For the benefit of those who don't know Dvorak, it is a keyboard that was resigned by a University professor so that the most frequently used keys are on home row. You can type about 25% faster with it. You can change the setting on the keyboard through settings and create a Dvorak keyboard without acutally switching keyboards, only the keys won't type what the keyboard says, they will type what the Dvorak key would be, so you either have to relabel the keys or be very sure where they are.
It never caught on, despite it's clear superiority, because every typist on earth would have to relearn to type. all over again. The QWERTY keyboard, that you are most likely sitting at, was designed to minimize the times that two adjacent keys were struck in succession, because on a manual typewriter they tended to get tangled together. T and H a common diphthong, are typed with the opposite hands, for instance. A google search would get you plenty of information. On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 15:20 -0400, Chris Knadle wrote: > 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] > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > Jun 1 - Zimbra > Jul 6 - Jul 2011 > Aug 3 - Scala - 100th MHVLUG meeting -- Mark Robert Mark Wallace 60 Delaware Road Newburgh, NY 12550-3802 Telephone: (845) 566-0586 _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jun 1 - Zimbra Jul 6 - Jul 2011 Aug 3 - Scala - 100th MHVLUG meeting
