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Engnome
August 1st, 2006, 11:12 AM
In this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=158230 there was some discussion about dvorak, some sad it was great and some said it was just a myth. Therefore I have this simple question: do you recommend the dvorak layout?

Kvark
August 1st, 2006, 11:34 AM
Maybe dvorak is a little faster then qwerty but it is definately far from the fastest keyboard. The chorded keyboards that type one word per key combo they use when writing logs in court and subtitles for live TV broadcasts are the fastest by far. No other keyboards come near matching the speed of speach. I wish I could get my hands on one of those.

FISHERMAN
August 1st, 2006, 11:57 AM
I never used Dvorak, but I can't image why it would be anything special.
In my home country(Belgium) most people use AZERTY instead of QWERTY, but I prefer QWERTY.
Just use whatever you like.

Engnome
August 1st, 2006, 12:05 PM
Maybe dvorak is a little faster then qwerty but it is definately far from the fastest keyboard. The chorded keyboards that type one word per key combo they use when writing logs in court and subtitles for live TV broadcasts are the fastest by far. No other keyboards come near matching the speed of speach. I wish I could get my hands on one of those.

omg that sounds exteme 0.o gotta take ages to learn. Every word? they don't have to change to a normal keyboard for some words?

Terracotta
August 1st, 2006, 01:24 PM
I never used Dvorak, but I can't image why it would be anything special.
In my home country(Belgium) most people use AZERTY instead of QWERTY, but I prefer QWERTY.
Just use whatever you like.

Same here, but I do miss the french letters, I always have to appologies to French people that I can't write correctly because I'm not using a normal keyboard (uhu ok normal as in Frech keyboard, it is strange, in the Netherlands, same language (dutch) they use qwerty more often).

Edit: on-topic: don't know haven't tried it yet. Would love to switch to a better lay-out, but at least if it is as easy as qwerty and has French letters...

Kvark
August 1st, 2006, 02:09 PM
omg that sounds exteme 0.o gotta take ages to learn. Every word? they don't have to change to a normal keyboard for some words?
I have never used one so I'll have to make wild guesses here... Yeah it's probably hard to learn. I think it works kinda like this... Each key represents a syllable. When writing they press all syllables in one word at once, releases and presses all syllables in the next word at once. The computer uses a "syllable combos to words with normal spelling"-dictionary to translate the piano playing to text. I guess they must have some way to spell out words that aren't in the dictionary.

megamania
August 1st, 2006, 02:18 PM
I never used Dvorak, but I can't image why it would be anything special.
In my home country(Belgium) most people use AZERTY instead of QWERTY, but I prefer QWERTY.
Just use whatever you like.
Of course you should use whatever you like, but years and years ago I read that the keyboards layouts that we use today are designed to be slow, believe it or not.

While the Dvorak keyboard was designed to be efficient, the layouts we are now using were designed when the first typewriters came out: if you typed too quickly the keys would get stuck, so they decided to make typing more difficult.

I think I read this ages ago on Compute!, but I'm not sure (I mean I'm sure about the contents of the article, not about the source).

Engnome
August 1st, 2006, 02:25 PM
http://www.tifaq.com/keyboards/chording-keyboards.html has some interesting keyboards. Look at the last one. (http://www.keybowl.com/kb/index?page=orbitouch)

:-k

KingBahamut
August 1st, 2006, 03:39 PM
Dvorak is considerably harder to learn, specially if youve been a Qwerty user for so long. But if you have the time to do so, learning it will help your overall typing speed.

TravisNewman
August 1st, 2006, 03:45 PM
I learned it a few years ago and it was amazing. That said, I gave it up because I was forgetting qwerty and nobody else used dvorak. Once I got used to qwerty again, my typing was much faster than before.

Overall it's a good thing, but it might make you forget what you're doing at other PCs

jnev
August 1st, 2006, 04:56 PM
several of my friends use dvorak, and when I tried it within 10 minutes I was already able to type at close to 10 wpm. dvorak is much faster than qwerty, I'm probably going to convert soon...

picpak
August 1st, 2006, 05:22 PM
I'm sure it's faster, but I'd have to relearn all my Ctrl+X/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V combos.

Engnome
August 1st, 2006, 06:40 PM
I'm sure it's faster, but I'd have to relearn all my Ctrl+X/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V combos.

At first I thought so too however instead of Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V you can select a text and then middle mouse click to paste.

Brunellus
August 1st, 2006, 08:25 PM
At first I thought so too however instead of Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V you can select a text and then middle mouse click to paste.
....thus pulling your hands away from the keyboard. Nice one.

I also imagine it puts vim users out, as hjkl no longer map nicely to the right hand for cursor movement....

BWF89
August 1st, 2006, 09:18 PM
I've never tried DVORAK. It's supposidly the superiour system but I'd have to take the time to 100% relearn everything I know about keyboarding and if I learn DVORAK I might get mixed up when I have to use QWERTY like 99% of the computers in my country use.

G Morgan
August 1st, 2006, 11:26 PM
I'd say the chances of another system being better are high because generally businesses like to stick with old standards for the sake of laziness. Never used Dvorak though.

skymt
August 2nd, 2006, 01:06 AM
I use dvorak exclusively. I haven't lost my qwerty skills, because I never had any to begin with. :rolleyes:

Brunellus mentioned potential problems with Vim. It's my favorite editor, and I haven't had any trouble using it with dvorak. Movement is now two-handed, with j and k on the right, h and l on the left. There are dvorak keymaps for Vim available, but I haven't bothered with them, as I'd have to re-learn too much.

On speed: yes, it's fast. Really, really fast. I don't know exactly how fast I type right now, but I've timed myself a few times, and I usually come out around 45-50 wpm. That's without any real training or learning effort.

On how to switch: just do it. I learned by switching cold turkey, with a keyboard diagram in the corner of my screen for the first couple days.

halfvolle melk
August 2nd, 2006, 01:18 AM
I know a guy that can type 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz' in under 2 seconds. Sick! On qwerty. He sort of slides through 'cde', 'fgh' and 'ijkl' on a pretty flat keyboard.

On topic: My typing sucks, qwerty takes 2 seconds, so I wouldn't know.

jpkotta
August 2nd, 2006, 03:10 AM
Maybe dvorak is a little faster then qwerty but it is definately far from the fastest keyboard. The chorded keyboards that type one word per key combo they use when writing logs in court and subtitles for live TV broadcasts are the fastest by far. No other keyboards come near matching the speed of speach. I wish I could get my hands on one of those.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype

They're expensive and require quite a bit of training to use. And would probably be useless for programming.

lintroduccion
October 4th, 2006, 04:18 AM
It's just like the whole linux thing. To use the widespread option, or to use a technically better option although a little "unknown".

I use dvorak and sebeolsik korean keyboard to write, and never regret for having done that. In fact, I enjoy typing more than before:D.

P.S: "Sebeolsik" is to dvorak as "Dubeolsik" is to QWERTY, in korean keyboard layouts. Dubeolsik is the standard layout used everywhere, although support for Sebeolsik does exist.

henriquemaia
October 4th, 2006, 04:30 AM
Other: the concept is good (in theory), but since there aren't pt_PT variants of dvorak keyboard, one can't try to test it out.

For an experienced typist, the pt_PT qwerty keyboard is very inefficient.

lintroduccion
October 4th, 2006, 06:11 AM
I had some workarounds to type spanish (plus some extra) characters in english dvorak in Windows. Unfortunately that program supports only Windows and I'm forced to switch between dvorak and spanish keyboards when typing in Ubuntu... I wish there were some kind of input editor in which I could create my own dead-key function, keyboard switching mechanics etc. Is there any?

Zyzzyx
October 4th, 2006, 06:33 AM
I've been using Dvorak layout nearly exclusively since January 1st, 2004. However, I've been using the Kinesis keyboard (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/contoured.htm) for over six years now.
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/images/133-med.jpg

Can't stand a flat or standard 'ergonomic' keyboard now. I can type all day long on this keyboard, hands don't get tired. The Dvorak layout just made it better, with the better spread of key usage compared to Qwerty. The keyboard is great for long weekend gaming sessions too (except that using Dvorak layout, you've got to remap everything in a game).


I say nearly exclusively for Dvorak because I do still have to use standard Qwerty layouts on all the other computers at work. I have one Kinesis board at home, and one at work, both Dvorak layout. I also do have a small standard flat Qwerty board at home for the other three computers, on a KVM switch.

Interestingly I don't have too much of a problem typing Qwerty on a flat keyboard. Can usually get right to it and go. Not as fast on Qwerty as I was a few years ago, but probably ~50-60wpm (currently about ~70-80wpm on Dvorak). But, if I change the layout of my Kinesis board back to Qwerty (programmable board, changes with a keystroke combo), I can't type at all. Its almost like a positional memory for my fingers. If they're on the Kinesis keyboard, they'll do Dvorak just fine; on a flat keyboard, the mind (and fingers) switch to Qwerty. Oh, and in reverse, I have a helluva time trying to do Dvorak on a flat keyboard.

Kateikyoushi
October 4th, 2006, 02:09 PM
I never had one, used only korean, japanese layout, if speed is the most important than get a datahand.

henriquemaia
October 4th, 2006, 02:49 PM
I had some workarounds to type spanish (plus some extra) characters in english dvorak in Windows. Unfortunately that program supports only Windows and I'm forced to switch between dvorak and spanish keyboards when typing in Ubuntu... I wish there were some kind of input editor in which I could create my own dead-key function, keyboard switching mechanics etc. Is there any?

Read this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1101186&postcount=3

This might help you.

maagimies
October 4th, 2006, 03:28 PM
I did try converting myself to dvorak, but I just couldn't change even after weeks, been using a qwerty for too long I guess.
My typing speed atm is sufficient, it doesn't need to get faster :neutral:

Quake
October 4th, 2006, 04:48 PM
I'll switch to Dvorak when they'll be a major switch over. Because as it stands now, I use several computers which are all qwerty.
I had little bit of problems switching from Azerty to Qwerty (When I was in Europe) so It's going to be difficult switching from Dvorak to Qwerty back and forth all the time.

lintroduccion
October 4th, 2006, 06:35 PM
Read this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1101186&postcount=3

This might help you.

Awesome. Just what I was looking for.
Thank you.:D

oedipuss
October 5th, 2006, 11:53 AM
What about the colemak layout ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colemak

It's kept several keys in their qwerty positions to ease switching , but it's supposed to have some of the advantages of dvorak too.

And it's rather new, so it's taking into account common key combinations for shortcuts, like crtl+c, +v etc, or some commands like ls -l which in dvorak are rather akward.

Erik Trybom
October 5th, 2006, 02:57 PM
Those of you who have converted to Dvorak... Is it hard for you to use a qwerty keyboard now? Even if you were pretty good at qwerty typing before?

I'm thinking about getting a dvorak board but I cannot use it at school and if using two different setups is too hard then I guess I'll stick with qwerty.

der_joachim
October 5th, 2006, 05:42 PM
....thus pulling your hands away from the keyboard. Nice one.

I also imagine it puts vim users out, as hjkl no longer map nicely to the right hand for cursor movement....

Heh. Forget vim keystrokes. I hate the position of curly braces on a Dvorak layout. ](*,)

Engnome
October 5th, 2006, 06:26 PM
Those of you who have converted to Dvorak... Is it hard for you to use a qwerty keyboard now? Even if you were pretty good at qwerty typing before?

I'm thinking about getting a dvorak board but I cannot use it at school and if using two different setups is too hard then I guess I'll stick with qwerty.

Well I converted a few months back (a week before I started this thread) and I like it. I to have to use windows in school sometimes but usually I lug my Linux laptop over and connect it to the windows laptop I got from school (have ubuntu on it too but one has to run windows or else the wireless vpn stuff doesn't work) I tried switching XP to dvorak but there was a problem, It wasnt really the same as on linux so I changed it back. (the Swedish version of dvorak was different, not sure about the english version)

Anyway about your question: Yes it is easy, infact I use dvorak and the convert to qwerty in <5 seconds to type on windows. And then it's just as easy to go back. However YMMV.

BLTicklemonster
October 5th, 2006, 06:30 PM
DVORAK is my favorite Russian author, never head of that QWERTY fellow, though. (interesting to note that the Qwerty fellow's name is spelled with letters that sit right next to each other on the keyboard!)









;)

macogw
October 5th, 2006, 09:58 PM
....thus pulling your hands away from the keyboard. Nice one.

I also imagine it puts vim users out, as hjkl no longer map nicely to the right hand for cursor movement....

You have to move your hand off the keyboard for the "select" part of copy/paste anyway.

Brunellus
October 5th, 2006, 10:53 PM
You have to move your hand off the keyboard for the "select" part of copy/paste anyway.
no, you can select text in vim using just the keyboard.

Mihkal
October 6th, 2006, 02:04 AM
Dvorak reminds me of linux, it's better but most people refuse to use it because it will mean doing something different.

BTW,
I started using dvorak after looking at this poll, and I love it! :-D

maniacmusician
October 6th, 2006, 03:14 AM
DVORAK is my favorite Russian author, never head of that QWERTY fellow, though. (interesting to note that the Qwerty fellow's name is spelled with letters that sit right next to each other on the keyboard!)









;)
.....did you just take my avatar and gimp it?

it even has the text in the bottom left, lol

henriquemaia
October 6th, 2006, 04:17 AM
What about the colemak layout ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colemak

It's kept several keys in their qwerty positions to ease switching , but it's supposed to have some of the advantages of dvorak too.

And it's rather new, so it's taking into account common key combinations for shortcuts, like crtl+c, +v etc, or some commands like ls -l which in dvorak are rather akward.

I wish there were a keyboard with a similar concept designed for Portuguese. We had a Portuguese layout (fortunately now gone), the HCESAR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCESAR), but not really (scientifically) thought for efficiency.

lintroduccion
October 7th, 2006, 07:48 AM
Those of you who have converted to Dvorak... Is it hard for you to use a qwerty keyboard now? Even if you were pretty good at qwerty typing before?

I'm thinking about getting a dvorak board but I cannot use it at school and if using two different setups is too hard then I guess I'll stick with qwerty.

Not at all if you keep in touch with QWERTY. If you keep practising, you will have no trouble typing in both of them. If you don't, you'll probably type "with your eyes" in QWERTY after your honeymoon with Dvorak:-D.

I have experienced both cases; I changed to Dvorak from QWERTY while I was forced to type in QWERTY at school because the system administrator had blocked the computer's control panel. A few weeks later I achieved the same speed in Dvorak while retaining my QWERTY speed as well.

But it didn't happen the same way when I switched to Sebeolsik from Dubeolsik (They are korean layouts). Since I typed in korean only at home, I practised Sebeolsik having no contact with Dubeolsik. Now I write at full speed in Sebeolsik, but can barely guess the right key position in Dubeolsik, with many trial and errors.

Practise makes perfect, me thinks:p.

lemonsCC
October 7th, 2006, 08:05 AM
dvorak is soo compact my hands feel squished !

atoponce
December 3rd, 2006, 06:02 PM
In this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=158230 there was some discussion about dvorak, some sad it was great and some said it was just a myth. Therefore I have this simple question: do you recommend the dvorak layout?

Although this thread is a little old, I wanted to put in my $0.02.

I have used Dvorak for almost a year now. I have heard from many, many people that there is no benefit to switching to Dvorak. That is just simply not true. Let me go over some of the GREAT reasons why you want to use Dvorak instead of the Sholes (QWERTY) layout.

Sholes designed the typewriter with the machine in mind

When Christopher Latham Sholes designed the keyboard, initially, all the letters where on two rows arranged alphabetically. However, very quickly, he noticed that this layout was inefficient for typing, because the key bars would jam frequently. So, instead of improving the machine, he became obsessed with moving the keys. The idea was to arrange the keys, so certain key combinations, eg: "th", "at", "ing", etc., where as far away as possible. Also, supposedly, a salesman by the name of Densmore, requested that the word "typewriter" be on the top row to help aid sales of the machine. So, in essence, looking at the layout, it is a completely random layout.

Dvorak designed the typewriter with the typist in mind

Look at the Dvorak layout. All the vowels are placed under the left hand and all the most commonly used consonants (English language) are under the right hand. From there, the next most used consonants are on the top row, as it is easier to reach up the keyboard then down. Also, emphasis is given to right-handed typists, as the great majority of the world is right handed. Finally, the least used consonants re found on the bottom row.

On each row, the emphasis is placed with the index finger, then the middle finger, then the ring and finally the little finger. This is because your index is stronger than your middle, which in turn is stronger than your ring finger, which is stronger than your little finger.

Finally, the keys were placed to maximize alternate hand typing. Try tapping the desk with one finger as fast as you can. Now tap the desk with two hands alternating, as fast as you can. You can go A LOT faster, no? Dvorak knew this when designing his layout. Consider the url "starwars.com". On QWERTY, "starwars" is all typed with your left hand, "." with your right, "c" with your left and "om" with your right. Compared to Dvorak, where "st" is right, "a" is left, "rw" is right, "a" is left, "rs" is right, "." is left, "c" is right, "o" is left and finally "m" is right. There are only 3 alternations with QWERTY as opposed to 8 with Dvorak. A 266% increase.

The Home Row

Look at the home row (where your fingers naturally rest on the keyboard (the middle row)) on QWERTY and Dvorak and tell me what you see. On QWERTY, there is only 1 vowel, the letter "a", and a semicolon. Now look at Dvorak. Quite the opposite, no? All the vowels are on the home row, and no semicolon under your little finger (a wasted key on QWERTY). Pull up your terminal, and run through this exercise with me.


aaron@hercules:~$ wc -l /usr/share/dict/words
98569 /usr/share/dict/wordsSo, I have 98,569 words in my dictionary. Let's see how many I can type off of the home row with QWERTY then with Dvorak.


aaron@hercules:~$ egrep -ci ^[asdfghjkl\;\']+$ /usr/share/dict/words
233
aaron@hercules:~$ egrep -ci ^[aoeuidhtns-]+$ /usr/share/dict/words
1969As you can see, I can type almost 10 times as many words using only the Dvorak home row than I can with the QWERTY home row. The reason should be obvious. Because of the random nature of the QWERTY layout, you only spend about 30% of your time typing on the home row. The other 70% of your time, you are reaching for letters. Quite the opposite with Dvorak, where you spend nearly 70% of your typing on the home row, and only 30% of it reaching (only about 10% of which, you are reaching down, which is harder to do than reaching up). This makes typing Dvorak FAR more comfortable to type than QWERTY. It's more ergonomic and reduces, if not eliminates, the chance for repetitive stress injury.

Personal observations

I was a QWERTY typer for many years. As with most of you, I took a typing class, and that is the layout that was taught. It wasn't until about a year ago that I was introduced to the Dvorak layout. I thought that I would give it a try. I installed gtypist on my SSH server, and ran it in screen, so I could have access to my current typing lesson, regardless of where I was located.


aaron@achiles:~$ sudo aptitude install gtypist screen
aaron@achiles:~$ screen gtypistWithin 2 weeks, I could type at a comfortable enough speed, where I didn't need QWERTY (about 20 words per minute). Within the next week, my speed had doubled to about 40 WPM. After 6 months, I had passed my previous QWERTY speed of roughly 60 WPM. I was typing about 70 WPM. I currently sit at that speed, sometimes peaking around 85-90 WPM. Also, my typing accuracy has increased about 50% since moving to Dvorak.

The biggest thing I noticed, though, was how comfortable is was to type. It was almost a night and day difference. My fingers felt natural at the keyboard, and they move right along. Really, I wish I would've learned the Dvorak layout when taking that typing class back in school.

jonyboy1000
December 3rd, 2006, 06:41 PM
It certanly looks like an interesting layout to try. Ebay, here i come. LOL

slavik
December 3rd, 2006, 07:29 PM
from what I understand, DVORAK is actually the older layout. The reason for QWERTY was that DVORAK typing machines would frequently jam, since the keys that were often sued together are next to each other in the layout. QWERTY simply moves the keys away from each other ...

atoponce
December 3rd, 2006, 08:36 PM
from what I understand, DVORAK is actually the older layout. The reason for QWERTY was that DVORAK typing machines would frequently jam, since the keys that were often sued together are next to each other in the layout. QWERTY simply moves the keys away from each other ...

That is incorrect. The Sholes (QWERTY) layout is the older layout by almost 1/2 a century. QWERTY was developed in the 1860s while the Dvorak was brought forth in the 1930s. Wikipedia can give you more information about the histories of both layouts.

IYY
December 3rd, 2006, 08:47 PM
Dvorak is faster, there is no doubt about it. However, I don't see any reason at all to learn it. Nobody only works at home; I type at work, at the school's unix lab's, at the school's windows labs, at the computer club, at my friends' computers, at co-worker's and fellow students' computers when helping them with some code... None of them use Dvorak.

atoponce
December 3rd, 2006, 08:54 PM
Dvorak is faster, there is no doubt about it. However, I don't see any reason at all to learn it. Nobody only works at home; I type at work, at the school's unix lab's, at the school's windows labs, at the computer club, at my friends' computers, at co-worker's and fellow students' computers when helping them with some code... None of them use Dvorak.

Yes. Unfortunately, this is the #1 problem for getting users to switch to Dvorak: it's holds very little market share. However, it is *easy* to switch with the 3 major operating systems. It just needs to be enabled in the operating system, then, to switch between the layouts, it's:

Windows: Alt+Shift
Macintosh: Option+Apple+Space
Unix/Linux: 'setxkbmap dvorak' / 'setxkbmap us'

PriceChild
December 3rd, 2006, 09:08 PM
Unix/Linux: 'setxkbmap dvorak' / 'setxkbmap us'In GNOME I have a little panel applet which i click to change.

Mezzoforte
February 5th, 2007, 11:43 PM
I converted to Dvorak some year ago and I definitely find it more efficient. I don't have to stretch my fingers that much anymore and I write faster. Also, there's no gain for me to look at the keyboard, and that made me learn the Dvorak layout quickly, and I always look at the screen while writing. When I used QWERTY, I looked at the keyboard and thus I was slower and more wont to err. Though I realise that was only because I didn't learn it the good way from the beginning :).

For those of you worrying about having to use normal QWERTY on all keyboards but your own, that's not really a problem. One way of getting around this is to no-admin layout starters. Have a look here and you'll find some: http://wiki.aoeu.info:2502/aoeuinfo/show/Tangentbordslayouter
Oh, and that page is in Swedish. Sorry. For those others of you, have a go at this great site:
http://dvzine.org/type/index.html
So, there's not really a problem. I use Dvorak easily at school and public computers as well as home. A mouse click, and I've switched layout. Oh, does this sound as a commercial? I know :D

old_geekster
February 6th, 2007, 12:03 AM
I use QWERTY. I have never tried DVORAK. However, I don't believe that any keyboard is going to make my speed any better. Slow is "sleau", no matter how you spell it!

jetpeach
February 6th, 2007, 12:31 AM
i answered "other" because although i used dvorak for about a year, I ended up quitting and my verdict is negative but not because of the dvorak layout. basically, the major problem was when using other people's computers, it was very difficult to have to keep switching back and forth. but even this, maybe i could have dealt with, the problem was also with keyboard shortcuts - they were all in the wrong places...

so my judgement is this - in terms of an overall better layout, yes dvorak is better, but when combined with all the time learning and the moved keyboard shortcuts (control-c control-v are not so convenient anymore...) and the difficulty when needing to use other computers, the benefit was not great enough to make it worthwhile.

so i'm waiting for a real revolution in UIs... something not just incrementally better.

strabes
February 13th, 2007, 04:28 PM
@KingBahamut: Dvorak is not considerably harder to learn. In fact, it's just the opposite. A few years back I began teaching myself dvorak for the fun of it on a non-dvorak keyboard and in about a week I was typing as fast as I was on qwerty, probably about 40-50 wpm. It had taken me around 8 years to get up to that speed, with daily typing classes in elementary school. I now type around 100 wpm (without consciously trying to increasing my typing speed) and my hands don't ever get strained or tired, even after typing/copying a large amount of text. After 5 years of using dvorak, I'm really really glad I made the switch, and will never switch back. I have no idea why we still teach our children to type using this archaic keyboard that was designed to slow typists down. Sure, my qwerty speed did decrease a bit, but that's not really a problem since I don't use public or others' computers that often. I guess if you had a job where you're using many different computers each day or something then it might be a bit difficult to transition, but I'd still do it for use at home, if nothing else. After a bit you'll memorize where all the buttons are (including the punctuation & symbols) and you can just switch the layout on your computer and be able to type dvorak on a qwerty keyboard like I do on my laptop.

Everyone should try out dvorak. I believe you'll be glad you did. This is the lesson I used to learn in about a week: http://gigliwood.com/abcd/

Masoris
April 27th, 2007, 02:48 AM
Dvorak layout is very useful to type Japanese and Chinese. In Japanese and Chinese language, vowel are more than consonant. In Dvorak layout ‘aoeuiy’ is type by left hand and most consonant are located right. So it can be typing very rhythmical. If you ever seem Japanese or Chinese who type his language by Qwerty layout, you will soon know that they type with strange rhythm, because qwerty layout is not fit with their language.