists who used them to transcribe telegrams from Morse code at the speed at which it was being recei…

My understanding is that Morse code is like 15-20 words/minute. http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/x9004008.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#Speed_in_words_per_... Fair enough about the Remington 'TYPEWRITER' story; I don’t have direct evidence there, only what I have read elsewhere (which could be apocryphal). Someone at Remington might have swapped R with . because they wanted to keep letters sep…

[deleted]

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#59

Post by p1necone »

chillacy wrote: post #12

> One week or so ago I switched from Colemak to typing on QWYRFM due to the reduced load it places on the pinkies. I typed Dvorak for 10 years before I started getting RSI again in my right ulna. It turns out that the 'S' key being hit by the pinky in Dvorak caused me a lot of pain. I ended up switching to BEAKL, a pretty obscure layout which is specifically made to alleviate stress on the pinky. It moves the relativ…

I self taught myself to type and so don't really follow whatever is "proper" technique, so with WASD I tend to use my left pinky for SHIFT and nothing else.

Re: How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is

#60

Post by rsfern »

NickBusey wrote: post #50
rsfern wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s interesting. I guess I never really thought about it, but on dvorak `ls` is a double tap with the right pinky, and it’s often immediately followed by [enter] with the same pinky… I type that key sequence a lot

You don't use your ring finger for l?

No, but thinking about it that would make sense. Is that considered the correct posture? I’ve always used my pinky finger for L and ?
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