Configuring the Keyboard ?

[Francois Ouellette]

>> 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  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

Conclusion: if it ain't broken, don't try to fix it!
It's a nice idea to try to improve the keyboard layout, but this has been
done many many times, many many years ago at the time of mechanical
typewriters, and QWERTY and its variants (i.e. AZERTY in France) always
remained the preferred layout. You may end up to be the only person in the
world to use your new layout, out of hundreds of MILLIONS of keyboards and
typists out there!

Also remember that there are 15% of persons who are left-handed. Ever saw
a keyboard with a numeric keypad on the left? Nope.
Fun exercise nevertheless.

 François Ouellette
<fouellet-cpI+UMyWUv9BDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>
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