On Thursday, May 05, 2011 15:01:19 Sean Swehla wrote:
> On 05/05/2011 02:05 PM, John Mort wrote:
> > On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Chris Knadle
> > 
> > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> >     My impression at dinner is that everybody at the table universally
> >     despised
> >     both CapsLock as well as the CapsLock light.  ;-)  So yeah,
> >     "reclaiming"
> >     CapsLock to do something USEFUL makes a lot of sense.
> > 
> > I'm against remapping it myself, not for any love of the key's
> > intended function (though I do find a use for it once a year or so)
> > but I found that when I began to rely on that key doing something more
> > useful it became a big annoyance when I was working at any other machine.
> 
> That's actually the most compelling argument I hear against Dvorak kb
> layout (which I've never tried). I spend so much time on my own machine
> that it's definitely worth the time-save for me.
> 
> /thor

My girlfriend switched to the Dvorak layout a few years ago, and I also have 
experimented with using it.  Unfortunately for her though, she found that once 
she had used it long enough, she was no longer able to type using the QWERTY 
format anymore.  This causes the obvious problem of what to do when having to 
use a foreign computer in QWERTY format, but there's a less obvious problem 
relating to programs that use key presses directly without going through 
keyboard mapping first.  Certain games seem to commonly do this, but there are 
other types of programs that seem to do this as well.  I don't personally know 
if this is a problem on Debian/Ubutnu/etc as she primarily uses Mac OS X where 
she's having these particular problems.

Because of these issues she recommended that I not fully switch to Dvorak.  
However I also know other people who have successfully learned Dvorak layout 
and are still able to use QWERTY when necessary.  For the time being I'm 
probably "95% QWERTY, 5% Dvorak", but I'd like to be more "50%/50%"... just 
haven't spent time on it.

The point I'm making here is that if you do decide to learn Dvorak, make sure 
you also practice QWERTY at the same time so that you can switch between the 
two when you want or need to.  As long as you do that, I don't see any 
downside.

  -- Chris

--

Chris Knadle
[email protected]
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