begin quoting John H. Robinson, IV as of Fri, May 05, 2006 at 08:50:31AM -0700: > On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 03:11:38PM -0700, Stewart Stremler wrote: > > begin quoting John H. Robinson, IV as of Thu, May 04, 2006 at 02:05:47PM > > -0700: > > [snip] > > > Simpy, Dvorak is superior. > > > > By how much? I've heard that it's as little as 2% improvement in speed.. > > That I don't know.
Extremely small improvements probably aren't worth the effort. It's a geeky desire to optimize the hell out of everything, I know... > > So what is the goal with our keyboard layouts? > > > > Avoid RSI? > > This sounds like the true goal. So all the discussion about how much faster <layout> is just a smokescreen. :) > > Wouldn't junking the mouse do more along those lines? Most of my > > problems occur when I use the mouse a lot. > > > > Better posture, frequent short breaks, split keyboards, etc would also > > probably do more than changing a keyboard layout. > > When you look at the English language, and the distance travelled per > finger to type English prose, Dvorak comes out to have more on the home > row than Sholes. Total distance travelled per finger is less. > > Let motion = less damage. As a general principle, I'd disagree. At a minimum, it's not that simple. It might be closer to say that using as many different muscles as possible results in less damage, and so keyboards are designed to be harmful, and we really do need a _Minority Report_ interface to our computers... Most things, you want to use the full range of motion. Failure to do so ends up leaving you in a condition to get hurt. (The specific example I have in mind is chopping wood...) [snip] > It, however, does show original research. The interesting thing that I > took out of it that using weighted costs per transition caused the > gentically evolved keyboard to share two traits with the Dvorak layout: > all vowels on one side, and most frequent letters on the home row. Yup. Personally, I think that the GA and the Dvorak are interesting in how the break down the language, but what they don't take into account (and neither does Querty/Sholes) is the pace and rhythm of the language. I would think you'd want to stay mostly on the home row, but come off the home row in a sort of cycle; perhaps trying to start a phrase on the bottom row, then home row, then end up on the top row, and back to the home row to start off the next phrase. -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
