Originally posted by ksv
It's a more effecient keyboard layout than qwerty, where the first 5 letters are dvorak, not qwerty
I couldn't tell if ksv was trying to be funny here or not, but the dvorak keyboard is named for the creator, not the keyboard layout. I'm not sure of the creator's first name, but he did extensive research on typing, and came up with this very efficient layout.
Here's what it looks like (sort of):
First line: ',.pyfgcrl/ (this is the line right under the numbers)
Second line: aoeuidhtns- (this is the home row)
Third line: ;qjkxbmwvz (this is the line below the home row)
In addition, the [ and ] keys are in place of the = and - on the QWERTY keyboard, and the = key is in the place of ] on the QWERTY keyboard.
The guy who made the layout did some very effective studies. The dvorak keyboard layout offers these advantages:
1) It promotes alternating typing. That means that you generally type one letter of a word with one hand, the second letter with the other hand, the third with the first, and so on. Of course, not every word follows this pattern, but much more so than the QWERTY keyboard layout. The result? The longest word you type with one hand is papaya, a 6 letter word. Here are longer words that are all typed with one hand on the QWERTY keyboard layout:
devastated, exacerbate, exaggerated, desegregated, stargazers, stewardess, streetcars, sweetbread, aftertaste, reverberated, uphill, killjoy, million, minimum, opinion, pumpkin, lollipop, monopoly
There are many more than that.
2) To go along with number 1, all of the vowels are on the home row in your left hand. Since most words generally do not have vowels together, this furthers the alternating typing style. Also, 70% of all letters typed are on the home row of the Dvorak layout. This compares to 31% for QWERTY. Obviously this is a tremendous benefit.
3) On the dvorak keyboard layout, you generally type with a strumming motion. The letters are arranged so that a strumming pattern, similar to the way a person would strum their fingers on a table, is encouraged. This provides more comfort to the hands. It is an often overlooked advantage of Dvorak.
Basically this means that as you type, you generally type from the outside in and then repeat the process.
A little history -- when typewriters were first invented, the keyboard was basically alphabetical, and it was much faster than the QWERTY keyboard layout. Because typewriters were mechanical, fast typing would often cause them to jam. Because of this, the QWERTY keyboard layout was invented to make typing as
difficult as possible. Of course, with computers, this is no longer a problem, so the dvorak keyboard layout is much more efficient.
I found a great dvorak keyboard typing tutor (that also includes QWERTY typing drills), called Master Key. It's native in OS X, too.
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I did a lot of typing drills in Master Key for about 3 weeks, and after that, I was already typing faster than I did on the QWERTY keyboard layout. I must say, though, that my hands are much more comfortable when typing in the dvorak keyboard layout -- I don't put as much strain on them.
Furthermore, since I have no other computer that uses the dvorak keyboard layout, I am forced to use the QWERTY keyboard layout in other places. Although I don't particularly care for the QWERTY keyboard layout that much, I have come to be able to switch layouts pretty quickly. So I don't have that much trouble when typing on QWERTY keyboards anymore.
It took about another 3 weeks to be able to type well on both layouts, so it takes about 6 weeks to get used to, overall.
(A lot of this information came from
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~dylan/dvorak/DvorakIntl.html )
I should mention one more benefit, though. It basically secures you as the only user of your computer. Whenever my relatives or friends sit down at my computer, they can't type at all, so my computer is basically unusable unless they bring their own keyboard.
