PDF reader not really user friendly...

[Edward Cherlin]

On Jan 26, 2008 1:58 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
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> david at lang.hm wrote:
> > after all the qwerty keyboard layout was designed to slow typing so that
> > the mechanical typewriters could keep up. there are better layouts for
> > typing (even some standardized ones like doevak) but the OLPC ships with
> > the qwerty layout in the US becouse that is the standard.

I use Dvorak. I have set up two scripts on my XO, named aoeu and asdf,
for switching between Dvorak and QWERTY. They are typed with the same
keystrokes. The command is

setxkbmap {dvorak|us-en}

> Weirdly enough, I think that qwerty is actually an advantage for this keyboard.
>  Qwerty was designed to avoid having consecutive letters be close to each other
> along the left-right axis.  This was done so that the corresponding typewriter
> hammers would not interfere.  In the case of the OLPC keyboard, the key pitch is
> slightly narrower than the natural spacing between adult fingers, which means
> that typing two consecutive letters with two neighboring fingers is difficult.
> Qwerty tries to minimize exactly this case.  Dvorak, which attempts to place
> digraphs next to each other, might be slower on this size keyboard.

This turns out not to be the case. The Dvorak keyboard was designed so
that successive keystrokes would be done by fingers on opposite hands
as often as possible. In particular, the letters under the left hand
are aoeui (including reaching over one column with the index finger).
So in words that have alternating vowels and the consonants
fgcrldhtnsbmwvz, alternating hands is the norm. Only the consonants
pyqjkx and punctuation are on the left-hand side.

> Three cheers for qwerty!

Hip hip, Foo!
Hip, hip, Bar!
Hip, hip, Blech!

> - --Ben
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-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay