Keyboard layouts

[乳头的早餐谷物]

QWERTY REPRESENT

[ℎalifax]

QWERTY, but incluye begs to differ.

[fawk]

It's QWERTY time.

[SlappyMcGee]

I believe incluye once argued that DVORAK was superior because it favors your dominant hand, to which I argued that typing is not necessarily a skill inherent to dominant hands, but rather something that is taught and trained.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Dvorak, for about two years now, I think. My typing speed's almost what it used to be (I had been touch-typing with Qwerty since I was, like, 10, so I consider this an accomplishment), but I have effectively un-learned Qwerty and regularly embarrass myself at other people's keyboards.

I believe incluye once argued that DVORAK was superior because it favors your dominant hand, to which I argued that typing is not necessarily a skill inherent to dominant hands, but rather something that is taught and trained.

I don't know about this "dominant hand" bullshit, but I will argue that Dvorak is potentially much faster for two reasons:

1. The vowels are all on the same side of the keyboard. The words one types the fastest are those that alternate fingers as much as possible; the Qwerty layout grants this advantage to only a small subset of English words, whereas Dvorak grants it to the majority, particularly for common words.
2. The most commonly used letters in the English language are in the Dvorak layout's home row. Of the nine most common letters (E, T, A, O, N, R, I, S, H), Dvorak has seven of them on the home row (all but R and I), whereas Qwerty only has two (A and S).

On the other hand, the Dvorak layout still leaves a few things to be desired. For example, I think it'd be better to have the letters in common pairs to be on opposite sides of the keyboard, such as S and T, R and T, or most frustrating to me, R and N. (These considerations are of course laughable in the Qwerty layout. It's amazing how much pointless extra work that layout imposes on you.)
I do like having T and H so near each other, though, as it allows one to type "the" in practically the time of a single keystroke.

Also, if at any point I have way too much time on my hands, I want to learn the one-handed variations of Dvorak. I never like having to resort to the reviled Hunt & Peck when one of my hands is occupied (especially when the layout printed on the keyboard is Qwerty).

[SlappyMcGee]

Dvorak, for about two years now, I think. My typing speed's almost what it used to be (I had been touch-typing with Qwerty since I was, like, 10, so I consider this an accomplishment), but I have effectively un-learned Qwerty and regularly embarrass myself at other people's keyboards.

I believe incluye once argued that DVORAK was superior because it favors your dominant hand, to which I argued that typing is not necessarily a skill inherent to dominant hands, but rather something that is taught and trained.

I don't know about this "dominant hand" bullshit, but I will argue that Dvorak is potentially much faster for two reasons:

1. The vowels are all on the same side of the keyboard. The words one types the fastest are those that alternate fingers as much as possible; the Qwerty layout grants this advantage to only a small subset of English words, whereas Dvorak grants it to the majority, particularly for common words.
2. The most commonly used letters in the English language are in the Dvorak layout's home row. Of the nine most common letters (E, T, A, O, N, R, I, S, H), Dvorak has seven of them on the home row (all but R and I), whereas Qwerty only has two (A and S).

On the other hand, the Dvorak layout still leaves a few things to be desired. For example, I think it'd be better to have the letters in common pairs to be on opposite sides of the keyboard, such as S and T, R and T, or most frustrating to me, R and N. (These considerations are of course laughable in the Qwerty layout. It's amazing how much pointless extra work that layout imposes on you.)
I do like having T and H so near each other, though, as it allows one to type "the" in practically the time of a single keystroke.

Also, if at any point I have way too much time on my hands, I want to learn the one-handed variations of Dvorak. I never like having to resort to the reviled Hunt & Peck when one of my hands is occupied (especially when the layout printed on the keyboard is Qwerty).

I'm very intrigued by the concept of one hand dvorak.

[Tanner]

http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorb ... -the-lazy/

[Universezero]

This is as pointless as the 'are you a boy or a girl' poll.

[Vyacheslav]

Suki, AE, and incluye are the only members I know of who use DVORAK. Everyone else uses zxcvbnm.

[smartalco]

http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorb ... -the-lazy/

I immediately thought of this, I keep wanting to try it but haven't got around to it. Maybe this will actually get me to try it :D

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

zxcvbnm.

This is an excellent way of referring to this layout.
Yoink.

[Donfuy]

I find it surprising that it's taking you that much time learning to type as fast as when you used Qwerty, Tsukatu. I tried to switch to Dvorak for about ~1-2 weeks and I was already typing quite fast with it.

Then I realized it was rather pointless, since I work in multiple computers, some of them not mine, and the keyboards have the characters the qwerty way.

It was a bit like me trying to switch to linux on my netbook. Sure, it's faster and does many cool stuff, but it didn't work as well as xp.
Maybe this analogy isn't the best.

[Heartattack]

I use QWERTY. Just out of curiosity, how many words per minute do you bang out, Suki?

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I use QWERTY. Just out of curiosity, how many words per minute do you bang out, Suki?

I used to hit 110 regularly or upwards of 130 when doing pure transcription in ZXCVBNM, but on Dvorak I'm closer to 90 on average.

[SlappyMcGee]

TypeRacer.com says I do half that. :P

[Heartattack]

I can hit 70-80 wpm on a QWERTY keyboard in most cases, and with transcription around 90. Above average, but I don't guess I have anything on you.

[smartalco]

I'm generally 90-100. My mom was a transcriptionist for several years, and if I remember right, was doing 140+ at one point o_O

[Vyacheslav]

Around 100 or so, max out around 120-130

[scythe]

Qwerty. Too lazy/apathetic to switch; plus, I'm missing a spacebar anyway, so my typing is irretrievably slow.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

TypeRacer.com says I do half that. :P

Hm. Well that's interesting.
Maybe it only feels slower for some reason. Maybe I just feel the potential for it to be so much faster...

[Donfuy]

I definitely thought I typed faster!
Around 70 on desktop, around 75 on netbook. Thought I was much faster, at least on the netbook :/
I think it has something to do with me regularly typing in two languages. And about knowing what I'm typing.

Gah maybe I'm just making excuses. ;_________;

[Kablizzy]

Depends entirely upon what I'm typing. If I have to transcribe, my speed goes way, way down, but if I'm doing something freeform like this, where I don't necessarily have to type out a specific word, I can reach 140 or so.

[Heartattack]

Depends entirely upon what I'm typing. If I have to transcribe, my speed goes way, way down, but if I'm doing something freeform like this, where I don't necessarily have to type out a specific word, I can reach 140 or so.

That's weird, most people type a lot faster when they don't have to think about what they're going to say next. Do you look at your hands while you type or what?

[Donfuy]

Depends entirely upon what I'm typing. If I have to transcribe, my speed goes way, way down, but if I'm doing something freeform like this, where I don't necessarily have to type out a specific word, I can reach 140 or so.

That's weird, most people type a lot faster when they don't have to think about what they're going to say next. Do you look at your hands while you type or what?

It's about knowing what you are typing. Do you happen to be able to write something like jhasiofjapf faster than what you just wrote?

[Heartattack]

Well that's not necessarily all there is to it. Generally in transcription we use words that we use on a day to day basis. Usually after typing for a while the mind has a memorized path for your fingers to take to type a word. So typing random letters you're looking at isn't anything at all like typing a paragraph that you have in front of you. Most people type faster when they're not thinking about what they're going to say next, and the most obvious answer I could think of for Blizzy to type slower this way is that he relies on seeing his fingers to type.