I don’t use Dvorak, but I’ve been intrigued by alternative layouts for years. I taught my daughter QWERTY years ago. My reasoning was that the speed difference between QWERTY and other layouts isn’t great, technology may change input methods before she was typing enough to worry about repetitive use injuries, and primarily because QWERTY keyboards are everywhere. At school the ubiquitous keyboards are all QWERTY and at work likewise.
As an EMACS user I bind my keyboard’s caps lock to ctrl. That makes me realize just how often I’m typing on someone else’s keyboard (my fingers automatically hit caplock-B instead of back arrow for example). If I used Dvorak I think it would be much more frustrating trying to use a random keyboard.
It didn’t take very long to teach my daughter touch typing. I would place my fingers on top of hers at first and touch her fingers during simple typing lessons to show her which finger to use. This seemed to allow her to connect a letter to the correct finger very quickly.
Xah Lee has studied typing and keyboards for years. Take a look at his web site; it’s full of information [1]. He’s a Dvorak user.
Comments
I don’t use Dvorak, but I’ve been intrigued by alternative layouts for years. I taught my daughter QWERTY years ago. My reasoning was that the speed difference between QWERTY and other layouts isn’t great, technology may change input methods before she was typing enough to worry about repetitive use injuries, and primarily because QWERTY keyboards are everywhere. At school the ubiquitous keyboards are all QWERTY and at work likewise.
As an EMACS user I bind my keyboard’s caps lock to ctrl. That makes me realize just how often I’m typing on someone else’s keyboard (my fingers automatically hit caplock-B instead of back arrow for example). If I used Dvorak I think it would be much more frustrating trying to use a random keyboard.
It didn’t take very long to teach my daughter touch typing. I would place my fingers on top of hers at first and touch her fingers during simple typing lessons to show her which finger to use. This seemed to allow her to connect a letter to the correct finger very quickly.
Xah Lee has studied typing and keyboards for years. Take a look at his web site; it’s full of information [1]. He’s a Dvorak user.
[1] http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_dvorak_layout.html