Subject: Re: [lojban] The Dvorak of Lojban?

From: "Robert J. Chassell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 07:17:47 -0500 (EST)

I am curious if anyone has tried remapping his keys on his keyboard to 
something more pleasing for Lojban. A sort of Dvorak for Lojban.

I do not know much about Dvorak and how it makes typing nicer for English.

First, the Dvorak keymapping; on my system you have choices:

* A left handed keymapping, for if your right hand is amputated, or
if you are using it for another task than typing (and are
therefore `situationally handicapped').

* A right handed keymap, 

* The ANSI standard keymap for two hands, and 

* The most common keymap, which is what most people use.

(According to Marcus Brooks, "ANSI places both square brackets on the
same key (requiring a shift for one), omits curly brackets (which
usually end up both on the same key too), and leaves the +/= key on
the topmost row." Why the ANSI committee did this, I don't know.)

Here is Marcus Brooks; diagram of the standard Dvorak layout; other
keys -- mostly the number keys -- are the same as in QWERTY:

Shifted:
{ }
" < > 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

Lowercase:
[ ]
' , . 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

The advantage of the Dvorak layout is that you need to move your
fingers less; most of the keys you use are on the central row. Also,
English writers tend to alternate hands as they type a vowel follow
by a consonant followed by another vowel, and so on. And, most
interestingly, some of the sequences of consonants are typed in the
`natural finger order' which is outer or smallest finger inward.
Thus, you are more likely to type a `th' as in `the' than an `ht' or
an `sn' as in `snow' than an `ns'.

When we suffered through a batch of poorly designed keyboards, and
several people I worked with got repetitive stress injuries from
typing on them, we found that those who used Dvorak keymappings
suffered less.

According to a study by Aetna insurance some years ago, it takes about
2/3rd the time for novices (in their case, executives who used to
depend on secretaries) to learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard to some
reasonable speed such as 50 words per minute than on a QWERTY keyboard.

Others claim that the advantages of Dvorak keyboards are exaggerated.
I don't believe that -- at least for my kind of typing and for the
kinds of typing done by programmers developing GNU Linux -- the Dvorak
was superior. 

The problem with the Dvorak keyboard is that most people already know
how to type on a QWERTY keyboard and do not want to relearn. And the
advantage of relearning is low, especially on a computer, which is
after all a `super-typewriter' in that you can readily edit your
errors, change your mind, insert or move paragraphs anywhere you wish
(and with this paragraph, as it happens). The Dvorak keyboard
improves the process of typing a modicum. That was all you could do
with technology in the days of the typewriter. Computers, regardless
of keybinding, improve the process of writing.

In the days before computers, I purchased a Dvorak keyboard typewriter
learned and used it happily. 

But then I started working for a computer company whose equipment did
not provide ready keymappings, and which used a QWERTY layout. So I
relearned QWERTY. Eventually the company realized that it wanted to
sell machines in France and Germany and other countries with different
keymaps in the US and revised its software, but by then I had
relearned QWERTY and did not want to re-relearn Dvorak.

As for Lojban

...it may not make much sense until most 
of what I type is in Lojban. But I am still curious.

I hate to say it, but a Dvorak keymapping may be as poor for Lojban as
the QWERTY keymapping. The `l' key, for example, is off the center
row. It is where the `p' key is on a QWERTY keyboard. The Dvorak
keymapping is designed for English, not any other language.

Incidentally, in addition to keymappings, I find I have two Dvorak
typing courses on my system. I have never looked at either of them.

See:

Marcus Brooks
http://www.mwbrooks.com/

Pete's Dvorak Keyboard
http://www.ai.mit.edu/~szilagyi/dvorak.html

Critical review of Dvorak
http://www.reason.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.html

-- 
Robert J. Chassell [email-masked]
Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com