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“QWERTY wasn't designed to solve type bar jamming” [pdf]
- The_suffocated 2y agoVery interesting article. I don’t understand, however, how shorthanders used typewriters for short-writing. The figure on p.168 (above fig. 9) is not explanative.
- yorwba 2y agoThe numbers above the words indicate which finger (index, middle, ring) is used to press a key, the letters below indicate the hand (left or right). Basically a precursor of touch typing that doesn't use the little fingers and doesn't always use the same finger for the same key. The actual shorthand would be written on paper, with the typewriter being used to expand it to a more readable form.
- The_suffocated 2y agoThank you. I mistakenly thought the typewriter was used to type shorthands.
- somat 2y agoHa. so the reason that I is next to 8 is that early typewriters used the I as a 1(no independent 1 key) and the morse transcription company wanted to type years(1871) quickly. I love it.
- readthenotes1 2y ago"The legend was referred by Prof. James V. Wertsch,[22, 23] a professor of the Department of Psychology, Clark University, then it was regarded as an established theory in the field of psychology. " The reproducibility crisis struck early, it seems.
- analog31 2y agoIn the next century, researchers will discover that the GUI wasn't designed to make computing harder by forcing people to find cryptic little symbols, randomly arranged on the screen, and break routine operations into tiny sequences of manual steps. And it wasn't called a "personal computer" because it turned each person into a computer.
- sudahtigabulan 2y agoThis reminds me of Motel of the Mysteries :^)
- zaik 2y ago"A common misunderstanding is that GUIs were invented to give ancient computers enough time for processing by slowing down user input speed. However our research shows that counterintuitively input latency was better at the time when GUIs were invented and then gradually got worse..."
- qbane 2y agoAnd paid subscriptions are not even necessary for offline apps
- ForTheKidz 2y ago> GUI wasn't designed to make computing harder by forcing people to find cryptic little symbols That was absolutely the result of moving to a 2d-ui: icon spam and little discoverability. I can't say I've ever wanted an icon toolbar when I have a menu right there that's activated by common keystrokes without clogging my screen. Of course, some people only know "save" as a floppy-disk icon. Good luck raising them the remaining way.
- userbinator 2y agoWhatever its intent, QWERTY definitely hasn't impeded the fastest typists, who can regularly exceed 200wpm these days. Odd to see no mention of the Linotype layout, also known as the "Etaoin Shrdlu", given that was also a common competing keyboard layout in that era.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoHumans do not have fins, but Micheal Phelps can still cut through water. That elites can thrive is not a compelling argument when most people just want technology to get out of the way. An alternative layout with commonly used symbols on the home row makes the QWERTY deficiencies immediately apparent. Significantly less effort required for writing prose when using something like DVORAK.
- karmakaze 2y agoI got into alternate keyboard layouts and developed my own (roughly an optimized NIRO). When I tried using it on my small Surface Go I found that my fingers would 'jam' typing letters close together, so I leave that in QWERTY so it happens much less.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoI can believe it. For a physical keyboard, I would much prefer a layout with a DVORAK-like home row, but probably not for mobile. The imprecision of touch and swiping text entry likely do markedly worse when high frequency characters are on top of each other.
- paleotrope 2y agoI'm sure somebody has created a software keyboard where the more used characters are simply larger than the less used ones.
- sadeshmukh 2y ago
- weinzierl 2y agoI don't follow the connection to Morse. Can someone summarize their argument in a comprehensive way?
- bluGill 2y agoThe first typewriters were for telegraph operators turning morse code into written letters.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Horffupolde 2y agoIn Morse telegraphs, some words are abbreviated and so characters have a different frequency distribution. For example RECEIVED may be shortened to RX, making X much more frequent than otherwise.
- kens 2y agoIn original Morse code, S was "dot dot dot", E was "dot", and Z was "dot dot dot space dot". So if you were transcribing Morse code back then, it was ambiguous if you received a "Z" or "SE". To handle this, the "S" key was moved from the right side to a position between "Z" and "E" so you could quickly type either "Z" or "SE" once you figured out what was sent. Modern (i.e. 1865) Morse code changed "Z" to "dash dash dot dot", eliminating the ambiguity.
- weinzierl 2y agoYes, but how does it help to have the ambiguous characters close. I could understand if they had left out Z completely similar to early typewriters having no 0 but using the O character instead. The ambiguous Z would always be written as SE. If they wanted to resolve the ambiguity it makes sense to move SE and Z further apart so the operator does not easily make a typing mistake in addition to the recognition mistake easily.
- jrootabega 2y ago
- frompdx 2y agoThe keyboard arrangement was incidentally changed into QWERTY, first to receive telegraphs, then to thrash out a compromise between inventors and producers, and at last to evade old patents. Interesting article. The connection to Morse code makes a lot of sense (C being similar to S). The requirement to move I below 8 to type 1870 or 1871 quickly is hilarious in retrospect. At the time who could have known the decision to focus on efficiency for the coming decade could be so enduring?
- volemo 2y ago> efficiency for the coming decade They were future proofing though: the "I" is between "8" and "9", so they were optimising for the next 130 years, not merely coming decades.
- Dwedit 2y agoNow why was fricken Semicolon given the prime real-estate of being an unshifted key?
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoTo make it easier to code in C and Pascal ;-)
- andyferris 2y agoIf we consider 100-year-old prose, we used the semicolon in places you see a dash now; like this - not this. It was important; it was located with period and comma and apostrophe.
- Izkata 2y agoIt's still used for complex lists: https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/semicolons_in_lists.htm https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/semicolons_in_lists....
- xethos 2y agoBecause the smart way (with "M" there instead) was patented. From TFA (emphasis mine): > In order to evade the patents that were assigned to the Type Writer Company, WS&B slightly changed the design of No. 2 including the keyboard arrangement (Fig. 9), where M was moved next to N, and C was exchanged with X. It was the QWERTY keyboard arrangement as seen nowadays.
- Sniffnoy 2y agoSo, to summarize, the original typewriter layout (1868) was alphabetical, with the top row (A-N) going left-to-right and the bottom row (O-Z) going right-to-left. Then (1870), the vowels (including Y) were pulled out and put in a separate top row. After that (by 1872), changes were made in order to better support the use case of people receiving Morse code, and that's when we finally start to see something that looks like QWERTY. Additional changes later got it to the modern form, but by 1872 something QWERTY-like was in place. And yeah -- if you look at the bottom two rows of a QWERTY keyboard, you can still see what remains of that alphabetical ordering, being left-to-right on one row followed by right-to-left on the row below!
- jader201 2y agoThis still doesn’t explain one of my biggest peeves with keyboards: Why are the keys angled up and to the left — for both hands? Was this to solve the type bar jamming? Or is that also an urban legend? I know there are modern keyboards that solve this, by either splitting the keyboard and angling in the natural direction of your fingers (so to the right for the left hand, and vice versa), or just ortholinear keyboards that have straight rows of keys (but still angled ergonomically). But that ridiculousness has lived on, such that even “economic” split keyboards will still angle both sides to the left.
- kragen 2y agoThe key levers had to be staggered on their way back to the type bars so they wouldn't hit each other. The angle isn't ergonomic in origin but mechanical. You probably haven't ever seen a mechanical typewriter, but maybe you can find one to experiment with, or at least a YouTube video showing the workings.
- Y_Y 2y ago> You probably haven't ever seen a mechanical typewriter Really? I see them all over the place. They're very rarely used for typing (except by hipsters in parks) but the are tons used for decoration or in historical scenes.
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoI'm more interested why some of us have qwertZ instead of Y there :D (Z an Y are swapped... mostly a non issues, except with some games, where Z and X are some gameplay controls, and we have a Y down there)
- doktorhladnjak 2y agoIsn't this based on letter frequency? In languages like German, Z is a fairly common letter. Y not so much. Whereas in English it's the opposite. They put the more commonly used letter in the center.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoOr shorter: Qwerty wasn't designed.