Page F30 reader poll on the Dvorak simplified keyboard vs. Qwerty and other layouts

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The poll ended yesterday and here are the results with 36 votes:

What do you think of the Dvorak simplified keyboard?
I use it all or nearly all the time.
5 (13%)
I'm fairly good at it but I prefer Qwerty / have switched back to Qwerty for some reason.
2 (5%)
I tried it out a little bit.
6 (16%)
Never tried it but intend to eventually.
7 (19%)
Not interested in trying it out.
9 (25%)
What's the Dvorak simplified keyboard?
5 (13%)
I use another layout besides Qwerty and Dvorak.
2 (5%)
Other
0 (0%)

Votes so far: 36
Poll closed


0% Other on a poll is a good sign, since it means I've covered all the bases. Just over 50% of those that answered say their either use Dvorak, have tried it, intend to try it, or use another layout besides Qwerty. This is only indicative of those on Page F30 though, the regular readers of which are certainly interested in learning about and trying out some pretty novel ideas, such as constructed languages. That's another example of an extremely good concept that needs a larger user base in order to gain momentum.

Not all new ideas are shunned though. The metric system is an example of a new idea that has done what it intended to do, and now just needs to finish its conquest of North America before it can achieve final victory.

6 comments:

Bacopa said...

There usedvto be a story going around the the US war department in 1942 did a study that switching to Devorak would pay for the costs of retraining within months. Supposedly Remington undid the deal by threatening to raise the cost of ammo of the the military quit buying as many of their typewriters.

lyzazel said...

I remember I had learnt some Dvorak from http://www.dvorak.nl (a great tool to learn it) but later I found it hard to use because I had to switch between different language layouts and that was what dvorak couldn't do. Also switching between computers wasn't easy.

I have also read an article or two stating that Dvorak is actually no better (i.e. faster to type in/more accurate) than Qwerty because there was no legit research proving it is better in the first place. I'm not sure if that's true (couldn't find the article again) but I wasn't terribly interested in checking all the facts by myself at that time.

I could still recall some of it. I think I still recall the middle line.

Me said...

I use something called Tajpu on Firefox to type in different languages, as you can add anything on to the basic layout. I just recently added Lithuanian for example so now to type ą I hit a and then insert twice.

As for Dvorak vs. Qwerty: there's an applet here that shows the difference between the two after entering any amount of text:

http://www.typocheck.co.uk/dvorak/

lyzazel said...

Well, I don't really like Firefox very much anymore for some reason. I use Safari on Mac and Opera on Windows now and my Firefox on Windows just keeps crashing even though I have updated it to the latest version (I have an old PC and it seems that they don't support something there very well).

I can just type ą in my QWERTY Lithuanian keyboard by simply hitting the key 1. I do that a lot, obviously, and typing two symbols instead of one would actually be a lot of lost time for all of the Lithuanian letters.

I wish they had some way to add Dvorak + Lithuanian or Dvorak + French and other layouts the same way they have English Dvorak on my Mac.

Well, overall, perhaps I should make the effort to switch to Dvorak in the the long term. I just checked it and I could type the middle line and some of the top and bottom lines pretty accurately (albeit slowly). In a few years time, I will probably not need to type as much Lithuanian or switch among different working machines so much so I could make the switch then.

lyzazel said...

I remember I had learnt some Dvorak from http://www.dvorak.nl (a great tool to learn it) but later I found it hard to use because I had to switch between different language layouts and that was what dvorak couldn't do. Also switching between computers wasn't easy.

I have also read an article or two stating that Dvorak is actually no better (i.e. faster to type in/more accurate) than Qwerty because there was no legit research proving it is better in the first place. I'm not sure if that's true (couldn't find the article again) but I wasn't terribly interested in checking all the facts by myself at that time.

I could still recall some of it. I think I still recall the middle line.

lyzazel said...

Well, I don't really like Firefox very much anymore for some reason. I use Safari on Mac and Opera on Windows now and my Firefox on Windows just keeps crashing even though I have updated it to the latest version (I have an old PC and it seems that they don't support something there very well).

I can just type ą in my QWERTY Lithuanian keyboard by simply hitting the key 1. I do that a lot, obviously, and typing two symbols instead of one would actually be a lot of lost time for all of the Lithuanian letters.

I wish they had some way to add Dvorak + Lithuanian or Dvorak + French and other layouts the same way they have English Dvorak on my Mac.

Well, overall, perhaps I should make the effort to switch to Dvorak in the the long term. I just checked it and I could type the middle line and some of the top and bottom lines pretty accurately (albeit slowly). In a few years time, I will probably not need to type as much Lithuanian or switch among different working machines so much so I could make the switch then.

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