I´m moving to the Dvorak keyboard to preserve my wrists. Simple, yes? Here´s a case for it. And some software — multi-OS — named for the Esperanto word for keyboard.
Typed in Dvorak.
Why Dvorak and how
Personal and cultural reflections, plus the District of Columbia and some Esperanto
My wife takes a professional and personal interest in why particular technologies are adopted while others fall into disuse. The Dvorak keyboard is one of her favorite examples of a superior tool that lost out to an inferior one.
Please report how long it takes you to train your fingers and brain to type on the Dvorak. I’m interested in trying it myself. But I don’t know if I can ever get used to pronouncing “Dvorak” the anglicized way.
I learned the Dvorak layout 25 years ago on a four hour flight to California from Virginia and started using it full time the next day. It was slow going for the first month, and more than six months were needed to get the error rate down. I am only sorry I did not make the change when I was in high school thirty years earlier. It would have made a big difference for me in doing my academic work in college and graduate school. The younger a person is the faster they can learn a new system.
Now I use the Dvorak layout on both the flat keyboard and the DataHand keyboard (which is my dominant tool for keyboard entry and has been for the last twenty years).
I used to work for the UUA years ago, but I do not have any idea about UU ministers speaking
Esperanto. I do not have a good current idea about who to ask!
I got bored one summer in high school and decided to learn Dvorak. I had taught myself QWERTY and never used the correct fingers. But, since I didn’t re-label my keys for Dvorak, I had to learn to type with the correct fingers by looking at the chart next to my monitor.
I was pretty slow for a couple months, but after 15 years or so now, I’m pretty quick at it. I can still type either way fairly easily, but I think I’m a little quicker at Dvorak and it feels much more comfortable and natural.
I read about the Colemak layout a couple years ago, and it seems pretty interesting. I may have to give that a shot someday too.
Others in my office said it might take 4 to 6 weeks to get up to speed. That seems about right.