So long qwerty...

[folkstone]

Starting to teach myself how to type with the Dvorak keyboard layout. It's been ages since I've used a typing tutor program. This time however, there are many more real words early on in the tutorials.

Its interesting and fun. More details to come, hopefully soon.

Comments

[quikchange]

My roommate thewizard tried that in the Fall but gave up on it after a few weeks.

[thepolemicist]

Did you lose a bet?

[folkstone]

No, I did not lose a bet. However, Dvorak does have an intelligent key layout which should reduce the dangers of the evils of RSI.

[thepolemicist]

Well it's supposed to be a far more efficient system, but even if I wanted to learn how to walk again, I wouldn't even know where to start looking for the necessary hardware... except eBay. You can buy anything there... ANYTHING.

What prompted this life-altering decision?

[folkstone]

Hardware? Who said anything about new hardware? You can easily remap the keys in software in all major operating systems. You *can* get keyboards with the appropriate kepcaps, but you can also just move keys around on an existing one. I haven't even done that yet. I have a printout of the Dvorak keyboard layout taped near my computer.

The trick, of course is to learn to touch type with the new layout. I never look at my keyboard when typing Qwerty, so why should Dvorak be any different?

As for what prompted this change, I followed a link to http://dvzine.org which had a fun comic about the Dvorak layout. I have the pdf on my computer, it was removed from the server for bandwidth reasons shortly after I grabbed it.

[carn_carby]

That's so awesome!! I just read up on Dvorak. I wonder if it'd be hard to retrain physical memory..

[folkstone]

Well, some of the keys are almost where they used to be, and those are the ones that seem to be causing the most problems for myself. Overall however, it's quite the experience.

[lambda_calculus]

How well do you type normally?

I (and some studies whose location now escapes me) found that if you can do a decent job touch-typing on QWERTY with the proper posturing and habits to prevent your wrists from blowing, then the move to DVORAK may not be worth it simply because of the inconvenience.
It's definitely easier and probably better for you overall, but if I do it again it will be on a) a work term, when I'm not using my computer for anything critical and deadlined or b) after I develop amnesia of the fingers.

Good luck with it though, I definitely enjoyed my failed attempt.

[folkstone]

Well, it has a very natural feel to it. Now that I've started to use it, it feels very natural. The main problems that I've noticed so far are with keyboard hotkeys for different programs. Vi is very Dvorak hostile. I also wish that ksh read my .vimrc file for key bindings.