OT: keyboard layouts

[Taavi Burns]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 01:06:46PM -0500, Henry Spencer wrote:
> It is *supposed* to, but no systematic test conducted by an unbiased
> experimenter has ever found more than a 5-10% improvement.  (And you can
> get that sort of improvement with a Qwerty layout just by remapping the
> Return/Enter key to something you can hit without moving your hand off the
> home position.)

The most important thing that both of us lack here are references.
I encourage people who are interested to go and do some research.  :)

> Beware of placebo effect.  *Expecting* that typing on a Dvorak layout will
> feel better has a strong tendency to *make* it feel better.

There are strong arguments that a Dvorak layout should feel better than
qwerty regardless of speed.  The most commonly used keys are in the home
row, the second most commonly on the top row, and least common on the
bottom row.  This does indeed reduce the number of times your fingers
have to move away from the neutral position.  That's gotta be a win, eh?

> Nope, this is a myth.  The early typewriters did have problems with
> jamming with fast typists, yes, but only if *adjacent keys* were hit in
> fast succession.  The Qwerty layout was designed to put frequently-used
> keys far apart, to reduce jamming at high speed.  It turns out that this
> actually *speeds up* typists, because it increases the probability that
> successive keys will alternate between hands. 

I'm not convinced that that is the case.  Provided that common digraphs
in English occur on the same row, I would see it being easier to coordinate
the correct order of keystriking.  Yes, Dvorak keys were laied out like
that.  That would be the point.

I do find it hard to believe that there is NO improvement whatsoever
from using a keyboard layout designed for use with electronic interfaces
with careful attention to useability versus one that was actually designed
to reduce jamming on old mechanical typewriters.

Yes, that is very soft logic.  I'm not saying either is "better", just
that I find it likely that they are each better at what they were
designed to be.

-- 
taa
/*eof*/
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