Talk: Dvorak layout

Victor Ortega  <vo2...@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>Bob Allison (bob...@wwa.com) wrote:
>>    I use a Dvorak layout for actual typing because it is faster and 
>> requires less effort to type than QWERTY.  OWERTY was scienfically designed 
>> to make typing difficult in the age of manual typewriters when typist 
>> were too fast for them and jammed them a lot.
>
>Because of my lack of knowledge on the subject, I decided to look this
>up in my encyclopedia.  Here's what I found under "typewriter":
>
>     Despite the revolutionary advances in typewriter capabilities,
>     one essential element has remained unchanged since the first
>     Remington.  The keyboard arrangement, nicknamed QWERTY for the
>     top line of letters, was designed to make it easier for salesmen
>     to sell the machines.  All the letters in the word "typewriter"
>     are in the top line, so there was no need to hunt and peck.  A
>     much more efficient arrangement was devised in 1936 by August
>     Dvorak, cousin of the composer.  With the Dvorak keyboard, the
>     right hand does equal work with the left, the strongest fingers
>     do the most work, and 70 percent of the typing takes place on the
>     "home row," where the fingers naturally rest.


   In 1872, Christopher Lathan Sholes and two associates invented a 
machine he called a 'Type-Writer'.  It worked, but in those times, they 
could not make a machine fast enough to keep from jamming.

   So since Sholes couldn't make the machine faster, after much 
experimentation, he created a keyboard layout that was inconvenient to use. 
Unfortunately the world has had to use this junk ever since.  Whether he 
put the keys to spell Type-Writer on one row, I don't know.


   Here is how my dvorak keyboard is:

row        ~  !  @  #  $  %  ^  &  *  (  )  {  }
#1         `  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  [  ]  delete

row           "  <  >  P  Y  F  G  C  R  L  ?  +  |
#2       tab  '  ,  .  p  y  f  g  c  r  l  /  =  \

row           A  O  E  U  I  D  H  T  N  S  _
#3   caplock  a  o  e  u  i  d  h  t  n  s  -  return

row           :  Q  J  K  X  B  M  W  V  Z
#4     shift  ;  q  j  k  x  b  m  w  v  z  shift

                       spacebar


--
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  ||          ||  || | (/_                                     /;:.\
  ||__.        _                                              //;:. \
   ~  ||  /'\\< \,,._-_ /'\\ /'\\,._-_ /'\\ \\ \\ \\         ///;:.. \
      || ||   /-|| ||  || / ||    ||  || || || || ||   __--"////;:... \"--__
      || ||  (( || ||  ||/  ||    ||  || || || || || --__   "--_____--"   __--
 ,-___-  \\,/ \/\\ \\, \\,/ \\,/  \\, \\,/  \\//\//      """--_______--"""
 

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