Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 12:02:38 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710211702.MAA23067@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: absieber@eos.ncsu.edu Sender: Lojban list From: Andrew Sieber Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) To: Lojban list X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2843 Lines: 50 Edward Cherlin wrote: > > The speed-up has been measured at about 20%, which amply repays the time > spent learning in short order. I picked up about 10 wpm, which fits that > claim. I dearly hope that applies to me as well. I've taken a long time before I got around to replying to this message because my Dvorak speed has been so ridiculously slow. It's somewhat better now, but I'm not nearly back to the speed I used to have. I've been touch typing only in Dvorak for 16 days now, and purposefully hunt and peck with two fingers when I'm forced to use a qwerty system (fortunately I rarely have to), and lately I've found that I actually have to think about the placement of the qwerty letters, so there's no turning back now. I guess that that's a good sign. > Not in my experience. Professional typists whe have to switch keyboards > frequently say that they can do it as easily as polyglot speakers switch > languages. However, if you can stand total immersion, it should take you > less than a week to become comfortable, and I would expect about two weeks > total to reach your previous speed. Unfortunately it's taking quite a bit more time than that. And my qwerty touch-typing is gone for good. Yet I intended the latter. But I still have to think about the placement of the Dvorak letters, which is highly annoying. > One has the same problems with Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, kana, etc. > keyboards. I got a Russian typewriter in college, and learned to touch type > without disturbing my English typing skills. Lots of people use multiple > layouts all the time. I personally drew the line at a manual Korean > typewriter with three shifts, and a Chinese typewriter with a box of > several thousand type slugs. A professor told me that the typewriter repair > person for the university said that the Chinese typewriter wasn't a > typewriter at all. According to him, it was a knitting machine. I'm drawing the line HERE. I don't ever plan to learn another layout, and especially not another physical keyboard arrangement! Dvorak will be the last layout I learn; I intend to use it for the rest of my life. Well I've never seen a Korean or Chinese typewriter, but from your description of it, I'd say it's neither a typewriter nor a knitting machine. It's a paperweight. > To return to Lojban, however, I am hoping that it will eventually speed up > my math and logic, just as Dvorak speeds up typing. I certainly had that > experience learning APL, compared with all those poky scalar languages that > make you write loops and branches even to add the columns in a table and > choose among the results. Someday I'll have to figure out how to speak APL > in Lojban. I am thinking along similar lines: Improved thought, if nothing else. --Andrew absieber@eos.ncsu.edu