• Bugs in OS support for switching layouts. In Mac at least, option-’ gives me æ and option-[ gives me ” because it’s modifying the QWERTY position character. Locking my screen with LockTight, I tell it my shortcut is shift-option-command-P, but I really have to hit L.
• Software that reads scancodes in some situations where it shouldn’t. Especially as a developer, I run across tools that don’t use the OS-provided character mapping.
• Pair programming – I would like to have a Dvorak keyboard, plugin to a qwerty co-workers machine, and both keyboards work at the same time.
• Sitting down at a QWERTY keyboard. People make fun of us when we can’t use their keyboard, but honestly, it’s really annoying. I’d like to have dvorak with me all the time.
• Working through remote X sessions, VMWare, over Synergy, or in the BIOS or bootloader – you can never be sure if you have us->dvorak mapped, or if it’s mapped twice. Especially when using more than one of those remote means.
• Really low-tech people are put off from trying dvorak by the prospect of changing a setting in their OS/windowing toolkit

There is a good solution, and dvorak and other alternative layouts would really benefit if we could find someone who has the ability and desire to do this:

Make a keychain-form-factor adapter, with a male and female USB-A connector, that converts and propagates USB-keyboard scancodes.
I think this just requires a USB keyboard controller and USB keyboard host controller chip (with accompanying capacitors and what-not and what-have-you) and an EEPROM or similar with a mapping programmed in. And a hacked-up enclosure.

I have taken the labels off five keys now, returning to their glorious and blank Das Keyboard state. I’m also still working on TypingHero, my Flex app that’s supposed to make it fun to type faster. Gabe helped me out over the weekend to improve the wiring of my mxml views to their backing controller classes. It’s great to work with true components, but it’s frustrating that using best practices in Flex is so contrary to the examples and sometimes the language makes it awkward.

Sadly my speed has leveled out over this month, and is stuck at half my QWERTY speed…

1/7
Net Speed: 33 WPM
Accuracy: 97%
Gross Speed: 34 WPM

1/21
Net Speed: 33 WPM
Accuracy: 97%
Gross Speed: 34 WPM

I’ll get a more useful and fun version of TypingHero soon, and of course I’ll speed up my typing considerably using it. Of course!

The paper clip method worked very nicely and never made me feel like I might break anything.

I feel a slight desire to proselytize. I’m not going to knock on doors with a book of mormon, but I would like to be scientific about gathering evidence to make my case.

Before the switch, I was pretty fast on qwerty:

typingtest.com – default settings, Zebras
Accuracy: 94%
Gross Speed: 58 WPM

Irrational side of…:
Accuracy: 96%
Gross Speed: 65 WPM

Then I changed keys, and my last blog post was 407 words in about an hour:

week 0:
6.8 wpm

Only 10 times slower… but I would forget the end of my sentences by the time I got there.

week 2
Accuracy: 100%
Gross Speed: 27 WPM

So now I’m up to half my original speed. This doesn’t exactly make the case, but I’m getting there.

I also made a quick Flash version of the typing lesson I’ve been working through, and would like to make a real game out of it. It’s at TypingHero.com.

It all started when I spilled some Guinness in my Apple keyboard a couple months ago. I tried to clean it up quickly, but after it dried, a couple keys didn’t work. I ran it through the dishwasher, I heard that can work on NPR, but although it came out clean as new, the bad keys were still on vacation.

After moving around the corner in my building I pulled the keyboard out again and decided to take another shot at repairs. I discovered that the keys pop out really easily, there’s a simple center post and two snappy clips. It was so much fun to pop out the keys that even though only Caps lock, Tab, and tilde are broken, I ended up with this:

So what would you do in this situation? Once all the keys are in a pile, it’s a perfect time to make some changes instead of putting them back in those lame places they started in. The name for those lame places is the QWERTY keybard layout. (Ironic how long it took me to type QWERTY…)

wikipedia:

[O]nce an operator had learned to type at speed, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another, forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also frequently blotting the document. A business associate of Sholes, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to speed up typing by preventing common pairs of typebars from striking the platen at the same time and sticking together. The effect this rearrangement of letters had on maximum typing speed is a disputed issue. Some sources assert that the QWERTY layout was designed to slow down typing speed to further reduce jamming.

So while QWERTY wasnt designed to be the slowest layout, it does try to help the typewriter deal with fast typers, and as a result, it is a slow and antiquated system that has become a anachronistic standard at best. Why do people still use it? Plainly, it is already on the keyboard, and people want to do what’s familiar. Maybe they don’t want to question common wisdom and norms. And sure, once you learn it, you can be pretty fast.

Programmers do like to question norms of course. And sometimes do wildly impractical projects, like using the fastest layout, Dvorak:

Once I had the keys in place, it took 10 seconds to switch keyboard layouts in OS X. Windows makes it easy too… you can probably find the tempting Dvorak option on your machine right now. Don’t you want to click it, and ditch that lame layout from the 1800’s? Look at the metrics, and imagine yourself Instantly typing 40% faster!

So that last claim is a bold lie. I’ve now spent almost an hour typing this, which is completely infuriating, so I’m going to get dinner. Check back in a week or two to see how long I can make myself do this.

(did I mention I’ve tried twice before?)

5:45 PM