From rob@twcny.rr.com Sun Mar 18 21:41:01 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@twcny.rr.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 19 Mar 2001 05:41:01 -0000 Received: (qmail 69607 invoked from network); 19 Mar 2001 05:41:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 19 Mar 2001 05:41:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailout4-0.nyroc.rr.com) (24.92.226.166) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 Mar 2001 05:41:01 -0000 Received: from mail1.twcny.rr.com (mail1-0 [24.92.226.74]) by mailout4-0.nyroc.rr.com (8.11.2/RoadRunner 1.03) with ESMTP id f2J5cIb12845 for ; Mon, 19 Mar 2001 00:38:18 -0500 (EST) Received: from riff ([24.161.104.50]) by mail1.twcny.rr.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-59787U250000L250000S0V35) with ESMTP id com for ; Mon, 19 Mar 2001 00:38:18 -0500 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 14esMv-0002vL-00 for ; Mon, 19 Mar 2001 00:38:13 -0500 Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 00:38:08 -0500 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Lojban Dvorak Message-ID: <20010319003808.A11000@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com From: Rob Speer X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 5986 I've decided to see how well the Dvorak keyboard works for Lojban. I'm just going to consider letter frequencies and a few other factors, while Dvorak himself obviously put a whole lot more research into his keyboard. Here goes: In English, the letter frequencies are something like this: ETOAISNRHLDUMYWCFGBPVKXJQZ Of [ETOAISNRHLDU], only R and L are on the top row. The rest are on the home row. Of [MWCFGP], only M and W are on the bottom, the rest are on the top. The rest, [KXJQZ], are on the bottom row. In Lojban, the only resource for letter frequencies seems to be the documentation for Scrabble, and it was only counting their occurrences in the dictionary. However, since letter frequencies in actual usage would vary quite a bit with people's different Lojban styles, I might as well go with that. Sorting them by (without-lujvo occurrence) + (with-lujvo occurrence / 10) gives the order: IAUNREYOTLSC'KMJDPBFGVXZ I 1312 A 1285 U 817 N 767 R 767 E 652 Y 574 O 499 T 496 L 487 S 475 C 464 ' 417 K 395 M 358 J 349 D 305 P 290 B 278 F 210 G 204 V 168 X 161 Z 122 The placement of the vowels [aeiou] in Dvorak works well enough for Lojban. The Y could possibly be moved to where P is (left index finger up) in Dvorak now, because in Lojban you basically never type Y with another vowel. Dvorak considered the most important English consonants to be [DHTNS]. This, again, skips R and L, but their placement on the top row probably has to do with letter combinations. In Lojban, the most important consonants appear to be [NRTLS], and I'd say that ' is under-represented in the list and belongs there also. So NTS can stay right where they are, and L should be moved to where D is (right index finger extended). This puts L in a handy position for all the common cmavo beginning with L. As for R, it has to stay on the top row, but it is involved in a lot of letter combinations. Let's put it in place of G (right index finger up). [CKMJD] come next. C is in almost a good place except that it makes {tc} difficult; M is debatable; J and K are way out of place. There's an opening where L was, R simply moved over, and F needs to get out of there. Change the top row from [FGCRL] to [JRKCD] and you get a nice arrangement that seems to make common consonant clusters work. Put P where Y was, completing the switch. This leaves, forgetting about punctuation for now, the bottom row. Q can go on the far left edge and W can go on the far right, replacing ; and z. H can get the former Q key, second from the left. Now that those are nicely out of the way, we're left with [BFGVXZ] to fill in to: [QH____M__W]. X, V, and B can stay where they were: [QH__XBM_VW]. The space between M and V can be filled by F, G can go where K was, and Z can go where J was. [QHZGXBMFVW] Now punctuation. The . is often used with vowels, so it needs to be on the right hand instead of the left. But the hyphen isn't used much. So we can switch them. Similarly, switch the comma and slash/question-mark. There's an opening where ' was, and the displaced semicolon can go there. This gives us the entire keyboard. English Dvorak: ' , . P Y F G C R L / = A O E U I D H T N S - ; Q J K X B M W V Z Lojban Dvorak: ; / - Y P J R K C D , = A O E U I L ' T N S . Q H Z G X B M F V W How's it look? Any suggestions? -- Rob Speer