Designed to be slow.

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

                         Michael Edwards.

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[Nicholas Clifford:]

>On Qwerty vs. Dvorak: I was always told, tho this may be in the urban legend
>category, that Qwerty was designed by early typewriter manufacturers precisely
to
>slow the typist down so the clunky machine would have time to respond to each
key
>strike.
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   Yes, I've always accepted this as true. I can't quite prove it with
authoritative references or anything, but I've read it often enough that I
accept it as an established fact. I don't think it's an urban legend, and have
never before heard it referred to thus.
   Apprently the type bars used to jam together if the next one rose before
the previous one had fallen down. I had this happen during the brief period I
was touch-typing before I started using a computer.

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>And as others have done I have fixed my Xywrite
>(and my Word also) to take my abbreviations and expand them into real words --
>e.g., butic becomes bureaucratic, a word I hate typing, but which, as both a
>Chinese historian and an American citizen, I find useful.
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   That sounds like that shorthand business Morris Krok was talking about -
and it's certainly something I'd be very interested in investigating. (Morris,
if you are willing to send it, I'd like a copy of that program, please. You
mentioned a couple of files you had relating to that.)
   I think "minimum" would have to be one of the very worst words to type.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.