[oclug] Dvorak (was Re: UNIX philosophy (was Re: vim rulez...))

[Gary Sandine]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2001 at 09:02:33AM -0600, Taavi Burns wrote:
> In a normal workday a good typists fingers cover up to 20 miles on a
> QWERTY keyboard, but only one mile on a Dvorak keyboard. QWERTY typists
> achieve barely half the speed of Dvorak typists, who hold most world
> records for typing speed. QWERTY typists make about twice the errors that
> Dvorak typists make. For a beginner to reach a speed of 40 words per
> minute, the person would need 56 hours of training on a QWERTY keyboard
> (an average of four hours per day during my two weeks of chicken pox) but
> only 18 hours on a Dvorak keyboard. 

I have a friend who tried to convince me of this - he was faster
on Dvorak than on QWERTY (a former QWERTY user) after about
2-3 weeks of using Dvorak only (he disassembled a keyboard and
reconstructed it the best he could for the Dvorak map).