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I'm a Dvorak user myself since ~2006, and it is good. The main benefit is not the speed, but much less fatigue from typing: you move your fingers far less. Thi
by Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
I'm a Dvorak user myself since ~2006, and it is good. The main benefit is not the speed, but much less fatigue from typing: you move your fingers far less.
This does come at a cost: hotkeys are usually a mess, especially if you have a second language layout (Cyrillic in my case), sometimes working differently dependent on layout, and hotkeys positions are typically optimised for QWERTY.
Interestingly, all Dvorak advantages on regular keyboard become severe disadvantages on smartphones: Dvorak is optimised for alternating hands while typing as much as possible, but when you type with one thumb, you constantly need to move your finger from one side of a keyboard to another. One could probably come with a screen keyboard layout optimized to type with one finger, but I'm yet to see such keyboard.
- lbourdages 3y agoOSX has a Dvorak-Qwerty-⌘ layout where commands use the Qwerty letters so people switching can keep their muscle memory. It helped when I tried to learn, but I abandoned because I felt like the effort wasn't worth it. I already type fast enough for my needs.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoI actually tried that and it's very confusing, because now no keys are corresponding to new positions of English letters. I ended up creating my own Dvorak and Cyrillic layouts, so that Cyrillic layout has hotkeys on their Dvorak positions (in most apps, but not all), and Dvorak layout has some keys like -,= on the same positions as ЙЦУКЕН Cyrillic layout. Still, I didn't yet find a way to make this layout default for a system: macOS refuses to use one of these on lock screen to enter password, but that's a minor inconvenience.
- kenhwang 3y agoI switch between Dvorak and QWERTY on my computer keyboards primarily because of the shortcuts being a mess. But since I only exclusively type with two thumbs on my phone, Dvorak is noticeably faster than QWERTY.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoI usually hold my phone with just one hand, and, sadly, my hand has only one thumb.
- scott00 3y agoMessagease is an on-screen phone keyboard optimized for single finger use: https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php I get about 30 words per minute with it.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoVery interesting, thank you. I'll definitely try it out.