Back and Forth Between Qwerty and Dvorak? 624
jamesh asks: "I'm interested in switching over to an alternate keyboard layout, probably Dvorak, before I begin to suffer any effects of RSI. I'm almost 30 and have been typing since I was about 8, and these days spend most of my workday in front of a computer, typing away at a keyboard. I've searched the Internet and most people's comments are that within a few months they were up to or faster than their previous speed, with better accuracy. I'm mostly a programmer, but I do spend time at client sites and do need to spend time at various users computers to have a look at whatever hole they've dug themselves into, and so I will need to switch between QWERTY and Dvorak mode fairly frequently.
What others have found when switching back and forth, as required? Can you mentally just flip back between them, or do you 'lose' your QWERTY skills and become 'hunt & peck' when faced with the old keyboard layout?"
Forget Dvorak (Score:5, Informative)
If you're serious, then rather than Dvorak, choose one of the layouts specifically designed to help RSI. The leading contender is probably the Maltron [maltron.com] layout. The sculpted keyboard helps, too, but they're also available in more traditional flat models [maltron.com] as well.
...yes... (Score:5, Informative)
Have you considered carrying a USB dvorak kbd with you to your client sites? ;)
Many of your answers (Score:5, Informative)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/ 14/126222&tid=227 [slashdot.org]
Tip For Mac OS X users... (Score:5, Informative)
DVORAK's supperiority is a myth (Score:3, Informative)
Keep your wrists straight (Score:5, Informative)
The "natural" keyboards that split in the middle try and do that as well, but it's completely unnecessary to split the keyboard. It's just a matter of getting used to your hands at an angle to the keys.
I think tendon stress and inflammation comes from forcing the tendons to bend while using your fingers. Seriously -- the layout doesn't matter as much as your wrist position (think about it -- it's the pressing of the keys, not the moving of the fingers
Re:...yes... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DVORAK's supperiority is a myth (Score:3, Informative)
When I first learned Dvorak, the more frequent alternation in Dvorak was a problem, leading to frequent transpoistion errors, and I had to type more slowly to remain accurate. In other words, I had hit the neural barrier before I hit the physical barrier.
However,
the more I practice Dvorak, the less of an issue this is. To a much greater extent than our bodies, our brains can adapt. By trading a harder barrier for a softer one, I think Dvorak increases your potential. It's telling that the fastest typist ever used Dvorak. And I think that if people started with Dvorak when they were young, the neural barrier wouldn't be much of an issue at all.
try this (Score:3, Informative)
It's great for rsi but my qwerty is shot...but my hands still work
Re:For anyone suffering from RSI... (Score:4, Informative)
And when you can't avoid typing, use better "typing posture". For those who didn't take a proper typing class (my mom forced me to take a course when I was a sophomore[1] in high school so I would be self-sufficient for college term papers. Little did I know I'd be taking Summer courses in LISP and FORTRAN the following year.
Biggest tip: do not rest your elbows or wrists.
I'm willing to wager 99%[2] of the people at a keyboard do not do this and most of the people who have RPI have acquired it because they do rest either joint of their arms.
All that changing a keyboards (different contour, key layout, or both) is doing is changing the posture of your fingers | hands | wrists | elbows | arms. Save yourself the time and just discipline yourself a bit.
The other thing which has been cited in RPI articles is when people spent time moving back & forth between keyboard & mouse repeatedly; i.e. you're better off to use keystrokes as much as possible or mouse as much as possible, but constant switching is not a good thing.
__________________
[1] Yes, that's the correct spelling [tinyurl.com] (for the spelling-challenged)
[2] Those five people who respond with claims they are the exceptions aren't going to disprove it.
The Benefits of Dvorak (Score:4, Informative)
1) Less finger movement for typical English sentences. This is easily verifiable, and not questioned AFAIK.
2) The keycaps on typical keyboards don't match the letter assignment, so you aren't tempted to look a the keys.
3) It is supported by modern operating systems and can be used with readily available keyboards.
These are real benefits, and not hype. In contrast, much of the argument against Dvorak is based on hype arguing against hype. Though they argee QWERTY was never optimised for touch typing, Dvorak proponents these days don't necessarily say that the QWERTY was deliberately designed to slow typing down. It is hype to say they are saying that hype.
But still, Dvorak was designed with touch typing in mind and without the constraints of key jamming, and althogh not the best possible design, it is more efficient. I would expect it to be the most efficient layout possible when walking up to a stock computer with XP on it and adjusting settings. So it isn't the most optimal data entry method possible, but it is still the best without going to custom hardware and/or software.
The link you give seems to just be hype debunking things that people didn't believe in the first place. Even Dvorak proponents will believe that widely spaced common letters is good, and that is one of the things that the Dvorak keyboard does do even more than qwerty.
So what you are doing is inventing extra "benefits" that can be disproved, and then based on than, extending it to say that all benefits are disproved.
It's like saying "A security vulnerability was found in Linux, so it is isn't secure after all, and so most the benefits of Linux are hype. You should be concerned with the architecture of the computer as a whole rather than just the operating system."
Re:Mod Parent(s) Up! (Score:4, Informative)
While this may or may not be true, my personal experiences seem to indicate that dvorak keyboard *is* good for your wrists.
I had a *lot* of 10,000+ word essays to write, my hands and wrists were getting so painful I could barely type, yet the deadlines couldn't be put off.
I switched to dvorak and the pain vanished within about a week of using it.
The vast majority of the keys you use to type the vast majority of words you type are all on the home row.
(If you don't know what 'home row' means then you have NO business criticising the dvorak keyboard, but I digress).
One thing that certainly helped was not just the fact that my fingers no longer had unnatural stretches to perform in typing, but the slowdown I had to endure in getting used to the dvorak layout.
But the home-row layout made things a lot easier.
Re:Mod Parent(s) Up! (Score:2, Informative)
Dvorak typists were also excluded from typing contests for years because they always won when they were allowed to compete.
From personal experience i can tell you that it is far more comfortable to type in dvorak for most tasks.
Re:Mod Parent(s) Up! (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that he wanted to make money, and sponsored competitions to prove the layout's worth, may be reasons to be skeptical, but certainly don't prove anything.
I have been using dvorak since sometime in my junior year of college ('97), and can tell you the following:
1. It feels a lot smoother and more comfortable, because of the reduced finger movement. This aspect of dvorak is proven for English.
2. It's a bit less of an improvement over qwerty for coding in something like cpp, because of all the punctuation (ML would be nice). It's actually sort of a pain sometimes for using unix commands, because so many of them are just consonants -- the layout is designed to alternate hands when typing English with vowels, so 'ls' hits two characters with your right pinkie -- less than ideal.
3. I can switch pretty easily back and forth, but barely ever have to anymore. When and if I do have to, I can type qwerty right away, but make a few mistakes for about the first 5 minutes. And this is when it's been a month or two since I last used qwerty...
I am glad I made the switch, basically because of the reduced finger movement and the feeling of comfort...
Re:Mod Parent(s) Up! (Score:3, Informative)
No, the Navy study concluded that the cost of switching from the QWERTY to the Dvorak layout could be recouped in 10.3 days. The Navy never released any other quantitative data.
-h-
Re:For anyone suffering from RSI... (Score:3, Informative)
Taking a break helps for mild symptoms. Getting a steroid shot usually works for awhile as well. However, a lot of these problems I think are more to do with your habits than anything else.
Things are hurting. Your body is trying to tell you something, but you aren't listening. A lot of these problems are due to simple diet, exercise/lack of, bad positioning and setup, and at the worst end disease. You can get away with a lot of these things when you are 15-25 or so, but as you get older it starts to take a toll. Just like a car you don't take care of, things do break down.
If I was in your shoes I would be looking into getting a steroid shot to fix the immediate problem, but also change my habits. Start working out & exercising, get on a diet that eliminated the junk -- and eliminate foods that cause inflammation/heat. Look into good ergo as well, find a keyboard you like, find a chair you like (most of you programmers are in the chair far longer than you realize. A $200 investment in a chair sure beats a $200 doctor visit.) Deal with stress as well, and while this sounds like its pretty pointless, stress causes your muscles to tense up and thus puts more strain on the tendons and connective tissues. Stress also seems to reduce blood flow to the area. (So do splits in my opinion, useful for a short period, but not something to make a habit of. They can cause a whole range of problems if you keep using them.)
I don't think Dvorak or Qwerty makes all that much of a difference. But getting a good split key, redesigning your desk so you aren't having to extend out and reach to do things, making sure it is the right height for you, forcing yourself to use better posture - those can make a real difference. Think: Minimize the wear and tear & take care of the body. See a doc anyway, sometimes you have an underlying inflammatory problem like arthritis and those are far better to catch early, and even in that scenario all of the same applies.
Its your body, you only get one. Not listening to it is positively the worst thing you can do for it. I know this from experience. Wear out takes a lot longer if you do the maintainence.
Re:For anyone suffering from RSI... (Score:4, Informative)
1) Regardless of your posture (and yes it matters), make sure you are not sitting in a static position for any period of time. Holding you muscles in a single floating position causes them to -- for lack of a better word -- "seize up" and tighten. Those "ropes" you feel in your forearms are caused by this.
2) Take a break every 10 minutes or so. Just take your hands off of the keyboard, shake out your arms and stretch a bit.
3) Get a deep muscle massage regularly on your back and arms to break up those tense muscles.
4) Find a new line of work
As a recoverer from mild RSI, I made changes before they became serious (as they did for my mother who got surgery). Please do the same so we don't lose great developers to the new epidemic of our age.
Dvorak works (Score:1, Informative)
Took me about 2 weeks to get back up to where I was, and within 2 weeks after that I'd greatly improved my speed.
Switching back and forth isn't a problem if you're doing it often. It's just like learning a new language. People fluent in more than one don't have to "think" about what language they are using, they just do it. You'll find the same thing happen with you after a little while. Give it a good month though before you decide it's not worth it.
Ergonomic keyboards will help a lot, but it's the layout of the keys that's Qwerty's biggest draw back.
If you want to know the facts, do a serch in Discovery magazine about Dworak keyboards. That's when I switched over.
Re:QWERTY not QWERY (Score:3, Informative)
Change the initial login window to use Dvorak! (Score:4, Informative)
I had the same problem, using Windows XP at work, and finding that the initial login (naturally) did not follow my personal prefs. My peeve was not so much the userID; rather, it was annoying to hunt-and-peck a *password* on qwerty.
To change the initial Windows XP login window so it uses Dvorak US instead of the standard (qwerty) layout, change the registry key "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload\1" to "00010409". (Actually, in order to support æøå, I've had to replace the Dvorak DLL file with a custom Norwegian variant, so what my XP calls 'Dvorak US' is in effect 'Dvorak NO'.)
Dvorak was not designed for programming (Score:2, Informative)
If almost all of your typing is really programming, I doubt dvorak is what you want.