Subject: Lojban Dvorak

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 00:38:08 -0500

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