3 ms·

In fact, QWERTY was designed to prevent jamming of early typewriters, allowing to type faster. http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwe

In fact, QWERTY was designed to prevent jamming of early typewriters, allowing to type faster. http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of...

taeric 6y ago
This is a patato patahto thing. It would only jam if you went too fast, so the story goes. Get rid of the jamming, or force a max speed that is lower.
- samatman 6y ago
  It's actually a critical distinction. If QWERTY was designed to be the worst possible layout, to make typing slow in order to prevent jams, then now, with n-key rollover, we're all stuck with the worst possible layout. If instead it was designed to be the most jam-free possible layout, with a secondary goal of being as fast as possible given that criterion, it's probably not that bad, and we'd live in a world where the fastest QWERTY typists aren't that much slower than the fastest typists, period. And, in fact, we see that, while the world record was at one time held by a Dvorak typist, the prize at present belongs to QWERTY: https://www.typing.com/blog/fastest-typists/ https://www.typing.com/blog/fastest-typists/
  - stevage 6y ago
    I wonder if anyone has ever set out to design the worst possible layout, and if so, what it would look like.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Could be a fun game. For starters I'd move the most useless keys to the index finger home row positions, perhaps pipe and backtick. Then I'd invert the sense of shift, so you have to hold it to type anything lowercase. I'd take all the most common two-letter sequences and I'd move those letters under the weakest finger. So T H E O A R S and N replace the punctuation keys on the right side. This should make it a real hassle to type "the", especially considering that you'll be holding down shift, which should itself be somewhere hard to reach, such as where 6 usually goes.
      - I_complete_me 6y ago
        Can't figure out whether you are a sadist or a masochist but I love how you ran with _that_ particular ball. Kudos to you.
    - benhurmarcel 6y ago
      http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?worst_layout http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?worst_layout
    - sarbaz 6y ago
      It's worth pointing out that the worst possible layout for keyboards might actually be one of the best possible layouts for phones.
  - taeric 6y ago
    I am not claiming to support that it is the worst. Just saying that, if it helps you type faster by keeping the device from jamming because you are typing too fast, then it is by definition helping you type faster by limiting the speed that you can type. Hence, slowing you down so that you don't go so fast that you crash. As per the claim of the fastest typist. I would be shocked it steno doesn't win that, hands down. Edit: Added in "because you are typing too fast", which was part of the original claim. I should have noted I don't know if I believe it, but I did want to raise that something that makes you go as fast as you can by keeping you from going too fast, both slows you down and makes you type faster. At the same time.
    - garaetjjte 6y ago
      That's some tortuous logic. If it helps type faster by keeping the device from jamming, then... it helps type faster. If it only jammed because you type too fast, you could(/must) just slow down, no fancy layouts necessary. It didn't jam because you pressed any key too fast, it jammed when you pressed adjacent typebar too fast, and with proper layout (making sure that common digrams weren't on adjacent typebars) these situations could be minimized. Weird thing in these discussions is considering that most jam-free possible layout and as fast as possible was somehow different design goal. But, in world of early mechanical typewriters, it was the same! You couldn't have "fast" layout that jammed because it wouldn't be fast, and if you had jam-free layout it probably was fast, because it weren't forcing you to depress each key completely before pressing next.
      - taeric 6y ago
        But only in the sense that my kid's training wheels help them go faster on a bike. Since that only works up to a certain speed. So... yeah, it is somewhat convoluted, but not as much as you seem to be implying. Take "kids chopsticks". They speed up kids, obviously. They slow down folks that know what they are going. (Really, I could probably list a huge list of things that all work in this vein.)
    - samatman 6y ago
      Stenography is specifically excluded, because it's a shorthand: the actual form of the final text is reconstituted from abbreviation. The system described in the OP text is a form of stenography, conducted with a normal keyboard. I would be surprised if a competition typist, presented with an already-shortened text, couldn't beat out most stenotype stenographers working off the original text. It would be unfair for a typing competition to exclude a chorded keypad, and I don't know of they do or not. It's completely fair to not accept "ts cmptly fr" as the transcription of "it's completely fair", no matter how it's typed in.
cortesoft 6y ago
Even that theory has been questioned: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the-legend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-... It seems likely the keyboard layout was the result of working with typists to develop the best layout.
- garaetjjte 6y ago
  Linked paper [0] correctly states that QWERTY wasn't designed to slow typists down, but authors argue that it was not designed to avoid type-bar jams, but only vaguely suggest some letters were moved around due to Morse operation practice. They base that conclusion on analysis of radial distances of common digrams on typebar basket. But there's no justification why only angle criteria was considered, and they omitted that layout clearly minimizes adjacent typebar digrams, which is shown by [1] and [2]. They also without much evidence reject idea that TYPEWRITER ending up on same row was intentional design, but curiously enough [2] calculated odds of that occurring randomly as about 1 in 2500, so it might have been. [0] https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/139379/1/42_161.pdf https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433... [1] http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of... [2] https://cyber.sci-hub.se/MTAuMTAxNi9qLnJlc3BvbC4yMDEzLjAzLjAwNw==/kay2013.pdf#view=FitH https://cyber.sci-hub.se/MTAuMTAxNi9qLnJlc3BvbC4yMDEzLjAzLjA...

taeric 6y ago

This is a patato patahto thing. It would only jam if you went too fast, so the story goes. Get rid of the jamming, or force a max speed that is lower.

samatman 6y ago
It's actually a critical distinction. If QWERTY was designed to be the worst possible layout, to make typing slow in order to prevent jams, then now, with n-key rollover, we're all stuck with the worst possible layout. If instead it was designed to be the most jam-free possible layout, with a secondary goal of being as fast as possible given that criterion, it's probably not that bad, and we'd live in a world where the fastest QWERTY typists aren't that much slower than the fastest typists, period. And, in fact, we see that, while the world record was at one time held by a Dvorak typist, the prize at present belongs to QWERTY: https://www.typing.com/blog/fastest-typists/ https://www.typing.com/blog/fastest-typists/
- stevage 6y ago
  I wonder if anyone has ever set out to design the worst possible layout, and if so, what it would look like.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Could be a fun game. For starters I'd move the most useless keys to the index finger home row positions, perhaps pipe and backtick. Then I'd invert the sense of shift, so you have to hold it to type anything lowercase. I'd take all the most common two-letter sequences and I'd move those letters under the weakest finger. So T H E O A R S and N replace the punctuation keys on the right side. This should make it a real hassle to type "the", especially considering that you'll be holding down shift, which should itself be somewhere hard to reach, such as where 6 usually goes.
    - I_complete_me 6y ago
      Can't figure out whether you are a sadist or a masochist but I love how you ran with _that_ particular ball. Kudos to you.
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?worst_layout http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?worst_layout
  - sarbaz 6y ago
    It's worth pointing out that the worst possible layout for keyboards might actually be one of the best possible layouts for phones.
- taeric 6y ago
  I am not claiming to support that it is the worst. Just saying that, if it helps you type faster by keeping the device from jamming because you are typing too fast, then it is by definition helping you type faster by limiting the speed that you can type. Hence, slowing you down so that you don't go so fast that you crash. As per the claim of the fastest typist. I would be shocked it steno doesn't win that, hands down. Edit: Added in "because you are typing too fast", which was part of the original claim. I should have noted I don't know if I believe it, but I did want to raise that something that makes you go as fast as you can by keeping you from going too fast, both slows you down and makes you type faster. At the same time.
  - garaetjjte 6y ago
    That's some tortuous logic. If it helps type faster by keeping the device from jamming, then... it helps type faster. If it only jammed because you type too fast, you could(/must) just slow down, no fancy layouts necessary. It didn't jam because you pressed any key too fast, it jammed when you pressed adjacent typebar too fast, and with proper layout (making sure that common digrams weren't on adjacent typebars) these situations could be minimized. Weird thing in these discussions is considering that most jam-free possible layout and as fast as possible was somehow different design goal. But, in world of early mechanical typewriters, it was the same! You couldn't have "fast" layout that jammed because it wouldn't be fast, and if you had jam-free layout it probably was fast, because it weren't forcing you to depress each key completely before pressing next.
    - taeric 6y ago
      But only in the sense that my kid's training wheels help them go faster on a bike. Since that only works up to a certain speed. So... yeah, it is somewhat convoluted, but not as much as you seem to be implying. Take "kids chopsticks". They speed up kids, obviously. They slow down folks that know what they are going. (Really, I could probably list a huge list of things that all work in this vein.)
  - samatman 6y ago
    Stenography is specifically excluded, because it's a shorthand: the actual form of the final text is reconstituted from abbreviation. The system described in the OP text is a form of stenography, conducted with a normal keyboard. I would be surprised if a competition typist, presented with an already-shortened text, couldn't beat out most stenotype stenographers working off the original text. It would be unfair for a typing competition to exclude a chorded keypad, and I don't know of they do or not. It's completely fair to not accept "ts cmptly fr" as the transcription of "it's completely fair", no matter how it's typed in.

cortesoft 6y ago

Even that theory has been questioned: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the-legend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-... It seems likely the keyboard layout was the result of working with typists to develop the best layout.

garaetjjte 6y ago
Linked paper [0] correctly states that QWERTY wasn't designed to slow typists down, but authors argue that it was not designed to avoid type-bar jams, but only vaguely suggest some letters were moved around due to Morse operation practice. They base that conclusion on analysis of radial distances of common digrams on typebar basket. But there's no justification why only angle criteria was considered, and they omitted that layout clearly minimizes adjacent typebar digrams, which is shown by [1] and [2]. They also without much evidence reject idea that TYPEWRITER ending up on same row was intentional design, but curiously enough [2] calculated odds of that occurring randomly as about 1 in 2500, so it might have been. [0] https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/139379/1/42_161.pdf https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433... [1] http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of... [2] https://cyber.sci-hub.se/MTAuMTAxNi9qLnJlc3BvbC4yMDEzLjAzLjAwNw==/kay2013.pdf#view=FitH https://cyber.sci-hub.se/MTAuMTAxNi9qLnJlc3BvbC4yMDEzLjAzLjA...