Dvorak Links

(From http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/241 ) : btw, how is your transition to Dvorak going? I'm suffering some fairly bad wrist pain in my right hand and am getting to the point where I'll try anything... would you recommend it? Why did you make the change? -- gonad

Actually, I am planning to go back, personally. Dvorak's 10-f typing is really, really good and beats qwerty hands down, imo. So, for a 10-f touchtyping guy, I still recommend that they try out dvorak.

But I prefer 8-finger typing (no pinkies, i think 8-f typing keeps my RSI in check -- this is the style you develop when you naturally let your typing evolve without learning to 10f touchtype (I actually had to make myself forget 10-f-tt) and am real good at it.

It seems to me that when it comes to 8-f typing, there is no difference. Perhaps, qwerty is better. In dvorak, all the important keys are too closely spaced for my 8-f typing to be as good as it was on qwerty. And I keep hitting the wrong vowels. I did learn 10-f tt on dvorak too, but switched back to 8f.

Of course, add to that the inconvenience of the weird placement of all control keys. Try typing emacs' C-x C-s on emacs, for example, and you will see what I mean.

Finally, I don't have to (too much), but if you ever had to work offsite, imagine the (minor) pain of switching back and forth.

I cleared LPI linux certification, and was planning to try out the advanced one next. There, I will have to use qwerty during the exam.

Don't let the last 2 points discourage you too much though. -- somehow, one retains a pretty good memory of qwerty.

All said, I plan to stick with dvorak at least till the end of the year, just to make sure I gave it a fair try, and only then switch back, if at all. May be I will actually think dvorak is better for me by the end of the year. It has been about a month now. I have been thinking of dvorak for 4--5 years, and only now did I jump in all the way. I should definitely give it a "full" try.

Re: pain, I like using workrave (apt-get install)

--deego

Update (december 20th, 2005).

I forgot all about it.. and didn't even notice until someone discussed RSI on an irc channel (#emacs) a few days ago. Which made me think of mine.. and, wow, my RSI pain is completely gone. I am also a rather fluent dvorak user now. Credit dvorak for the RSI-relief? Most likely. Well, I also got a fancy keyboard adjusting base at a site where I get 70% of my work done, around september, when my latest RSI flare-up happened, so there's some chance that is what helped. However, I am more than inclined to credit dvorak for this. And, I don't think I am going back to a QWERTY layout any time soon. I should also mention that I haven't used workrave in a long time now, and have been dealing with extreme workloads (enough to keep me up all night.. in other words, lot of typing lately. Earlier, any extended typing would cause me a lot of pain.)

I am glad I decided to wait till the end of the year before switching back to QWERTY. The moral of the story for me is that if you try something, make sure you give it a fair try.

BTW, even though I only wanted to remain a hunt-n-peck user and forced that style for my dvorak usage (because I believed that that is good for RSI), dvorak is so good that it seems to have slowly transformed me to a 10-finger typist.. the reason is that your fingers rest on the home row such a large percentage of the time that you end up keeping them that way, and becoming a 10-finger touch-typist..

Happy holidays, everyone, and Merry Christmas, Bill O'reilly.

-- deego, now a happy dvorak user.

Update (April, 2006).

Still completely RSI-free. It just vanished. Amazing. -- deego

Sticker Bootstrap

I initially used dual qwerty-dvorak stickers when learning dvorak. The stickers displayed the dvorak letters smuch more prominently than QWERTY letters -- this made using QWERTY very difficult when you have to --- during new installs or system emergencies, etc. (If yours is a 1-person machine, even that can be minimized, the very first stage of a decent linux install will let you choose the keyboard setting for good.)

After about 8 weeks, when my dvorak fluency was good enough that I never needed to look at those stickers, I removed those stickers. Now, I type using dvorak from memory, and if I need to use qwerty, i can always look at the keyboard.

Keyboards i like:

|deego> enyc: i don't use that one (IBM Model M) any more.. i try to find a big kbd like the ibm one, but i need separate meta and alt keys, some extra keys next to the right control. i like a a wide but short backspace key (and perhaps a wide but short enter).

|enyc> sounds like a SUN kb

Update:

20100308: For fun, I took some online practice typing tess from different companies. My corrected (takes into account errors) Words per minute (wpm) always seems to lie between 90 and 100 WPM. That seems to be at least the 90th percentile. For example, http://speedtest.aoeu.nl/ just reported "Your score: 462 CPM (that is 92 WPM) Your score beats or equals 95.95% of all! In reality, you typed 467 CPM, but you made 1 mistake (out of 85 words), which was not counted in the corrected CPM score"

Update:

20100412: I have now been a happy dvorak user for some 5 years. I can get by with QWERTY for a short period of time when I really need to, and in that case, I need to look at the keys. A minor problem: On windows XP, even though I have switched the input language to US dvorak, some games continue to use the QWERTY layout. Thus, when I try to press "I" (for inventory) in dvorak, it actually thinks I pressed "G", and calls up my guild screen. This happens in some, not all, MMORPG games. This phenomenon seems to be restricted to some "open beta" games, and does not seems to be ever the case with established, polished RPGs.

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Updated: 2010-04-12

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