Configuring the Keyboard ?

[Henry Spencer]

On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Geoffrey Hunter wrote:
> Incidentally, in an ideal world the 26 letters of our alphabet would
> be arranged in alphabetical order; the QWERTY order was designed to
> slow down (I kid you not) typing on mechanical typewriters to reduce
> the occurrence of key-hammer jams...

Nope, not true; this is a myth.  QWERTY was designed to put frequently-
used letters far apart, because early mechanical typewriters tended to
jam when *nearby keys* were hit in fast succession.

In fact, wide spacing of frequent letters speeds typists up, notably
because it makes alternation of hands more frequent. 

QWERTY is actually fairly good for speed.  It had many competitors in the
early days of mechanical typewriters, and even then, there were speed
competitions and customers paid attention to the results.  QWERTY
generally did well.  It's not optimal, but it's good enough that you
probably can't improve on its speed a whole lot.  (The exaggerated claims
for the Dvorak layout came from tests run by Dvorak himself; independent
tests consistently show little or no advantage.)

> How about this for a (partial) keyboard arrangement:
>      A B C D E F G H I
>      1 2 3 J K L M N O   4 rows x 9 columns
>      4 5 6 P Q R S T U    = 36 characters = 26 letters + 10 digits
>      7 8 9 0 V W X Y Z

Ugh.  Hint:  you want to put heavily-used letters in the home row!

By the way, tests have shown that even for people with no typing skills --
this was done back before micros got really common -- alphabetical order
has no speed advantage over QWERTY.  Most people don't really have that
good a feel for where a particular letter is in the alphabet.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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