raveling@Unify.com (Paul Raveling) (06/18/91)
In article <1991Jun12.161454.6519@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>, levene@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Robert A. Levene) writes: > > Considering that for the past 60 years people have stuck to the Sholes > (QWERTY) keyboard layout over the Dvorak (DSK), I'm not optimistic > that chord keyboards will be popular, ... The conclusion is true, but not all of us have stuck to these layouts. I've been using my own layout quite successfully for a bit more than a decade now, and find it more satisfactory than either QWERTY or Dvorak. The key principles that I use are: -- Frequency of use for each finger should be approximately proportional to its length. This assumes that strength and dexterity are partly a function of finger size. (Dvorak violates this, particularly with its placement of A and S). -- Finger motion should be minimized by clustering the most frequently used characters in or near home position. -- Vowels and the most frequently used consonants should be assiqned to opposite hands to maximize left/right alternation. Lesser principles are: -- vowels should go on the right hand, since on the average an individual vowel's frequency of use is higher than that of an individual consonant's. The expectation is that most people's musculature and dexterity is better in the right hand than the left; this is natural for right-handed people, but may also be true for lefties since so many tools are designed for right-handed use. This is another principle that Dvorak violates. -- For characters that are used infrequently, placement doesn't matter much. It's easier to leave most special characters wherever they are -- any gain in efficiency tends to get swallowed by learing overhead. Exceptions are frequently used specials such as period, comma, colon, and semicolon. -- Sometimes it's necessary to make up for design blunders from the keyboard designers. E.g., on a Sun type 4 I moved ~ & ` to the line feed key & mapped their old key to return because it's hard to reach over it to the real Return key. I'm about set to move Caps Lock up where the Pause key is (under the Caps Lock LED) because I rest my hand on it accidentally often enough to be a pain in the whatnot. For comparison I'll append a rendition of these 3 variants as they appeared on an HP 9000/300 series workstation's keyboard. Only special characters have moved to suit the Sun Type 4 keyboard that I'm using now or the PC/AT clone at home. ------------------ Paul Raveling Raveling@Unify.com Raveling: ------------------------------------------------------------ | ~ | ! | @ | # | $ | % | ^ | & | * | ( | ) | _ | + | Back | | ` | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | - | = |space | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | | | | : | { | } | | | | Tab | Z | W | D | T | F | U | O | I | Y | ; | [ | ] | \ | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | | | | | . | " | | |Caps|Ctl| X | G | R | S | L | B | E | A | H | , | ' |Retrn| ------------------------------------------------------------ |DEL| | | | | | | | | | > | ? | | |ESC|Shift | Q | V | C | P | J | N | M | K | < | / | Shift | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | |Meta| (Space) |Meta| ------------------------------------------- Dvorak: ------------------------------------------------------------ | ~ | ! | @ | # | $ | % | ^ | & | * | ( | ) | { | + | Back | | ` | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | [ | = |space | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | " | < | > | | | | | | | | ? | } | | | | Tab | ' | , | . | P | Y | F | G | C | R | L | / | ] | \ | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | | | | | | _ | | |Caps|Ctl| A | O | E | U | I | D | H | T | N | S | - |Retrn| ------------------------------------------------------------ |DEL| | : | | | | | | | | | | | |ESC|Shift | ; | Q | J | K | X | B | M | W | V | Z | Shift | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | |Meta| (Space) |Meta| ------------------------------------------- QWERTY: ------------------------------------------------------------ | ~ | ! | @ | # | $ | % | ^ | & | * | ( | ) | _ | + | Back | | ` | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | - | = |space | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | | | | | { | } | | | | Tab | Q | W | E | R | T | Y | U | I | O | P | [ | ] | \ | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | | | | | : | " | | |Caps|Ctl| A | S | D | F | G | H | J | K | L | ; | ' |Retrn| ------------------------------------------------------------ |DEL| | | | | | | | | < | > | ? | | |ESC|Shift | Z | X | C | V | B | N | M | , | . | / | Shift | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | |Meta| (Space) |Meta| -------------------------------------------