Re: Qwerty and Dvorak touch-typing.

["Walter Jowers" walter.jowers@xxxxxxxx]

As a guy who's quite a good qwerty touch-typist, I'd venture a guess that
the training it would take to overwrite 30 years of muscle memory would more
than offset the fractions of seconds I'd save by going Dvorak.

Also, there's this: There will be times, I'm sure, when I'll need to sit
down at somebody else's qwerty keyboard and just get something done. I'm
afraid if I tried it with a brainful of Dvorak re-training, my head would
explode like that guy in Scanners.

WJ

----- Original Message -----
From: "P Ferreira" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 5:19 PM
Subject: Re: Qwerty and Dvorak touch-typing.


> Michael-
>
> I gave up Qwerty for Dvorak in 1983 and I've never looked back. I wasn't
> much of a Qwerty typist. So it made no sense for me to try to maintain
those
> old skills. However, I did know a woman who remained highly proficient on
> Qwerty even after she took up Dvorak.
>
> I think that you may overestimate the need for Qwerty once you switch.
> Every system running windows can be easily made to run Dvorak. (It's in
the
> "properties" section of the standard US keyboard. You'll need to download
> some files from Microsoft to enable Dvorak with DOS, though.) And if you
> need to type on a standard typewriter there are -- or at least there
were --
> available Dvorak "balls" and "wheels" (or whatever they're called) that
> immediately transform many electric typewriters.
>
> You should also realize that in addition to greater speed there is less
> fatigue. Besides typing much faster, I can type for longer periods of
time.
> Since the hands move much less with the Dvorak keyboard, you should be
more
> relaxed when you type. And Xywrite can, of course, easily load a
customized
> Dvorak keyboard.
>
> Phil Ferreira
> ferreira@xxxxxxxx
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Edwards 
> To: XY-Write 
> Date: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 5:53 PM
> Subject: Qwerty and Dvorak touch-typing.
>
>
> >                         Michael Edwards.
> >
> >   Having just spoken about the kak virus, I wonder if I could ask
> something
> >else here. I'm not sure if it's too off-topic or not, but I'm sure there
> will
> >be people here who know the answer.
> >   For some years I've been thinking of learning to type on the Dvorak
> >keyboard, because I've heard it can enable touch-typing up to 30% faster
> than
> >does the qwerty one. There's been one thing that's made me hesitate
> though, and
> >I seem to have been unable to find out about it, even over quite a few
> years.
> >It's to do with the fact that I already touch-type on the qwerty
keyboard,
> and I
> >wonder whether, if I learn the Dvorak keyboard, I would lose the ability
to
> >touch-type on the qwerty one (or at least become less accurate or slower
on
> it),
> >because my mind would tend to get the two systems confused. I would
really
> like
> >to know if this is a real possibility before I try learning a second
> system,
> >only then to find out the hard way.
> >   If this is a known danger of trying to learn to touch-type on two
> different
> >types of keyboard, I would give up the idea, because I don't want to lose
> the
> >ability to touch-type on the qwerty keyboard - being able to do it only
on
> the
> >Dvorak keyboard would effectively limit my ability to efficiently use
only
> one
> >keyboard in the world - my own. I think this limitation would (for me)
> outweigh
> >the advantages of typing a little faster on a Dvorak keyboard.
> >   If anyone knows about this, I would be very interested to hear from
> them.
> >Does anyone touch-type on both keyboards? - or has anyone tried to learn
> both
> >and found out the hard way that it doesn't work?
> >
> >   Does XY-Write allow you to configure a Dvorak keyboard? (I will be
> very
> >surprised if I hear that it doesn't allow this.)
> >
> >             Regards,
> >             Michael Edwards.
> >
> >
> >
>
>