[comp.unix.questions] Dvorak Keyboard

penneyj@servio.UUCP (D. Jason Penney) (03/21/90)

In article <674@sagpd1.UUCP> jharkins@sagpd1.UUCP (Jim Harkins) writes:
[snip]
>I realized that, while Dvorak was far superior (possible religious war warning)
>as long as the rest of the world used qwerty I probably should too.  So
>think about it.  If you try to switch daily between the 2 keyboard layouts
>you won't be very good at either.  Unless you're either willing to convert
>every keyboard you use, or only use 1 keyboard day in and day out, it's not
>worth the hassle.
>
>Now, if anyone wants to start a movement we replace qwerty with Dvorak.....

I beg to differ; I use both qwerty and dvorak at work.  It's true there 
was a terrible moment of truth (about 40 hours into learning dvorak) 
where I couldn't touch type EITHER keyboard -- cognitive disruption!
It went away with about another 10 hours of practice.

I too am a dvorak fan.  I have dvorak drivers for the IBM PC and all 
Suns.  I also have a learning program that currently runs on the IBM PC 
-- perhaps I'll get around converting the MS Basic to curses C sometime :-).

If you are interested in this software, contact my KISS server.  Route 
mail to penneyj@slc.com, and use jason-archive-request for the subject.
If your return address is peculiar (not domain based), your first line 
should be,

path from-me-to-you

(I connect to uunet and ogicse directly).  "send help" and "send index" 
are good for starters if you're not familiar with kiss.  Otherwise, 
here's the current contents of my dvorak subdirectory:

total 282
-rw-r--r--  1 penneyj     56762 Mar  5 09:50 Part01
-rw-r--r--  1 penneyj     56302 Mar  5 09:50 Part02
-rw-r--r--  1 penneyj     53038 Mar  5 09:50 Part03
-rw-r--r--  1 penneyj     49691 Mar  5 09:50 Part04
-rw-r--r--  1 penneyj     32318 Mar  5 09:50 Part05
-rw-r--r--  1 penneyj     31238 Mar  5 09:50 Part06
-rw-r--r--  1 penneyj      6416 Mar 19 17:10 dvorak.sun

Parts 1 through 6 contain the IBM keyboard driver and the learning
program.  Don't worry; the bulk of the learning program is the test data.
The keyboard driver allows you to switch between layouts, even while any
other program is running.

dvorak.sun is the trivial program to change the Sun console between
Dvorak and Qwerty.

I am also interested in public domain Dvorak driver software for other 
hosts.  It's best if it allows people to switch dynamically -- Qwerty 
will NEVER go away.  Sigh.

-- 
D. Jason Penney           Ph: (503) 629-8383
Beaverton, OR 97006       uucp: ...uunet!servio!penneyj (penneyj@slc.com)
"Computers are useless; they can only give answers" -- Picasso