[Nuclear1]

Nope, no dvorak. Can't play Freespace on dvorak.

QWERTY

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I don't think I could've played FreeSpace on Dvorak either. The layout would mean that all the controls would be screwed.

[Pred the Penguin]

Actually not really, unless you use letters for controlling your flight. O_o

[FSW]

One of the reasons that QWERTY still exists, is the same reason that Americans use imperial units of measurement. Making such a fundamental switchover, even to an objectively superior system, is a hassle.

It's a shame, because young people are forced to learn the inefficient, archaic system that we are used to.

[iamzack]

the dvorak layout seems like it will become really popular with nerds first and everntually spread into the mainstream or something... like eveyrhting else

[The E]

No, I don't think so. Remember, the Dvorak Layout has been around since the 1930s. Right now, there are only very few of these Keyboards available in the market, and that propably won't change, unless the biggest buyers of keyboards start requesting them.

[iamzack]

*shrug*

This one retardedly smart girl I know uses a dvorak keyboard.

It's that it's all different from common keyboards and has supposed benefits and blah blah that I think nerd types would pick it up first.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

No, I don't think so. Remember, the Dvorak Layout has been around since the 1930s. Right now, there are only very few of these Keyboards available in the market, and that propably won't change, unless the biggest buyers of keyboards start requesting them.

I've never even seen a Dvorak keyboard being sold here in Singapore.

...they're even rarer than Macs!

[S-99]

That's because when you overpay for an apple product which is always...you're actually purchasing the lifestyle.

[Grizzly]

I'd say Davorak (or whatever) is just as random as qwerty.

[Enigmatic Entity]

When I first learnt to type (I was about 6 or 7), I thought "Why don't they just have

abcdefghij
klmnopqrs
tuvwxyz

instead of this random array?"

Of course, now I'm used to the QWERTY layout.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I think they used to. Now they don't.

[Dilmah G]

*Skips Thread and reads AE's post*

They used to have the vowels all on one line....good way to screw up your keyboard. I believe they fixed that during the 'typwriter stage' anyway.

[Snail]

Sounds like a bad-guy from Dr Who...

Nonsense

I lol'd so hard.

[The E]

Well, qwerty has been around since 1874 (according to wikipedia). it was designed in such a way to reduce the amount of mechanical failure on typewriters and to distribute the letters in a way that enables typists to effectively utilize both their hands. The dvorak layout is (supposedly) an even better distribution, because its letters are arrayed in such a way to make sure that both hands are used the same way. (This also means that there is no such thing as a "common" dvorak layout, as it has to be altered substantially for every language.)


The E - doing the research so you don't have to!

[Zacam]

Having started on Dvorak, and then forced in to QWERTY for school purposes, I enjoy being back on Dvorak.

And while it is tedious, Freespace can be re-mapped to utilize the Dvorak layout rather well. If it would just take the OSes Regional and Language settings in to account, that would be more for teh win, but apparently (like most improvements seem to be getting these days) it would require breaking the pilot files code some.

The down side for converting a Qwerty keyboards are:
Either having removable keys that do not have funky grooves for the home row keys, or overlaying stickers on them.
(EX: Logitech are easy to move the keys around on. Saitek and half the M$ keyboards are not)

In BIOS or DOS window environments, because the ASCII character pins on the ROM are still sending Qwerty signals, you still have a Qwerty keyboard in these environments. Some keyboards, this can be corrected on. Such as the G15, which is what I am using.

I don't know what my previous Dvorak typing rate was, but my Qwerty was at it's highest @ ~90wpm error free. It is now closer to ~125. I rarely can manage to type that fast when in a free form conversation because of the nature of how my brain works, but it comes in handy any way.

[Stormkeeper]

... I've never even heard of DVORAK. Regardless, I think that if you grew up with DVORAK, and you're used to it, you'll be able to type very fast. Ditto for using QWERTY. It's mostly muscle memory, imo.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I was once told that the most primitive keyboards had their keys arranged in alphabetical order.

[S-99]

When I first learnt to type (I was about 6 or 7), I thought "Why don't they just have

abcdefghij
klmnopqrs
tuvwxyz

instead of this random array?"

Of course, now I'm used to the QWERTY layout.

The random array of letter really helps out. Otherwise wit abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz on the keyboard in order. You'd be using one hand a lot more than the other for typing based on the letters that you have to reach which would be inefficient.

This reminds me of kindergarten in the 1988 when i was 4. They had all of these apple computers loaded with typing software that was themed by the muppet babies. Sure i knew my alphabet, and i didn't know the point of the software since i don't remember the teacher telling me why we were going on the computers. It was obviously to teach keyboarding, but i didn't know that. I guess other people in my class knew how to read, i didn't. I just liked kermit the frog and did whatever i could on the keyboard to make him show up again.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

When I was eight, I was the fastest typist in my class. We had a typing program on the Windows 95 PCs in our schools, and we had to type about ten to fifty lines of words. Our lesson was due to end at recess, but I finished first and early, so I was released ten minutes before everyone else in my class.