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Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

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Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#11

Post by Cthulhu_ »

grim_io wrote: post #7

I've tried to switch to Dvorak, but after a year I was just tired of the universally shitty default keybinding experience. Either customize every app to better match the layout, or live with the afterthought UX. Oh, and gaming. Better get used to switching to qwerty.

I have a new keyboard with a physical switch on it to switch keyboard layouts / settings, wonder if I should give it a try sometime. But, same issue, I switch between typing, gaming and programming. Switching to dvorak would mean I would also need to remap all my applications.

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#12

Post by Fnoord »

antiquark wrote: post #5

In a tech support scenario, Dvorak is always troublesome. You sit down to type at someone's computer, and random characters start popping out.

It is a problem for any well-designed application with shortcuts. For they'd make the shortcuts often used to be according to the OS HIG, and a priority to easy to reach keys being also shortcuts often used (in that order). The latter is just part of learning curve (we all grew up with Qwerty, right? right?!) but the latter is an issue for any non-standard Qwerty (depending on how much they differ from Qwerty; which Dvorak does a lot but Colemak and Workman and Azerty and Qwertz already less so).

So what you say counts for any non-standard keyboard. There's always a learning curve. I tried going to 60%, now I settled for 80%/TKL and there are situations where I miss the other 20%, but my (vertical) mouse is in a more natural position. At least with Dvorak, all the physical keys are the same size as a standard Qwerty, so you could just set to Qwerty English-American and be done with it.

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#13

Post by alpaca128 »

The real problem with current keyboards is the physical arrangement of the keys. Staggered rows instead of columns make them less ergonomic, the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard. The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text. While the weak pinky finger has to cover more keys than the others. These things are more significant than qwerty vs dvorak.

Need to type faster? Spend some time practising every day and you will gain more speed within weeks than from just switching layouts. Most people don't as speed often isn't actually that important. I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed. Need less hand movement? Placing symbols, arrow keys etc as secondary function onto the central keys with a programmable keyboard helps with that, changing to dvorak doesn't as much because on a modern keyboard you can reach all letters without hand movement either way.

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#14

Post by pmarreck »

Decided to try Colemak-DH after reading this article and googling:

https://andre-wagner.medium.com/colemak-dh-my-journey-to-cha...

The only problem I can find is that the only Mac mod I can find with this layout that is not completely custom has an annoying and minor difference with the Windows and Linux versions of the same type of mod.

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#15

Post by pmarreck »

grim_io wrote: post #7

I've tried to switch to Dvorak, but after a year I was just tired of the universally shitty default keybinding experience. Either customize every app to better match the layout, or live with the afterthought UX. Oh, and gaming. Better get used to switching to qwerty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45102335

On Colemak, WASD becomes WARS.

What’s not to like? :)

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#16

Post by vintermann »

I don't have a particular beef in the great Dvorak vs. QWERTY debate.

But I really wish I had a brain which could do things like acquire muscle memory fluency in one keyboard layout without losing it in another.

Though, I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... I feel like I'm not using that much of my regular qwerty muscle memory, and what's optimal for a swiping keyboard is probably quite different from what's optimal for a typing keyboard.

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#17

Post by k__ »

alpaca128 wrote: post #13

The real problem with current keyboards is the physical arrangement of the keys. Staggered rows instead of columns make them less ergonomic, the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard. The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text. While the weak pinky finger has to cover more keys than the others.…

"The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text."

To be fair, that single key is used rather excessively compared to the rest.

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#18

Post by IAmBroom »

According to this article, "a 1936 book called Typewriting Behavior" made "comparisons of the new keyboard to a jeep and the old one to an ox".

Jeeps were invented in 1941. Some origin theories of the name date back as far as WW I (but for recruits, not vehicles). If the author truly used this comparison in 1936 it would be a tremendous citation for the word's origin.

Or perhaps the comparison was made in a later edition of the book. Don't know.

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#19

Post by gwd »

pmarreck wrote: post #14

Decided to try Colemak-DH after reading this article and googling: https://andre-wagner.medium.com/colemak-dh-my-journey-to-cha... The only problem I can find is that the only Mac mod I can find with this layout that is not completely custom has an annoying and minor difference with the Windows and Linux versions of the same type of mod.

So did you actually get any faster?

I switched to Colemak pro'lly 15 years ago, and while my fingers certainly move around a lot less, I don't think my top speed on typeracer.com has improved over what I was able to do on QWERTY before switching, nor do I seem to make fewer errors.

On the whole 1) I do like Colemak a bit better, but 2) I don't think it was worth the switch, although 3) it's certainly not worth a switch back. I think 4) if everyone started with Colemak things would be better, but 5) given that they don't, I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone else choose Colemak over QWERTY if they're learning, based on my own experience.

What's kind of weird is that with all the ink / bits spilt over this issue, all we have are two 50+-year-old studies whose raw data are unavailable. How hard would it really be to re-run an RCT?

Re: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

#20

Post by tom_ »

grim_io wrote: post #7

I've tried to switch to Dvorak, but after a year I was just tired of the universally shitty default keybinding experience. Either customize every app to better match the layout, or live with the afterthought UX. Oh, and gaming. Better get used to switching to qwerty.

The only particularly bad case I've found is v/w/z being right next to one another, which can be annoying. Still, I think I've won out overall. I spend a lot more time typing text than I do invoking keyboard shortcuts.

Regarding games, switching keyboard layouts in Windows 10/11 is thankfully super easy. (And some games do get it right, and the bindings go by physical position, so they just fall into place - though personally I've never liked this, because I don't really know where any of the Dvorak keys are individually, for non-text purposes. I'd rather switch to QWERTY and then I can look at the labels on the keys to figure out where to put my fingers.)

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