Jan
16
(2006)
Dvorak transition nearly final
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: dvorak.
It took a bit longer than it did the last time I switched (I’m older now, I guess), but I think my transition to the Dvorak keyboard is nearly complete. I now “think” in Dvorak - my fingers are naturally finding the right keys without any intervention. Most of the time. Occasionally I have to pause to think about where a letter is - mostly when entering passwords or shell commands.
The biggest stumbling blocks at the moment are the slash keys ( /=\ ) and their shifted counterparts ( ?+| ) which tend to slow me down mostly when editing code (html lately - haven’t been spending much time hacking real code lately).
I had to use the old home computer to check email this evening, and found the antiquated QWERTY layout absolutely furiating. It makes no sense whatsoever, once you’ve seen the light of Dvorak.
So, now I’m about 75-95% of my previous QWERTY touch-typing speed, and seemingly getting faster every day. Wrists feel fine, too. See ya, QWERTY!
Comments
5 Responses to “Dvorak transition nearly final”
All well and good when you have a dedicated machine or three, but… as you found using your home computer, does it screw you up too much?
And do I really have to pop my keys of my chiney new PBook? That sorta hurts the sensibilities.
You don’t have to mess up your ‘book - it helps, for sure, if you use the onboard keyboard often. But it’s totally optional. There’s even a “Dvorak-QWERTY” layout that uses the Dvorak layout for “regular” keys, but has command key combos mapped to the QWERTY layout so you can use an unmodified keyboard safely.
You could probably pick up an El Cheapo USB keyboard for a couple of bucks and sacrifice it to learning Dvorak. Once you’ve learned it, you don’t even need to look at the keys, so there’s not as big a need to modify keyboards.
QWERTY does make sense. you can type the word TYPEWRITER with one hand quickly using only the top row.
some have conjectured this was a sales feature.
I would get confused looking at key that didnt show up on the screen.
I touch type maybe 50 wpm on qwerty, no sign of wrist issues at all. Its not yet compelling neough for me to switch. Plus, I get to see lots af alternative kepyboards when I’m oversees. Fewer, now that I travel with an el cheapo PC notebook perhaps, but still.
teddy,
I just used a p-Touch labeller and printed out letters, cut them to size and stuck them on the upperleft corner of the keys on my powerbook. That way, you have both layouts, in front of you, for easy reference.
I decided on the p-Touch labels because they are quite sturdy and won’t smudge off like a marker will. And it’s much neater looking than hand written labels (believe me).