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This seems risky. Many years ago, I could happily type in QWERTY and Dvorak (Colemak and Workman didn't exist yet), 60wpm on each in consecutive minutes. But I was having trouble with my joints (genetic condition). Moving my hand over to the arrow keys was a problem, so I modified Dvorak slightly to put the arrow keys in the middle (QWERTY's Y, G, H, B), put some letters and other keys on the number row, and put the numbers up on the function keys. It was close enough to Dvorak that it only took a few days to learn, but it had the unexpected consequence of breaking my Dvorak typing ability. The two were too similar.
Nowadays I use Workman [1] and put the arrow keys on the home row on a different layer (same locations as Vim).
I write Dvorak every day and I have no problems using QWERTY. I still type it faster than most QWERTY only typists, and with Dvorak I am basically undefeated.
I thought about trying Dvorak over 30 years ago but quickly discovered it is a wasted effort since everywhere I go there are QWERTY keyboards. What am I suppose to do, carry a Dvorak keyboard around with me (with the right adapters as well)?
I’ve been Colemak for 11 years.
For quick things (<5 min) I can still type decently on QWERTY.
For longer I just set the OS to Colemak and then back again when I’m done. Win/Mac has Colemak and Dvorak built in. I hope most linux distros do as well.
Assuming you don’t need to look at the keys.
Do you.. look at your keyboard while typing? I don’t even have letters on my keyboard.
I was in college a few years ago and it was pretty common to see portable mechanical keyboards...
I’ve typed Dvorak about 15 years. I just switch the keyboard layout on the other person’s computer if I’m going to do any significant typing and can’t use my laptop. (A rare need anymore.)
When you were considering learning in the 90s, this would’ve been harder to do, but that changed. It’s too bad you didn’t reconsider learning every decade or so!
I tried several years ago, before mechanical keyboards were the norm, and most keyboards you couldn’t even swap keycaps around.
Anyway. I generally agree. Switching it extremely difficult. And logging in to a Dvorak Remote Desktop is insanely annoying.
You are supposed to switch the keys mapping to dvorak...?
I came to a similar conclusion about trying to learn popular layouts. I was always somewhat curious, but on a few occasions I had shooting pains down the back of my right hand, and I couldn't type or mouse with it for days.
I looked at Colemak (and the Tarmak training layouts) which seemed unnecessarily complicated, so I made my own transitional layout. First keeping most of the keys on the 'same fingers' but not necessarily same column as Qwerty (the P and R swap hands and O changes finger):
Q W D F {P} Y U K L ;
A S E T G H N I {R}[O]
Z X C V B J M , .
The final layout I'm using is:
Q W U D P Z H Y L ,
A S E T G F N I R O
K X C V J B M ; .
[0] https://github.com/qwickly-org/Qwickly [1] https://github.com/qwickly-org/QwickSteps
I went through the entire process of learning Colemak-DH last year, and made sure to maintain my ability to type QWERTY. I would bring my reprogrammed HHKB to work every day, and switching between layouts at home to keep the skill. Eventually I realized that all the new layout did was add an extra layer of cognitive friction when it came to keyboard shortcuts. Now a year later I am back to just using QWERTY.
Glad I tried it, now I know I could do it all over with only a little bit of discomfort, but I never saw any of the oft lauded benefits of switching keyboard layouts. Maybe at 60-70WPM I am just not fast enough to notice improved efficiency, or my youthful joints have yet to decay enough to have pain from typing. Who knows.
I looked into the Dvorak stuff about 20 years ago and apparently there weren't any real good studies showing Dvorak was that much better.
The studies showing Dvorak superiority apparently were never compared with qwerty users going through similar training, and when they did, the advantage disappeared.
Apparently, we do better if we train.
Just yesterday I was thinking about making a switch. I was concinced that I was gonna switch to Dvorak. Today I'm very confused. Maybe workman as someone said here. But does it benefit other language typing or just english? If qwerty was made to slow down the typers, what about other languages like German, Russian. Did they do that too? I'm not gonna switch if I have to type with same layout in other languages.
It's a big decision
If you have doubts, don't switch. It saves you a lot of trouble when you have to work on someone else's system.
Dvorak has the advantage of being supported on most operating systems, now, and possibly some decades into the future.
Note also that if you grew comfortable with asdf, hjkl, or Emacs key bindings (C-n, C-p, C-f, C-b), you'd have to unlearn some muscle memory there as well.
Source: am very happy Dvorak typist for more than 20 years. The initial two weeks, starting from the Beavis-and-Butthead lessons, gave me terrible headaches.
Tried a couple of times to switch to Dvorak, the biggest blocker are the shortcuts. I'm also an avid vi user and I feel it's closer to impossible to use it with a different layout.
I tried to learn dvorak, and colemak, and both ended up requiring too much investment to be worth it. This is very tempting, even though I promised myself I'd stop messing with keyboard layouts
I’m not here to convince anyone as I could care less what layout you type in, but are you really saying a few days or weeks of typing slightly slower isn’t worth a lifetime of increased ergonomics and comfort?
I just gave the layout a quick spin, and it's indeed very easy to learn when coming from regular QWERTY, and it's almost eerie how much finger travel it saves. I may just go and switch to it. Thanks to the author!
(Apologies for not referencing Dvorak or Colemak in this comment)
In the site footer small print it says it was "rediscovered" ...so who came up with this concept originally?
Was wondering that myself.
I'm skeptical that this would be easy to learn. I haven't thought about what row certain keys are on for about 25 years. I imagine there would be a long period of frustrating typing and not being able to get things done as fast as you need, with constant corrections.
It's incredibly easy relative to Dvorak. Dvorak changes every single key across the whole keyboard and you have to relearn typing from scratch. This just changes a few keys, and when you "miss" you immediately know where the right one actually is, either directly above or directly below...super easy fix and the muscle memory will redevelop quickly.
As someone who can type on Dvorak, this is exactly what would happen. It doesn't matter that it isn't as radically different as qwerty->dvorak, you still have muscle memory for where everything is and now it's different. It's a bit like learning a new language. If you're going to change keyboard layouts, you might as well do it right and pick a better layout than this. I like Dvorak, but Colemak and Workman layouts are also well-regarded.
Sounds silly but the only change I do for the letter keys is inserting / (or whathaveyou) at [h] and shifting the [hjkl;] to the right. That way, right-hand fingers are resting at hjkl which makes vim-movement a lot more ergonomic.
Q W E R T Y U I O P
A S D F G / H J K L
Z X C V B N M , .
I learned to touch type Querty as a teen. Then about 35 years ago I switched to Dvorak figured everyone was going to do it. Turns out not many did. But I’m still happy I switched. It’s easy enough to add Dvorak as an input method to any OS. Only problem has been leaving it on a company computer and having my coworkers mystified when their login password doesn’t work :/
I did this as a prank a long time ago to a friend. He couldn’t log in, and I think it took us a while to figure out how to change it back without being able to log in. Or maybe he found the Dvorak mapping and logged in using Dvorak and changed it back.
Just learn dvorak or colemak - they're not hard to learn, have tons of benefits, and are readily available on all operating systems
Is there any evidence at all that they have tons of benefits? I thought there was research that said they were mostly myths.
Decades ago I learned dvorak and used it exclusively for about a year. I honestly felt no benefits. If anything it made things more of a pain in the ass because many common commands (e.g. Ctrl-C Ctrl-V) are where they are because of their locations on a qwerty keyboard. You can re-map shortcuts but I still find myself using devices that aren't my own often enough that I find it annoying.
I remember one funny instance where I had to remote desktop into a shared server, and I remapped to dvorak and forgot to change it back, and then when someone else remoted in they thought their keyboard was possessed.
Or Workman, which has advantages over both: https://workmanlayout.org/
I like Workman. With that and a keyboard that has many thumb buttons (Moonlander and Ergodox clone) my wrists are much happier.
I wouldn't recommend Dvorak - it was designed a very long time ago without computers in mind or the in-depth efficiency calculations we can do today.
What are the benefits, beyond retraining all my shortcut muscle memory?
I still think that what’s even sillier than QWERTY is the fact that the keys are angled up to the left on both sides. Sure this (sort of) makes sense for your right hand, but the left hand does not naturally fit the keys going in that direction.
I’ve considered moving to an ortholinear split keyboard [1] for this reason, but it seems like I’m so used to the “broken” way that it would take too long to retrain muscle memory at this point. The other downside is readjusting when needing to use a laptop keyboard.
I’m just ranting that they didn’t do standardize on something that made more sense a long time ago, instead of everyone being so locked into the broken way that there’s no going back at this point.
The keyboard keys are staggered for historical reasons [1]. I always found it awkward moving my fingers diagonally instead of vertically. My typing experience improved dramatically moving to an ortholinear keyboard [2]. It helped my pinky RSI as well with the modifiers being on the thumb clusters.
[1] https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/40390/why-are-keyboar...
I built a Dactyl style keyboard with a trackball on one side. It's split, ortholinear, and also "scooped". To be honest it took me a while to adjust but it was worth it. Switching back to the laptop keyboard is almost entirely a non issue—that muscle memory runs deep.
While I was at it I also tried learning Colmak but didn't stick with it. This flip layout seems worth a try for the low learning overhead.
The ortholinearity is learnt extremely fast, less than a week. Do not worry about it. What takes time is the layout change.
This from my experience with a typematrix keyboard together with the daily use of a normal laptop keyboard.
I don't understand how Dvorak is supposed to be hard to learn. It took me 2 months to get from "where are the letters" to being able to touch type faster than I previously could. From the start you're typing words, not "asdf".
It's probably just me, but as soon as I started learning dvorak I was wrecked on both dvorak and qwerty. Kept trying to type qwerty on dvorak and when switching back dvorak in qwerty. Really confused my brain/muscle interface, I guess. It was a few weeks until I could type in both in a reasonable manner. Now, 20+ years later, they are both completely ingrained in my muscle memory and I could probably switch every other word if I had to.
Yeah, sdf jkl is way harder for me to wrap my head around than 'none hunt out the one ton nun'.
This is interesting. However, having a layout similar to what you already know makes it harder to have a clear mental separation between the two. It also makes it harder to use it as an excuse to learn proper touch typing.
I used to type dvorak for about 10 years. Ultimately all programs shortcuts (except a few, like i3wm) are designed with the assumption that you are using qwerty, as are all coworkers. So, eventually, I moved back.
I think there's a huge missed opportunity of learning keyboard layouts with a smartphone. You get labels for free, and it's much easier to learn how to manage 2 fingers than to manage 10 at once. But once you get proficient enough to touch type(not that touch), you can still map the muscle memory onto a physical keyboard and you will already be 80% done. The remaining 20% is locating the right key with the right finger, which will sort itself out once you start typing. I learned Dvorak this way.
I switched to Colemak dhm a while back and I'm really happy with it. I've been using a ZSA moonlander at home and at work, and it's subtle, but I can definitely tell that this layout is easier to use. It's especially great with this keyboard and its macros and layers.
My laptops are still QWERTY though, and it's not too hard to code switch. It didn't take me too long to learn the new layout, though there was a short awkward period where I was bad at typing regardless of layout.
Along with the switch to Dvorak some decades ago, I remapped CapsLock to be an additional Ctrl, and I started using Emacs key bindings (C-n, C-p, C-f, C-b) instead of the arrow keys.
I'm still typing in Dvorak, but I'm almost sure that it's primarily the change of cursor keys that made my typing much more relaxed. It saves a lot on wrist travel.
However, I did send a lot of unintended print jobs to our office printer when Notepad didn't ask for confirmation after pressing C-p.
I’ve been thinking about a similar idea for years after studying how qwerty came to be.
FYI I once came across a very old “how to type manual” which said your fingers should rest on the top row. That explains a lot. And suggests why something like this makes a lot of sense — unfortunately manual memory is a PIA to change.
Just use Norman or Workman if you are going to go through this effort.
Also, use a programmable keyboard, so you can use it wherever without having to jump through OS hoops.
Has anyone tried it without flipping the P and ;? I understand the reasoning, but having it be a symmetrical flip might be even that much easier to learn?
Or... you could just relax when you type and your skills will be applicable to more environments.
Is there an online tool that can let me try this keyboard layout?
We need to agree as a society to slowly transition to Dvorak or Colemak one key at a time over the next couple of decades. Every year we announce a new pair of keys which needs to be swapped, OSs roll out an update and people manually pry out the keys from their physical keyboards and swap them.