freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) (10/13/90)
A co-worker tells me that the keyboards used in the USA are less efficient
than keyboards used in the rest of the world....ON PURPOSE! Apparently,
typists fingers move fast enough to jam manual typewriters. Solution: make
a keyboard that is harder to use. Think about it. A and E are both
actuated by fingers on the left hand; pinky and ring finger respectively.
Could one of you who lives in an area where efficient keyboards are the
standard put the keys on the screen? I teach wordprocessing and would be
interested in trying a more effiecient letter-layout. Thank you in advance.
FYI the USA key layout is: QWERTYUIOP[]
ASDFGHJKL;'
ZXCVBNM,./ :)tpmg0848@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Magliery) (10/14/90)
In article <kcFyq1w161w@nstar.UUCP> freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) writes: >Could one of you who lives in an area where efficient keyboards are the >standard put the keys on the screen? I teach wordprocessing and would be >interested in trying a more effiecient letter-layout. Thank you in advance. are keyboards in other countries (that use the same alphabet) really different than ours (except for, i would expect, having keys for all the letters that come with diacritical marks)? i would think not. i hope you're not going to try to market a keyboard with a non-QWERTY layout. it'll never sell. also, if your students are beginning typists, what will they do once they get out of your class and try to type somewhere else? and if your students are *not* beginning typists, are they going to want to learn a different layout? i don't think i would. i'm happy enough with the speed i can manage (~100wpm on text) on (electronic) QWERTY keyboards. it was probably 3 or 4 years after i learned to type before i got to my current level. i wouldn't want to go back to zero. perhaps the improvement would be faster on a different layout, such as the critically-acclaimed (and i believe research-proven-better) dvorak layout. but i think apathy would prevent me from ever bothering. (in fact, i *know* it would, because i've known about dvorak for several years, and never bothered with it.) think about how long americans have gone without switching over to the metric system. yow. they'll *never* switch keyboard layouts. mag -- ____._._...___.....__.__.._..__ Tom Magliery mag@cs.uiuc.edu OR mag@uiuc.edu
freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) (10/15/90)
tpmg0848@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Magliery) writes: > In article <kcFyq1w161w@nstar.UUCP> freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) writ > >Could one of you who lives in an area where efficient keyboards are the > >standard put the keys on the screen? I teach wordprocessing and would be > >interested in trying a more effiecient letter-layout. Thank you in advance. > are keyboards in other countries (that use the same alphabet) really differen > i hope you're not going to try to market a keyboard with a non-QWERTY layout. > it'll never sell. also, if your students are beginning typists, what will > they do once they get out of your class and try to type somewhere else? > and if your students are *not* beginning typists, are they going to want to > learn a different layout? i don't think i would. i'm happy enough with the
freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) (10/15/90)
tpmg0848@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Magliery) writes: > In article <kcFyq1w161w@nstar.UUCP> freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) writ > >Could one of you who lives in an area where efficient keyboards are the > >standard put the keys on the screen? I teach wordprocessing and would be > >interested in trying a more effiecient letter-layout. Thank you in advance. > > are keyboards in other countries (that use the same alphabet) really differen > than ours (except for, i would expect, having keys for all the letters that > come with diacritical marks)? i would think not. > The layout of letters on the keyboard is different. The kbd you type 100wpm on was designed to make it HARDER to type. Why? Typists jammed manual typewriters by typing too fast. Most of the world uses a more efficient layout than QUERTY. Worperfect, Wordstar, Works, etc. ahve the capability to work with these more efficient boards. Students who know about the more efficient layout could switch the letters around (at work) and maybe get a raise for increased productivity. > i hope you're not going to try to market a keyboard with a non-QWERTY layout. > it'll never sell. also, if your students are beginning typists, what will > they do once they get out of your class and try to type somewhere else? > > and if your students are *not* beginning typists, are they going to want to > learn a different layout? i don't think i would. i'm happy enough with the > speed i can manage (~100wpm on text) on (electronic) QWERTY keyboards. it > was probably 3 or 4 years after i learned to type before i got to my current > level. i wouldn't want to go back to zero. perhaps the improvement would > be faster on a different layout, such as the critically-acclaimed (and i > believe research-proven-better) dvorak layout. but i think apathy would > prevent me from ever bothering. (in fact, i *know* it would, because i've > known about dvorak for several years, and never bothered with it.) > > think about how long americans have gone without switching over to the > metric system. yow. they'll *never* switch keyboard layouts. > > mag > -- > ____._._...___.....__.__.._..__ > Tom Magliery > mag@cs.uiuc.edu OR mag@uiuc.edu
john@nmt.edu (John Shipman) (10/15/90)
Tom Magliery (tpmg0848@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) writes: +-- | perhaps the improvement would be faster on a different layout, | such as the critically-acclaimed (and i believe research-proven- | better) dvorak layout. but i think apathy would prevent me from | ever bothering. +-- I was recently involved in a lengthy discussion of the Dvorak keyboard in the comp.misc group. I have attached some of my postings on the subject. I would be happy to correspond with anyone who is interested in this subject. ----begin included articles---- Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Optimal keyboards Message-ID: <1990Aug25.015334.16702@nmt.edu> Carl Turner (turner@webb.psych.ufl.edu) writes: +-- | PROs: * An optimal keyboard exists--the Dvorak keyboard, named after | its designer, August Dvorak. | * It's currently implemented in hardware on Apple //c and | available as a keymap on other machines: amiga, maybe IBM's. +-- I will take some credit for the availability of the Dvorak keyboard on the //c. I've been using this keyboard for some time, and I tend to rant about it with little provocation. One day I was ranting about it to my friend Tom Root, who just happened to be working on the operating system for the //c. +-- | CONs: * No one would use it. | * Switching from QWERTY to an optimal keyboard would be | difficult especially for people who use many kinds of | equipment: they would have to wait until ALL the machines and | keyboards are reconfigured. +-- I don't know how many people use the Dvorak arrangement, but *I* use it, and I'll continue to use it because it makes typing much faster and less error-prone. I also disagree with the second point, as I constantly use QWERTY keyboards as well, and I still retain a reasonable amount of touch-typing speed on them as well. I have three Heath H19's with remapped keyboard encoder ROMs, and also an aftermarket Dvorak keyboard for my PC-XT. If I ever get a workstation, a little tinkering with the /dev/kbd driver will take care of remapping that too. I am a contractor and have to use customer equipment a lot. I do about 35-40 wpm on the QWERTY keyboard and 70-80 wpm on Dvorak, touch typing in both systems. I don't believe that learning an improved system will decrease one's speed in the inferior system. The QWERTY keyboard layout is WORSE THAN RANDOM. Scholes, the inventor of that keyboard, was a lousy mechanical engineer, so he ANTI-ENGINEERED his keyboard to compensate for problems in his typewriter. I would be happy to correspond with anyone who wants to find out more about the incredible story of these two keyboards. Here is the Dvorak keyboard layout I have been using. This layout replaces a 10 x 3 rectangular area of the normal keyboard bounded by the Q, P, Z, and / (slash) keys of the QWERTY layout: left hand | right hand ? < > P Y | F G C R L / , . p y | f g c r l A O E U I | D H T N S a o e u i | d h t n s <--home row : Q J K X | B M W V Z ; q j k x | b m w v z Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.misc Subject: Re: Dvorak keys vs. QWERT Message-ID: <1990Sep7.055025.16732@nmt.edu> Summary: Doesn't bother me to switch back and forth Wes Hardaker (hardaker@iris.UCDavis.EDU) writes: +-- | Does anyone know both keyboards, and do you have a problem | getting confused? I doubt anyone just know the Dvorak style | since there are so few keyboards that support Dvorak. I | think this would be a problem switching from one to the other, | however, or is the brain intelligent enough to seperate the | two during their respective use. +-- I converted my personal equipment to the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, but of course I often have to use QWERTY. It doesn't bother me for long, as the feel of the keyboard tends to serve as a cue to tell me which layout to use. If I start using the wrong mental set, after noticing a few typos I tend to snap into the correct set. My usual pattern is to use full touch typing on Dvorak (not looking at the keyboard at all), but during casual use of QWERTY I tend to look at the keys. If I have to use QWERTY for more than a few minutes, my touch training on QWERTY kicks in. Disclaimer: I don't know if my experience is typical. I had 18 years experience touch-typing on QWERTY when I retrained myself on the DSK, and that was ten years ago. I seldom do more than an hour or two of typing a day. My QWERTY speed never got much beyond 40 wpm, but I can generally do over 70 wpm on the DSK. Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Dvorak keyboard---advantages Message-ID: <1990Sep1.082020.3529@nmt.edu> A number of people have asked me about the advantages of the Dvorak keyboard, so here are some excerpts from the article in which I first found out about the Dvorak keyboard: ``The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard: Forty Years of Frustration,'' by Robert Parkinson, from the November 1972 issue of a magazine called _Computers_and_Automation_. ---begin quoted excerpt--- BACKGROUND ON KEYBOARD DESIGN [The QWERTY keyboard] was designed experimentally by Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter, to SLOW THE TYPIST DOWN. ...The keys on the early machines...pivoted up to strike the platen (roller) from underneath.... Since the keys had no springs on them, they fall back into place by gravity. This meant their action was very sluggish, and if two keys that were close together in one quadrant of this ``basket'' were struck rapidly, one after another, they would jam. To overcome this problem, Sholes moved the keys around experimentally until the machine seemed to operate with a minimum of jamming. What he actually did was to make many commonly-used letter sequences awkward and slow to execute. Thus, by ``anti-engineering'' his typewriter from a human factors point of view, he was able to slow it down so it would function to his satisfaction. Now, when we have [keyboards] that are mechanically quite responsive, we are still bound by the old keyboard found on those first (1873) machines. What an irony! DEFECTS Upon analysis, Dr. Dvorak found that the [QWERTY] keyboard had several defects.... Hand overload: This occurs when more than one character has to be typed by the fingers of the same hand.... The fastest and easiest strokes occur for characters on the home row and on opposite hands. Unbalanced finger loads: [QWERTY] overworks certain fingers and underworks others, all out of proportion to their capabilities (taking into account strength and dexterity of each finger.) Excess finger movement: Because of the way the characters are spread out over the whole keyboard, fingers must reach from and jump over the home row far too often....on the standard keyboard the ``home row'' is not really a home row at all since only 32% of all typing is done there. Awkward strokes: ...many high frequency letter combinations are unnecessarily complex and difficult to execute (just try typing ``December'' or ``minimum pumpkin'' without looking!). RESEARCH After several years of intensive research, during which hundreds of keyboard arrangements were studied and rejected, Dr. Dvorak received a patent for his Dvorak Simplified Keyboard in 1932. The DSK solves the basic problems inherent in the [QWERTY] keyboard. Better hand alternation: The hand overload problem is solved by maximizing alternate hand stroking. This is particularly important in maintaining rhythm. As much as possible, successive strokes should fall on alternate hands. This allows what is called ``play for position.'' That is, while a finger on one hand is in the process of stroking a key, another finger on the opposite hand can be getting into position to stroke the next key---and so on.... Dr. Dvorak solved this problem by putting the vowels (which comprise 40% of all typing) on the left hand side of the keyboard, and the major consonants which go along with those vowels on the right hand side. This guarantees good hand alternation since most syllables are made up of vowel-consonant-vowel letter sequences. / , . P Y F G C R L Top row A O E U I D H T N S Home row ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (home finger positions) ; Q J K X B M W V Z Bottom row Better finger loads: ...the DSK arrangement precisely divides the finger loads according to relative finger capabilities. More work (70%) done on the home row: [diagram showing that on the DSK, 22% of typing is done on the top row, 70% on the home row, and 8% on the bottom row; for QWERTY, those numbers are 52%, 32%, and 18%.] Awkward strokes minimized: The rest of the characters, comprising the typing that has to be done off the home row, are placed on the DSK in positions on the remaining rows according to how hard it is to strike the keys in those rows. This is done such that the total number of awkwards strokes is minimized (the ``awkwardness'' of various types of strokes was determined using high-speed time-and-motion movies)....since awkward strokes are sometimes slower by a factor of three to one, and since the DSK reduces the number of these strokes by a factor of ten to one, one can see how it is possible to achieve a faster typing rate on this keyboard (and why Dr. Dvorak's students hold 12 out of 15 unbeaten world typing records.) --- end quoted excerpt --- The rest of this article describes the history of the keyboard, or, as the next section head says, ``If it's so good, why is nobody using it?'' However, this article is already pretty long. If enough people request it, I will post that story here. For now, though, here's a relevant quote from the end of the article: ...Dr. Frank Gilbreth (under whose direction Dr. Dvorak began the research that led to developing the DSK), the father of time and motion study, said, ``It is cheaper and more productive to design machines to fit men rather than try and force men to fit machines.'' ----end included postings---- P.S. I have already had requests from comp.misc to post the segment of the ``Computers and Automation'' article. I'm still planning to post it here when I get the time; I'll cross-post it to comp.misc also. -- John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, NM/john@jupiter.nmt.edu ``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.'' --Dave Farber
marcel@cs.caltech.edu (Marcel van der Goot) (10/16/90)
In <kcFyq1w161w@nstar.UUCP> Bill Williston (freewill@nstar.UUCP) writes > A co-worker tells me that the keyboards used in the USA are less efficient > than keyboards used in the rest of the world....ON PURPOSE! Apparently, > ... That the standard QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down the typist is well-known, and explained in some other postings. What some other posters seem to miss though, is that the optimal layout of a keyboard depends on the language you are using. The QWERTY keyboard was made slow for typing English; it might therefore, by accident, be better for other languages. The same is true of course for Dvorak's layout: I don't know whether English was the language he optimized for, but quite likely he would have found a somewhat different layout had he taken a different language as basis. (E.g., in Dutch you quite often have more than one vowel in a row, rather than vowel-consonant-vowel.) I cannot speak for the world in general, but I have some doubts about the claim in <Xyk2q4w161w@nstar.UUCP> (from Bill Williston again (?)) that > Most of the world uses a more efficient layout than QUERTY. (QWERTY, I presume.) Are you sure? Where do they do that? I only know about the situation in The Netherlands (and USA), and the standard keyboard there is certainly QWERTY. There is an entirely different keyboard, called the velo-type (I think). I have no references here, so in the following please forgive me if I remember some things incorrectly. The keyboard was introduced about 6 or 7 years ago, I think the inventor is Dutch. It has only a small number of keys, on the order of 10 or 12. The typist presses several keys at the same moment (it's more "pressing" than "hitting" keys for this keyboard), resulting in several letters. There is no one-to-one correspondence between keys and letters (obviously, since there are not enough keys), but the meaning of a key depends on the other keys that are pressed concurrently. To resolve this, the keyboard has a built-in micro-processor. Disadvantages: Because there is no one-to-one correspondence, you have to study first before you can use it --- one-finger typing just won't work. I don't think that it takes longer to master it than it takes to really learn typing on a QWERTY keyboard, though. At the time, they were expensive, say about $1000 for a keyboard. As with all computer products the price will probably come down. You need a different keyboard for different languages (but as explained above, that is inherent to an "optimal" keyboard), the design of which requires substantial research. It exists in Dutch and in several other languages, probably English and German, maybe French. It is intended for typing text, not computer programs, and I'm not sure it has extra symbols like @, #, *, <, and cursor-control keys. Advantages: It is MUCH faster. Supposedly one can type at full speech-speed (what is produced is normal text, not some form of shorthand). Because the keyboard is so different, using it does not affect ones ability to use more conventional keyboards. In conclusion I'd say the investment pays off for professional typists, but not for say a computer programmer. Does anyone know about its use? Is this what they use to generate on-the-fly subtitles for the hearing-impaired on television (using teletext)? Or do they still not do that? Marcel van der Goot marcel@cs.caltech.edu P.S. Any ergonomy in the design of a computer keyboard is of course completely destroyed if you must continuously take your hand off the keyboard to move the mouse.
quinn@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Clark Quinn) (10/16/90)
On the subject of chord keyboards, I wrote this note to another group recently. It seems appropriate here. >> This is a plea for someone to come up with an input device for the off hand/ >> non mouse-using hand. > >I think the inventor of the mouse, Doug Engelbart, did have an input device >for the other hand. As I recall it was a simple five-fingered keyboard. >I'm not sure what the keys did. > I believe, although I'm not certain, that the five-fingered keyboard Englebart used was a chord keyboard, where combinations of key presses could specify different characters. This has always been a reasonable idea, with the one caveat that the combinations can be hard to learn. An acquaintance of mine came up with a ten-key (ie two hand) chord keyboard that he claimed was faster and easier than even a Dvorak keyboard*. He tried to get Apple to invest in it. I was involved in a CHI lab at the time (at UCSD) and he came and gave a presentation. Don Norman (leader of the lab and my advisor) thought that the most innovative thing about the work was the key mapping that Will had devised (chord keyboards were old news). As far as I know, nothing ever came of Will's keyboard, nor the use of chord keyboards. (* Don has also evaluated Dvorak in comparison to other keyboards and decided that while, on average, they're 10-15% faster, they're not worth the cost to reimplement for the entire country {or the entire english speaking world, yes, Dvorak is English specific}). It may turn out that the combination of a five-fingered chord keyboard for one hand and pointing/clicking device for the other (be it mouse, trackball, or pen) is the most efficient input method for two hands. Or consider a ten-keyed chord keyboard (which should easily cover all the separate keys you might want) that could roll around on the desktop. It will require, however, a good analysis of the efficiency of various designs of both the physical characteristics of the keyboards and the psychological issues in mapping key combinations to characters.. I sympathize with the original posters request and hope that further research might devise such a device. -- Clark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clark N. Quinn (412) 624-9581 Learning Research and Development Center quinn@unix.cis.pitt.edu University of Pittsburgh quinn@pittunix.bitnet Pittsburgh, PA 15260
staff@hp340.sublink.ORG (Alex Martelli) (10/19/90)
marcel@cs.caltech.edu (Marcel van der Goot) writes: ... >> Most of the world uses a more efficient layout than QUERTY. >(QWERTY, I presume.) >Are you sure? Where do they do that? I only know about the situation >in The Netherlands (and USA), and the standard keyboard there is >certainly QWERTY. France uses AZERTY, mostly identical to US layout, and I doubt the slight changes are for efficiency. Some old Italian typewriters used to use QZERTY, but QWERTY's about unheard of on computers (I think some typewriters are still made that way... assuming ANY typewriters are still being sold today, that is:-). The most enraging change they generally make in national-language European keyboard is gratuitous switching-around of punctuaction, including making unavailable or hard-to-get-at such 'fancy' keys as '~', '{', '#', and so on (you can imagine how NICE that is for somebody doing Unix shell interaction, or C programming, etc... which is why I ordered an US keyboard FROM the US to replace my Italian one!!!). I don't THINK Japanese computer users make much use of altered keyboards - at least, the kanji-input system on SONY workstations is on a completely different basis than straight keyboarding (semi- clever window-based stuff, etc). -- Alex Martelli - CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Stalingrado 45, Bologna, Italia Email: (work:) staff@cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex@am.sublink.org Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434; Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only; any time of day or night).