Dvorak

[snoopy369]

Alt+0233 (é) just like on a QWERTY keyboard

[Alinestra Covelia]

Most European keyboards have a special shortcut for é. In the UK it was something like "Alt + Ctrl + E" but I could be misremembering.

[Dauphin]

That works, but you can save yourself a keystroke.

Alt Gr + e = é

[Traianvs]

over here that's the euro symbol

[Dauphin]

I get that from Alt Gr + 4.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
This may be similar to how it feels for stroke patients.

LUCKY Dvorak!!

[Alinestra Covelia]

I am currently typing at about 16 words per minute. This had better be bloody well worth it...

[Jon Miller]

lol

One important thing is how easy is it to get to the { } ] etc type keys

those are the important ones

JM

[N35t0r]

Yeah. The default spanish keyboards have [], {} accessible only via the Alt Gr key, and <,> on the same key, which is a PITA when programming.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Typing speed is definitely up, though nowhere near my usual Qwerty speed. When I'm not thinking about it, I type satisfactorily quickly.

I also found that hitting Control + Shift will toggle between the two modes. That happened a few times before I figured it out and each time I was like WTF!

Additionally, if you use the Pinyin speller for Chinese characters, there is no way that I have found to make it follow Dvorak. You must use Qwerty.

This is not a huge problem since I can alternate between thinking in Mandarin and in English, so I suspect the muscle memory corruption will not be so bad in that specific case.

[Alinestra Covelia]

An update. Today I'm typing in Qwerty because the school computers are using it and I can't change them. I'm back up to my usual insane typing speed, but I do notice the key placements are really really inconvenient. It actually makes my hands feel uncomfortable stretching all the way to the lower row and the corners of the keyboard.

This is a good exercise as I was starting to grow discouraged with Dvorak and thinking that I probably should call it a day. No, sirree - I'm gonna stick with Dvorak and keep on gaining speed with that. There really is a big difference, I'm finding.

Also, I've noticed that my back doesn't feel so tired when I get back from my daily bike rides. I'm not sure whether Dvorak has anything to do with this though. :P

[Q Classic]

So, you'd recommend perhaps switching over to Dvorak?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
Typing speed is definitely up, though nowhere near my usual Qwerty speed. When I'm not thinking about it, I type satisfactorily quickly.

I also found that hitting Control + Shift will toggle between the two modes. That happened a few times before I figured it out and each time I was like WTF!

Additionally, if you use the Pinyin speller for Chinese characters, there is no way that I have found to make it follow Dvorak. You must use Qwerty.

This is not a huge problem since I can alternate between thinking in Mandarin and in English, so I suspect the muscle memory corruption will not be so bad in that specific case.

You can change the ctrl-shift to something else in the keyboard settings.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
So, you'd recommend perhaps switching over to Dvorak?

Yes, but with important caveats.

First, it's going to be tough. Generally there is no typing tutorial support, and even the general courtesy of having keys correctly labelled is going to be absent. I printed out a copy of the Dvorak layout and taped it to my desk and that helped a little bit. Initial typing is agonizingly slow and you'll make loads of mistakes and it will be terribly frustrating.

Second, it's going to be lengthy. I waited until my summer vacation began and I was in a place where I could genuinely devote two weeks to just getting to grips with the layout and the system. Don't try this unless you have plenty of time to devote to it or your productivity will plummet.

Third, it's very tempting to "dumb down" your typing and your word choice to stuff that you already mastered. I compare the length of this Qwerty post against my Dvorak ones and I'm amazed at the difference. I wonder whether a lot of seemingly illiterate posters on message boards might actually be intelligent people who just can't navigate a keyboard too well and thus their posts don't show their full cognitive abilities. It's hard to resist the urge toi simplify stuff so you don't have to type it all out. I admit I failed in several respects. But past a certain point it's key to improvement so that your fingers can memorize how to type lengthy stuff.

But the end result is definitely worth it. I've just typed this entire post in Qwerty in a fraction of the time it wouild take me to type it in Dvorak, but I'm not quitting. The Qwerty layout is really, really inefficient and it shows in my stretching and straining. One of the reasons I swtiched was that I feared there might be some creeping carpal tunnel syndrome appearing in my wrists and hands. Typing even this brief message in Qwerty has reawakened all that with a vengeance.

Once you get the hang of Dvorak, you'll quickly see that a lot of the letters are placed a lot more forgivingly. The word "the" is almost impossible to misspell now (sorry, LordShiva!) and similar words like "that" and "there" are easy to. Even words with a "gh" in them like "right" and "thought" are easy, especially where the "ght" are consecutive. They're all right next to each other in Dvorak. My hands generally move around far less so that's a big plus.

I don't like the placement of the "k" and "f" keys, which are in the "v" and "y" positions on Qwerty. All the vowels are bunched together under the left hand home keys which oddly makes it harder for me to hit the correct one (though I'll always be within one key of the right one). And of course the []-=;'/,.<> symbol keys will be very confusing to start with.

Still these are small problems. The Qwerty layout isn't for me and I'm glad I made the change to Dvorak. Once I get really fluent with it I may alter it even further to suit my own bizarre and perverted typing preferences.

[LordShiva]

AC, your box is full

I mean your PM inbox, of course