Dvorak or not...
January 7, 2008
Dvorak layouts...
This seems to be one of those geekish topics that systematically ends up in a neverending holy war between believers and sceptical pragmatics. Both groups have convincing arguments on their side. As for myself, I am inclined toward the pragmatics' side: why going through the mind blowing frustration of learning from scratch a new layout when my fingers are already fluently typing on an other completely different and much more standard layout?
Not to mention the hassle of having to switch layout on every computer I will ever work on afterwards? And having to learn to touch-type for real? Because if I keep glancing at the keyboard, I am going to get all confused. Plus the fact that the default dvorak layout doesn't support my two other main languages, French and Swedish? And that I would need to get this new layout working under both windows, mac osx and the various linux flavors that I am using daily? And worst of all, learning over all my emacs shortcuts!
It feels like a bit too many obstacles in exchange for a hypothetical gain in typing confort...
But then, how can I really know it isn't worth the pain if I don't even give it a try?
So I did it: I just switched to dvorak.
I found a layout that fits my needs: svorak a1, described here. I got it running under both osx and windows (though a bit painfuly for the later: I had to compile an AutoHotKey binary for svorak a1).
And to get things right from the start, I bought an ergonomic keyboard, a typematrix ezreach 2030. To avoid the temptation of glancing at the keyboard, I covered all its letters with small white paper stickers :)
Now the sheer geekiness of my desktop setup frightens me: dual screen, weird looking keyboard with half the keys hidden behind greasy small paper bits...
I am giving dvorak 1 month to convince me.
This seems to be one of those geekish topics that systematically ends up in a neverending holy war between believers and sceptical pragmatics. Both groups have convincing arguments on their side. As for myself, I am inclined toward the pragmatics' side: why going through the mind blowing frustration of learning from scratch a new layout when my fingers are already fluently typing on an other completely different and much more standard layout?
Not to mention the hassle of having to switch layout on every computer I will ever work on afterwards? And having to learn to touch-type for real? Because if I keep glancing at the keyboard, I am going to get all confused. Plus the fact that the default dvorak layout doesn't support my two other main languages, French and Swedish? And that I would need to get this new layout working under both windows, mac osx and the various linux flavors that I am using daily? And worst of all, learning over all my emacs shortcuts!
It feels like a bit too many obstacles in exchange for a hypothetical gain in typing confort...
But then, how can I really know it isn't worth the pain if I don't even give it a try?
So I did it: I just switched to dvorak.
I found a layout that fits my needs: svorak a1, described here. I got it running under both osx and windows (though a bit painfuly for the later: I had to compile an AutoHotKey binary for svorak a1).
And to get things right from the start, I bought an ergonomic keyboard, a typematrix ezreach 2030. To avoid the temptation of glancing at the keyboard, I covered all its letters with small white paper stickers :)
Now the sheer geekiness of my desktop setup frightens me: dual screen, weird looking keyboard with half the keys hidden behind greasy small paper bits...
I am giving dvorak 1 month to convince me.
