Qwerty?

[bigpook]

This may be an interesting read...


http://www.reason.com/news/show/29944.html

[pmyshkin]

One rogue researcher claimed qwerty was best against rsi, because it was like taking a run around the block, while dvorak/colemak was like sitting on your ass in front of the tv...

Do you have a citation on this?

It seems to me like travel distance doesn't have to be the only objective measure. For example, one can imagine constructing an anatomical computer model of human hands typing, and calculating the stresses of each type of layout. The carpalx site you mentioned seems to be trying to approximate this very roughly.

I find it a little scary that random people are advocating new layouts. Who knows what the long term effects of typing on a particular layout will be?

[huha]

I find it a little scary that random people are advocating new layouts. Who knows what the long term effects of typing on a particular layout will be?

It's not like it will kill you, so I don't see any problems with this. It's just a bloody keyboard layout; if it's crap, you'll most likely suffer from low typing speed more than anything else.

-huha

[pmyshkin]

It's not like it will kill you, so I don't see any problems with this. It's just a bloody keyboard layout; if it's crap, you'll most likely suffer from low typing speed more than anything else.

I was thinking more along the lines of RSI. I just started trying to learn colemak, and it seems to be putting strain on my right hand. I guess it might be just because there are certain finger rolls I'm not used to yet, but the pain is significant.*

*Typed at 10 wpm on colemak layout.

[Viett]

A very interesting article indeed. They mostly concentrate on the practical application of an alternative layout, and it's pretty easy to see there is little, even if Dvorak's claims were correct. I've just been learning alternative layouts for fun. I don't think I'll ever surpass my QWERTY speeds in any other layout, though. I do believe that some layouts are easier to type than others, which makes them ideal for someone who wants to increase their comfort level.

(Typed in Colemak, just for sport)

[Rajagra]

The only way alternative keyboard layouts can thrive is if Microsoft etc. make it a totally trivial matter to change between layouts. It's already very easy, but if an employer locks down their PCs tightly for security reasons, you can't do it.

Imagine if alternative keyboard layouts were installed as standard, and that you could swap easily via the ctrl-alt-del / task manager dialogue. That would make it easy AND reduce support issues that would be a risk otherwise.

If that happened I would junk QWERTY in a heartbeat. I wonder if petitioning Microsoft would have any effect. (Rhetorical question, tbh.)

[FunkTrooper]

The only way alternative keyboard layouts can thrive is if Microsoft etc. make it a totally trivial matter to change between layouts. It's already very easy, but if an employer locks down their PCs tightly for security reasons, you can't do it.

Imagine if alternative keyboard layouts were installed as standard, and that you could swap easily via the ctrl-alt-del / task manager dialogue. That would make it easy AND reduce support issues that would be a risk otherwise.

If that happened I would junk QWERTY in a heartbeat. I wonder if petitioning Microsoft would have any effect. (Rhetorical question, tbh.)

Even if you can't change the settings on a Windows PC, you can usually run .exe files from USB drives, and if you can do that, you can just use Autohotkey to change your layout.  I know it's not an ideal solution, but it's pretty easy to do.  The only problem I find is that sometimes it doesn't quite work, and a few keypresses will be read as if they were qwerty.  This can be resolved by increasing the priority of the autohotkey.exe process; doing this every time is a little irritating.

[MANISH7]

unicomp says on their website that ps2 versions of the keyboard can be programmed at the time of manufacture. is it possible to ask them to program the keyboard to dvorak layout? so this means that the keyboard intrinsically does dvorak no matter where you use it. only downside is that you probably couldn't re-map the keyboard with other softwares like even windows.

i only heard about colemak one week ago (from webwit) whereas i've been learning dvorak for 2 months now. 2 months ago i thought about switching layouts because of my wrist pain. ever since i switched to brown cherry switches for BS, my wrists feel just fine.

is there merit to colemak's claim that dvorak makes your right hand work too much?

[Rajagra]

Even if you can't change the settings on a Windows PC, you can usually run .exe files from USB drives, and if you can do that, you can just use Autohotkey to change your layout.

In the places I'm talking about you would then get fired for running an unauthorised program, compromising security.  :frown:

[Viett]

is there merit to colemak's claim that dvorak makes your right hand work too much?

In my opinion alone, yes. Don't know if this is a bad thing, though. I kind of think it's nice at times because you can completetly rest your left hand on the desk without any strain. It may have an adverse effect on speed, though (there's no way to be sure).

[pmyshkin]

OP's article claims that the research against qwerty is too naive and biased. Here is a report that seems to address all of that article's concerns and still concludes that qwerty is inferior to dvorak and colemak.

[MANISH7]

I found this really cool website where you paste or type text and it will analyze it to provide statistics for finger / hand usages in all three layouts (qwerty, dvorak, colemak). I pasted a 12 page essay of mine.

http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/

Dvorak used 53% of my left hand and 47% of right hand. I hit the space bar only with the left thumb. So I don't accept that the right hand does too much work on Dvorak. Colemak slightly shifts the work from your pinky and ring finger to your index finger. Difference is insignificant IMO. Learning Dvorak was easy for me.

Advantages for Colemak: (1) programmer friendly. (2) qwerty shortcut friendly. (3) slightly more efficient.

Since I'm not a programmer and I already mastered qwerty, I'll stick with Dvorak and alternate between layouts on a need basis. I'm not learning a 3rd layout. Besides, I like that Dvorak is an ANSI standard.

[appie747]

http://www.albertnet.us/2009/06/defendants-i-type-lot.html
This is an article which disputes Liebowitz/Margolis. I came across these two earlier when I was googeling for Dvorak info. I'm someone who learned to touch-type in Dvorak and never touch-typed in qwerty. Reading this article should convince me to learn qwerty? I don't think so! The "analyzer" MANISH7 talks about clearly shows the results, no need to go through age-old studies for that.
Actually, because of the use of staggered keyboards Dvorak is even better because you don't have to leave the home row so much (and shift your left hand fingers to the left) . On a non-staggered keyboard qwerty would do better compared to Dvorak maybe...

[False_Dmitry_II]

And with that I will never use Dvorak. I'm more or less ambidextrous, but as far as it concerns keyboards I'm more left handed. So I guess I'll stick with qwerty.

[Keymonger]

Well, Colemak is better than Dvorak, but it's not without flaws unfortunately. The biggest offender must be the placement of the H key... it's left on the same spot as on Qwerty, but as noted by the dude who designed Workman, that makes typing 'the', which you will type a LOT, a bit uneasy. You type t, reach for h with your right index finger, then hit e with your middle finger. But it's not easy to reach h without slightly moving the middle finger, which slows down the typing of 'the', and it's a pretty annoying movement to boot.

If this isn't a problem for you, then it's really Colemak all the way. But as for me, it's not pleasant at all. Out of Dvorak and Colemak, both are more cumbersome for my hands than the layout I designed, which I happily use.
Lastly, I wanna point out... this layout business isn't as complicated as that dumb article is making it out to be. Finding out if Dvorak or Colemak or whatever is better for you can be found out before learning it. Typing is just a matter of using your fingers to input stuff.

[hoggy]

The article assumes that faster speeds are the best indicator of fitness for a keyboard layout.  Many members here (myself included) remark on increased comfort, not speed.  In fact my typing speed has gone down, and I still believe it's a better layout.

I suspect it's in defense of the Market knows best meme.

A better analogy for market failures might be Greek literature.  Of the tiny percentage that survives, why would it include only the best?  If we found a body frozen in ice, and could revive him/her - it probably wouldn't be the equivalent of Leonardo di Vinci...

[kill will]

I think people should just stick to qwerty.  most people type with 2 fingers and typing things like lol are easier ... so lol becomes natural because of the layout

[bugfix]

I for one believe in the superiority of QWERTZ.

[microsoft windows]

I like  Qwerty. It's what's on all the  keyboards  of the computers I use and I  can type  decently  with  it. My hands  never  stay  in the same place when typing though,  especially my right hand. I use mainly my thumb,  pointer, middle, and ring fingers on  my right hand so  it's got to move in order to reach many  keys.

[appie747]

Even if you can't change the settings on a Windows PC, you can usually run .exe files from USB drives, and if you can do that, you can just use Autohotkey to change your layout.  I know it's not an ideal solution, but it's pretty easy to do.  The only problem I find is that sometimes it doesn't quite work, and a few keypresses will be read as if they were qwerty.  This can be resolved by increasing the priority of the autohotkey.exe process; doing this every time is a little irritating.

Hi, maybe you know this: I tried Autohotkey, which I haven't really figured out yet, but I used KeyTweak to remap CapsLock to Backspace, that works fine here at home. I probably can't install that at work, but would keytweak work there from a USB drive? And would I have to do that every time I start up the PC?

[sordna]

Hmm, I learned Dvorak before Colemak came out. I wonder if it's worth switching. Also, for those of you that know Colemak, is it easy to switch back and forth between QWERTY and Colemak? I have a feeling it would be hard because they are so similar. Switching between QWERTY and Dvorak (after you mastered them both) is pretty easy for me, and my guess is it's because they are totally different and therefore hard to confuse.

[sordna]

By the way, here's a good rebuttal to the aforementioned article:
http://dvorak.mwbrooks.com/dissent.html

Dvorak (and colemak, or cerctain other layouts) are clearly better than QWERTY in various ways, any of the online comparison applets can easily demonstrate this.
Also the metric system is WAY better than trying to compare 3/8" to 5/32" to .218" for tools/parts, or remembering that 1lb has 16 ounces but 1 foot has 12 inches, and a mile has 1670 yards, all of which is RIDICULOUS. Yet, the Europeans had the common sense to switch to the metric system, while the US still uses the stupid "imperial" system that came from Europe in the first place. It's a good analogy to the QWERTY nonsense, people just aren't bold enough to make a change in the proper direction.

[Proword]

the metric system is WAY better ...

Or it was until logic was displaced by sentiment and the informative names of measures were replaced by "memorial" names, to celebrate certain people.  The most obvious example being temperature.

Under the Fahrenheit scale water froze at 32 degrees, and boiled at 212 degrees, Fahrenheit.  On the other hand, the very name Centigrade ("100 steps" if you will) told exactly what was being measured.  Water froze at 0 degrees and boiled at 100 degrees, Centigrade.  So they changed it to Celsius ... which tells the reader as much as the name Fahrenheit.  Even "foot/pound" (torque) tells you more than "Joule", which requires you to know what a "Newton-Metre" is.

It's not difficult to argue that a certain key layout is better than QWERTY, simply because it could scarcely be any worse.  It was designed to slow the typist down and it does that quite well.

Joe

[Proword]

I tried the keystroke distance measurer, but it doesn't take into account the use of the Thumb for "E" (a home key) in Maltron and the grid layout.  Is there any applet that will allow me to do this?

Joe

[quadibloc]

I saw that article, but given that it's attempting to refute "a case against markets", I have to be mistrustful of the article as a whole, because it was clearly written to defend a particular political point of view - basically, laissez-faire economics.

[hoggy]

I tried the keystroke distance measurer, but it doesn't take into account the use of the Thumb for "E" (a home key) in Maltron and the grid layout.  Is there any applet that will allow me to do this?

Joe

If the "E" should be counted as zero travel, you could use search and replace to remove all of those characters...

[Proword]

Thanks for that.  Will give it a bash.

Joe

[Proword]

Turned out to be a pretty pointless exercise, since this particular analyser doesn't seem to be able take account of the difference between a staggered keyboard layout and the grid keyboard of Maltron.

Will have a poke around for something else.

Thanks.

Joe

[graywolf]

Well, Qwerty was not designed to slow the typist. It was designed to prevent jamming. Most of you have never typed on an old style manual typewriter (the ones with the type on the end of long arms). And, it was designed in opposition to the ABC style keyboard; that jammed something awful, if you ever used a kids typewriter from back a hundred years ago (they had ABC key set up to make it easy for 5 year old kids to find the letters), you would know that. You could jam one of those up typing with two fingers.

Ever since the first electric typewriters came out there have been people tying to get the world to change away from the Qwerty keyboard (Supposedly, so named by Don Lancaster in his book "TV Typewriter" that told how to build a TV terminal to replace your paper tape Teletype terminal, before that it was just called a typewriter keyboard).  However, not many people are willing to switch after having spent two to four years learning to type at secretarial speeds on the standard keyboard. Evan a stenographic machine is only about twice as fast as an expert can type on that old fashioned Qwerty keyboard, just not enough improvement to make the effort worthwhile.

However, if you can pound along at 100+ words per minute on a 1939 Royal portable typewriter with 100% accuracy, like my mom could when I was a kid (she got the typewriter as a HS graduation present, and I learned to type on it); I will be glad to listen to your advice, but not enough to learn to type on a different keyboard layout.

[Proword]

I think many people tend to get carried away with figures like 100 words per minute.  That's usually taken over a short period like 5 or even 10 minutes.  

I'm a court reporter who is able to transcribe at the speed of spoken word (ie 2-3 words per second),  which sounds impressive on its own, but a few years ago I took all my work for a calendar month, shoved it into one document, stripped all formatting and extra stuff out until I had one huge document of plain text.  I assumed I worked a five day week, 8 hours a day (with no breaks of any kind at all) and dividing it out I came to 23 words per minute.  

Joe

[dorkvader]

Do you think that is because of pauses between sentences, etc? When I first learned QWERTY in highschool, I only maxed out at 18 keystrokes/minute, myself.

Still, that's a lot of keystrokes. No wonder you use a maltron

[Proword]

In real life there is lots of "dead" time, such as changing tapes, having coffee breaks, lunch, proofreading and correcting, printing, answering telephones etc, so "typing speed" is really a pretty meaningless figure.  I usually say I can transcribe at a ratio of 1:4 ie one hour of (reasonable) audio can be transcribed in 4 hours, including 100% sound checking, replaying the entire audio and checking the transcript.  When I was employed by a contractor to our state Courts we were not permitted to have more than 2 errors per page of roughly 355 words.  So 99.9995% accuracy.  If I'd handed over a job to a client which was 98% accurate, I'd have been sacked.  The clients did random spot check of transcripts and too many errors resulted initially in financial penalties then possible loss of the contract, so it was not something taken lightly, and every job had to be 100% sound checked before being released.

Joe

[Deverica Wolf]

Well, Colemak is better than Dvorak, but it's not without flaws unfortunately. The biggest offender must be the placement of the H key... it's left on the same spot as on Qwerty, but as noted by the dude who designed Workman, that makes typing 'the', which you will type a LOT, a bit uneasy. You type t, reach for h with your right index finger, then hit e with your middle finger. But it's not easy to reach h without slightly moving the middle finger, which slows down the typing of 'the', and it's a pretty annoying movement to boot.

If this isn't a problem for you, then it's really Colemak all the way. But as for me, it's not pleasant at all. Out of Dvorak and Colemak, both are more cumbersome for my hands than the layout I designed, which I happily use.
Lastly, I wanna point out... this layout business isn't as complicated as that dumb article is making it out to be. Finding out if Dvorak or Colemak or whatever is better for you can be found out before learning it. Typing is just a matter of using your fingers to input stuff.

I actually LOVE typing "The" with Colemak. Easy and fun for me! The The The! :playball:

STDHNEI

[dorkvader]

Dvorak's 'the' is pretty fun for me, too.
aoeuidhtns

the the the. I find I rather like it, It's so commonly typed by me, I do believe they were the first letters that I could type without looking. (even before 'a' and 'm' which are shared with QWERTY.)

[Playtrumpet]

I think later I might go research the exact freqencies of these most common letter pairings. For example, the 'th' digraph isn't just the most common; it is by FAR the most common. Other pairings don't even come close  to its significance. If a keyboard could focus on ordering the pairings and groupings and base their typing ease (subjective still, yes) directly by these frequencies.. Meh, probably too complicated.

[graywolf]

To my mind a 10-20% improvement does not make it worth relearning skills developed on a manual typewriter long ago. A 100% improvement might. Unfortunately, none of those alternative keyboards provide enough improvement to make it sensible to switch. In most cases, I think, the ones who are insisting that it is worthwhile are kids who are more interested in different, than in efficiency.

[N8N]

hah, that's some funny s**t right there...  cool looking keyboard though.

I say this of course as someone who has a similar keyboard and actually did a refresher typing course before actually receiving it to avoid just that effect.

[Playtrumpet]

You showed that keyboard who's BOAS.

[Proword]

I think later I might go research the exact freqencies of these most common letter pairings. For example, the 'th' digraph isn't just the most common; it is by FAR the most common. Other pairings don't even come close  to its significance. If a keyboard could focus on ordering the pairings and groupings and base their typing ease (subjective still, yes) directly by these frequencies.. Meh, probably too complicated.

If you haven't already done so, you might have a read through these papers.

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/academic-papers.html


Joe

[Deverica Wolf]

To my mind a 10-20% improvement does not make it worth relearning skills developed on a manual typewriter long ago. A 100% improvement might. Unfortunately, none of those alternative keyboards provide enough improvement to make it sensible to switch. In most cases, I think, the ones who are insisting that it is worthwhile are kids who are more interested in different, than in efficiency.

I can see that, especially if you work with QWERTY all day, but it only took me three weeks to switch, and I'm stupid and terrible at typing. If there are improvements to my speed and comfort (and risk of Carpal Tunnel), I am reaping them now and forever. :whistle:

[Proword]

To my mind a 10-20% improvement does not make it worth relearning skills developed on a manual typewriter long ago. A 100% improvement might. Unfortunately, none of those alternative keyboards provide enough improvement to make it sensible to switch. In most cases, I think, the ones who are insisting that it is worthwhile are kids who are more interested in different, than in efficiency.

I'm approaching 62 years of age.  I wouldn't say I'm a "kid".

Joe

[keyboardlover]

Meanwhile in WASD engraved key land.
[video=youtube;Y28h_ok5OXY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y28h_ok5OXY&feature=player_embedded#![/video]

The really funny part is that BongDude666 (the guy who uploaded this video) is actually playing Team Fortress 2 whilst baked out of his mind in said video.

[graywolf]

I'm approaching 62 years of age.  I wouldn't say I'm a "kid".

Show Image

Joe

Sure you are, when you were in kindergarten, I was in the 6th grade, I would not even have talked to you (GRIN).

In a way, computers have made fast accurate typing a thing of the past. In the old old days when we typed on paper, if you needed a clean copy, you had to retype the whole page instead of hitting backspace backspace h e to correct teh. Then they came out with correcting typewriters, but if you had more than a couple of corrections on the page they kind of stood out. I think most people under 30 have never seen a letter typed by a good secretary. She would never have put any of that stuff we get today in the mail, as it would have made her look incompetent.

[graywolf]

Actually, the problems we have with letter pairings like Th, ch, etc., is because they are actually single letters that English uses two letter for. We should have a key for them on the keyboard. The problem comes about because English is a composite of several languages, and the 26 letter Roman alphabet we use is simply not enough.

So there is a project for you guys, instead of tiring to redesign the keyboard, why not redesign the English alphabet. After all, the only reason we are still using it is because that is they way we have always done it.

Oh? That is why we are still using the qwerty keyboard, isn't it?

[dorkvader]

just learn an invented language like lojban while you're at it.

[Lanx]

In a way, computers have made fast accurate typing a thing of the past. In the old old days when we typed on paper, if you needed a clean copy, you had to retype the whole page instead of hitting backspace backspace h e to correct teh. Then they came out with correcting typewriters, but if you had more than a couple of corrections on the page they kind of stood out. I think most people under 30 have never seen a letter typed by a good secretary. She would never have put any of that stuff we get today in the mail, as it would have made her look incompetent.

I saw something like this recently, that this new generation is full of horrible spellers for a reason, autocorrect. They have been trained from an early age to not only use autocorrect and try not to learn how to spell but that, they have been trained to look for the squiggly red line to know if you have misspelled rather than "knowing" you've have spelled wrong.

[Lanx]

If you haven't already done so, you might have a read through these papers.

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/academic-papers.html


Joe

those papers are 10, 20, even 26 years old@!!!

[Proword]

those papers are 10, 20, even 26 years old@!!!

Well, actually, Lilian Malt's paper was presented to the conference of the Printing Industry Research Association in 1977, so that's about 35 years old, but mere age doesn't invalidate the research or the conclusions.  It's merely confirmed their validity.  

Joe

[Proword]

I think most people under 30 have never seen a letter typed by a good secretary. She would never have put any of that stuff we get today in the mail, as it would have made her look incompetent.

One of the good things I found when I was a legal secretary was that some of my proofreaders were being paid over $400 an hour.

Joe

[Deverica Wolf]

I saw something like this recently, that this new generation is full of horrible spellers for a reason, autocorrect. They have been trained from an early age to not only use autocorrect and try not to learn how to spell but that, they have been trained to look for the squiggly red line to know if you have misspelled rather than "knowing" you've have spelled wrong.

I do that! ...Maybe I should shut that off and learn to spell better. I think I make a bit of mistakes because of stress and discomfort but I need to fight back. It's a good idea. After I get my Blue Switch Tenkeyless.

Anyway, regarding the topic, I tried typing on QWERTY today and it felt like I was typing on an Alien keyboard. It's only been three months but it feels so strange to me now. I had used QWERTY for 12 years!