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...
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.
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.In the places I'm talking about you would then get fired for running an unauthorised program, compromising security. :frown:
is there merit to colemak's claim that dvorak makes your right hand work too much?
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.
the metric system is WAY better ...
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
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 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.
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.
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.
Meanwhile in WASD engraved key land.
[video=youtube;Y28h_ok5OXY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y28h_ok5OXY&feature=player_embedded#![/video]
I'm approaching 62 years of age. I wouldn't say I'm a "kid".Show Image(http://geekhack.org/images/icons/icon12.png)
Joe
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.
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@!!!
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.
those papers are 10, 20, even 26 years old@!!!
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!
Well, those old ladies who used to be typists can tell us something. They pounded on those typewriters 7 hours a day 5 days a week at a 100 words a minute, but did not seem to have all those hand/wrist problems we do.
Computer keyboard makers give us flat low travel keys that the claim are better. The old IBM electric typewriters had keys that moved more than a half inch to active, and all the old typewriters had stepped keyboards. Maybe, new is not better.
Not realizing it, you make my point. Suppose you type on your alt layout only for a couple of years? Then you get a job where you have to type on a qwerty keyboard, or you don't because you had to take a typing test on a qwerty keyboard and can not pass it?
The catch 22 of the computer age, you have lots of choices, until you look for a job. Then you have one choice, whatever your boss tells you to use. We know businesses use Windows computers, we know businesses use qwerty keyboards, we know business use MS Office. So if we want to work for them, we really do not have a choice, do we?
yea but the way we interact with the computer/keyboard is different... such as the use of a pointing device and how that factors into rsi/cts. eh maybe i'll read the most recent paper, but i hope it's not done by some old lady who used to be a secretary and now has like death arms... like that vid we saw last time.
oh wow papers are like less than a page long, and mostly go into the design of the maltron anyway, it's stuff we know really, if you're into ergonomics.
besides the modern computer basically forcing everyone to type have put them out of work (along with dragon dictate) unless they've moved on from secretary to executive assistant. From what i read on unemployment secretaries are the worse off, since they're basically obsolete now, you only see them on Mad Men.
Joe, how often do you use Dragon? I recently tried it and I do like it, though I find it likes to use up my RAM which causes other programs to slow. I know you have a very effective abbreviation system so I was just wondering if you use it that much.
Of interest, that little old lady sitting in the middle of the court room clacking away on her strange black steno machine is often the highest paid person in the room.