begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Wed, May 03, 2006 at 04:04:32PM -0700: > Rick Funderburg wrote: > >Tracy R Reed wrote: > >> I have always been annoyed by the fact that QWERTY was designed to > >>slow us down > > > >That is a myth (or at least there is no good evidence of it).
QWERTY was designed before digital computers, so analysis needed to be done by hand. Plus... you can spell typewriter using only the top row: a great marketing gimmick... "So, you want to see how fast our typewriters can type? Well, here, let me show you... notice that although I'm a typewriter salesman, I cannot type, and so I will use just one finger!" <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> <click> T Y P E W R I T E R "Now, isn't that great? Imagine how much more efficient you will be with our typewriter instead of our competitors, if I, a inexperienced as I am with this sort of device, can press the correct keys at a more than adequate pace. Here, you try." etc. etc. > A quick googling produces a number of documents from various sources > with sufficient detail as to be somewhat convincing. For example: [snip] > "The operative patent for the typewriter was awarded in 1868 to > Christopher Latham Sholes, who continued to develop the machine for > several years. Among the problems that Sholes and his associates > addressed was the jamming of the type bars when certain combinations of > keys were struck in very close succession. As a partial solution to this > problem, Sholes arranged his keyboard so that the keys most likely to be > struck in close succession were approaching the type point from opposite > sides of the machine." Surely that will HELP typing speeds: you can alternate hands. > One of the sources of confusion might be this: > > http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/myths.html > > Which says that the keys are arranged to allow people to type FASTER. > But in this context faster means faster than if the keys were arranged > for faster finger movements which would cause the mechanism to jam > causing you to have to stop and mechanically unjam the machine so your > overall rate of typing was slower. So in that case QWERTY did allow you > to type faster on average by reducing the speed at which you typed so as > to avoid a jam. Doesn't DVORAK also strive to alternate hands for every keystroke? > There is also the case to be made that frequently used keys were put far > apart from each other primarily to make the mechanism work out so that > it did not jam as much but the Exactly. > result is the same in that it slows down > the typist. Hm. I thought that alternating hands sped up typing, on average. I mean, if you're not typing asdfg, that is. > Everyone seems to be in agreement that QWERTY was not designed to allow > people to type fast and efficiently in a modern context and that the > design of QWERTY has no redeeming qualities. The fact that it is a Well, hjkl work out pretty nice.... > defacto standard is the only thing that keeps it around. I am happy to > dump it as a standard as soon as I find a viable replacement which might > be a handykey or might be a dvorak. My big problem with dvorak has > always been that programs like vi and other things have the keys chosen > due to their logical physical layout on the qwerty keyboard and changing > that layout would seem to be very distracting. But the Datahand keyboard > doesn't really even have a layout as far as conventional keyboards go so > I think it should be less of a problem. I'm having a hard enough time getting decent keyboards with the control key where it belongs. . . -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
