

Ask HN: Using alternative keyboard layouts? - tower10

Just as a mind exercise, I spent a couple of hours learning to type with the Dvorak keyboard layout last night.  After noticing my ZXCVQW shortcuts would be all over the place and not all that practical one-handed with a mouse, I gave the Colemak layout a shot for a few hours tonight (it retains those keys, plus punctuation, in the same place as QWERTY).<p>What I found really quite suprised me:<p>- It's way easier to re-train yourself than I thought it would be (faster, at least...it still requires a massive amount of concentration)<p>- QWERTY is beginning to feel horribly inefficient (I'd read before that your fingers do less walking with Dvorak but I never appreciated just <i>how much</i> more.  It feels like even less movement with Colemak.)<p>What are your experiences with alternative layouts?
======
trickjarrett
In college I ran across a guy who used genetic algorithms to shift the
keyboard around based on his own typing patterns. He took code he typed, blog
posts, emails, IMs, everything and logged it and after two weeks of collecting
he then ran it through as the data source for genetic algorithms, assigning
numeric values determining the viability of the arrangements based on distance
a hand has to travel, etc.

He found DVORAK was a very good layout, but he came up with another one which
was extremely odd and unusual. I played around with it but found that I never
had the time to retrain my hands, I was always in the middle of a semester and
thus not really free to be less productive.

This is a good blog post but not what I specifically discovered:
<http://bit.ly/17e6G>

------
snowboardbum
It took me about two weeks to learn Dvorak well enough to type at a reasonable
pace. I don't think I type any faster, but it's much more comfortable than
QWERTY so I enjoy typing more.

OS X has a Dvorak keyboard map that switches back to QWERTY while you're
holding down the command key. I don't know if there's an equivalent for
Windows.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I've been using Dvorak non-stop for the past three years, and I absolutely
love it. I don't type any faster than I used to either, but I've lost most of
the wrist pains that I had when using Qwerty, and I enjoy the fact that
everything is in a much more logical position.

I find that most keys are in "better" positions for general development, even
in vim (I always use the arrow keys, not hjkl). Having the colon key right
next to shit is extremely convenient, as the ability to one-hand `:qa` when
I'm done. The dash/underscore key is infinitely easier to reach on Dvorak,
which is immensely helpful when dealing with C and PHP code that tends to use
underscores for variable and function namings. My only complaint is that the [
] brackets are further away, but the gains I have from the rest of the layout
more than make up for that inconvenience.

I also took the time to remap the physical keys on my laptop, and purchased a
couple inexpensive mini keyboards (no numpad) that have laptop-style keys and
were reportedly very easy to switch layouts, and I use one at home and took
the other to my job. Having physically-mapped keys went a long way towards
helping me out, and at least helps out anyone else who sits down at my
machines.

~~~
kirubakaran
_> colon ... right next to shit_

Funniest Freudian slip I've encountered :-D

------
a-priori
I have used Dvorak full-time for 5-6 years now. Back in high school, a friend
of mine discovered Dvorak and a few of us switched cold-turkey; everyone else
switched back within a week, but I'm still going! It took about two weeks for
me to be comfortable with it. If you're like me, it's the punctuation that
will screw you up the most when switching.

I'm an Emacs user, but I learned Emacs after I learned Dvorak, so I don't find
the keybindings to be awkward. I do some strange things, such as using Escape
as the Meta key (with my left thumb on the chord letter).

Vim, however, is hard to use (e.g. "HJKL" are in the "JCVP" positions), which
may be part of the reason I gravitated to Emacs. For games, I either rebind
the in-game commands, or I switch to QWERTY while I'm playing (e.g. "WASD"
being in the ",A;H" positions is just no good).

~~~
Hovertruck
Is it wrong that I use the arrow keys in Vim?

~~~
silentbicycle
Nah. The navigation keys on the home row are a throwback to when terminals
were less likely to handle control keys correctly. If that's not a problem you
have, then don't worry about it.

You'll probably benefit from getting the commands to move by paragraphs,
functions, pairs of () {} <>,

------
aoeu
I taught myself Dvorak many years ago during lunch breaks using this tutor (I
think the webpage was much simpler back then, though the content looks the
same).. <http://www.gigliwood.com/abcd/lessons/>

Although I could type quite well from an early age (despite the ZX Spectrum's
rubber keys) I never learnt to touch type Qwerty. Learning Dvorak forced me to
touch type and rest on the home keys properly. Using a "normal" keyboard also
meant I couldn't cheat and look at the keys when using Dvorak.

Probably due to now touch typing, Dvorak is faster for me (and more comfy).
I'm forced to use Qwerty often enough however that I can switch between the
two fairly easily.

I'm in the UK but use the US-Dvorak layout as that is standard with Windows.
I'm therefore missing the pound sign but ALT-156 gets me through the odd
occasions I need it. I have tried the UK version on Linux but couldn't find
the exact same layout for Windows and am too lazy to re-create it myself. The
US version is good enough for me.

I tend to use the old DOS style keys for cut/copy/paste (Shift-Delete, Ctrl-
Insert, Shift-Insert) due to the odd xcv layout others have mentioned. I
learnt emacs after the switch so the layout seems fine to me. I haven't taken
the time to learn VI.

Windows is a little awkward as switching layout with the taskbar icon only
changes the active window and changing the default input language seems to
miss things like the start menu.

I think an ergo keyboard is the next step (I can feel my wrists are pushed
into a slightly unnatural position) but am yet to try one. This makes a lot of
sense to me also but again I'm yet to try it..
<http://www.tlb.org/keyboardchop.html>

------
Tichy
I've found that Yoga is more effective in preventing wrist pain. Also I don't
think typing speed is typically the limiting factor in coding speed. Even if
it was, maybe switching to a less verbose language would be more useful than
switching keyboard layouts, in my opinion.

------
justinchen
I haven't tried an alternative layout, but I do use a Kinesis countoured
keyboard and that has made typing less painful for me. My hands rest very
naturally on the keyboard and there's less distance to travel when tapping the
keys. <http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage_pro.htm>

~~~
mazer
I went whole hog and switched to the Kinesis Contoured _and_ to the Dvorak
layout. I'm an Emacs user, and had been one since before the switch. I'd also
touch typed qwerty before the switch.

A few comments:

* The first week or two is almost completely unproductive. You spend most of your time screaming at your fingers to just shut up and get used to the new arrangement.

* Once you make the adjustment, although your typing speed goes up, it doesn't go up by a large amount. The real benefit of Dvorak is typing comfort. Also, your accuracy will probably increase a bit.

* Switching to dvorak while using Emacs was not a problem at all. Not sure if it would be more difficult for Vim users.

* Switching to the Kinesis Contoured is a vast improvement over those "regular" keyboards most people use.

* After the switch, I rapidly and completely lost all my ability to touch type in qwerty. It just vanished in that first week or so. Nowadays, if I'm stuck on a machine without dvorak, I'm reduced to ridiculously slow hunting-and-pecking. If I were to open Emacs or Vim on such a machine (and I know the basics of Vim), I would scarcely be able to quit either program without damaging something.

* Things are a bit of a pain on Macs, since they have that extra "Command" key, and the Contoured only really makes Ctrl and Alt readily available (2 Ctrl keys and 2 Alt keys). You can remap Command to one key of one of those, but you don't want to lose any of them if you're an Emacs user.

~~~
mcxx
That's one reason why I'm not so keen on learning Dvorak - you won't be able
to write efficiently on any other computer than yours. Until now, it was just
my assumption, that by learning Dvorak (or any other layout as a matter of
fact), you'll lose your QWERTY-fu. Thanks for sharing.

I'll probably stick with QWERTY and a Kinesis keyboard.

~~~
jobenjo
I've been using Dvorak/Kinesis for about 4 years, and I agree mostly with
what's said. After a while, I found I could still use QWERTY, at least at a
decent enough level that I could just grab someone's computer and not bother
remapping (though sometimes I do that too).

The funny thing is every time someone grabs my laptop, they are totally
freaked out.

------
jdknezek
I've been using the Dvorak layout for at least 9 years, and with the right
hardware I've been able to get around the weird ZXCV placement. I currently
use a 2030 from <http://www.typematrix.com> . It has function key mappings
that place cut, copy, and paste directly below the ZXCV portion.

Also, you may want to try the Capewell-Dvorak layout by Michael Capewell at
[http://www.geocities.com/smozoma/projects/keyboard/layout_ca...](http://www.geocities.com/smozoma/projects/keyboard/layout_capewell.htm?20098#CapewellDvorak)
. Mr. Capewell has an evolved layout as mentioned by trickjarrett, but the
Capewell-Dvorak layout attempts to be a simple correction to some glaring
issues in Dvorak like the inconvenience of the ZXCV placement, typing G and H
on the same finger, placing A under the pinky and O under the ring finger,
etc. I haven't had the time to spend to learn it, but I think it would be well
worth the endeavor for someone just learning their second layout.

------
lliiffee
There is quite a bit of evidence that Dvorak superiority is a myth:

<http://www.reason.com/news/show/29944.html>
[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/221/was-the-
qwerty-...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/221/was-the-qwerty-
keyboard-purposely-designed-to-slow-typists)

~~~
jerf
And quite a bit of evidence that suggests that the "myth" arguments are
recycled propaganda from a guy in the early twentieth century who had an axe
to grind. Since nobody's actually done significant, unquestionable science on
the topic, it's hard to know.

The concept of somebody having an axe to grind about keyboard layouts strikes
us as weird in the 21st century when switching keyboard layouts is one quick
command in Linux, but back then there was _money_ at stake. I take the whole
argument both ways with a grain of salt and say that since there is no
respectable science, personal experience is the only thing that you can use to
decide.

(A lot of people come to understand that science is superior to anecdotes and
personal experience, but when there is no science, anecdotes and personal
experience are still better than nothing. If that bothers you, consider the
contrapositive, and what it would mean for that to be false.)

I note that I modded you up, though, because the articles are still
informative and useful to come to your own conclusion about what I've said in
my comment.

~~~
lliiffee
> And quite a bit of evidence that suggests that the "myth" arguments are
> recycled propaganda from a guy in the early twentieth century who had an axe
> to grind.

Really? Where? (I'm not being sarcastic-- you are being specific enough that
you clearly have something specific in mind.)

~~~
silentbicycle
I'm not the poster above, but the best-known example of propagandizing about
them is a paper called "The Fable of the Keys" by Liebowitz and Margolis
(<http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html>), which dragged the Qwerty vs.
Dvorak issue into the middle of an academic holy war about the free market.
Much of the resulting Qwerty vs. Dvorak arguments have really been about
_economics_ , not their actual merits _as keyboard layouts_. (The only
argument about the layouts themselves in the paper concerns whether typing on
Dvorak is inherently _faster_.) The two links lliiffee gave above are by the
authors of "The Fable of the Keys" and a newspaper column including a
refutation by marketing professor, respectively. (I'm not sure who the "guy in
the early twentieth century who had an axe to grind" jerf mentions is,
though.)

Now, I really don't care about economic ideology, but I like facts. The Dvorak
keyboard places more frequently used letters on the home row than Qwerty* .
Also, all of the vowels are on the left hand, which means that typing will
generally alternate between hands.

If you agree that it is better to spend most time typing on the home row (to
reduce finger travel and general hand contortion/RSI) and to not type several
letters in a row on the same hand (compare "reverberated" to "antiskepticism"
on Qwerty, for example), then Dvorak is objectively better by your standards.
(All bets are off if you're typing in Czech or something, of course.)

* Specifically, "asdfg hjkl;" vs. "aoeui dhtns". Semicolon! I suppose Qwerty could have PrintScrn/SysRq there instead, though.

~~~
jerf
That's definitely the biggest one I was thinking of. QWERTY v. Dvorak has gone
in many strange directions, but if you look for the actual _science_ , it is
at best quite split, and at worst, all the relevant studies were done by
people with very strong preexisting opinions, leaving us with not much to go
on. (I include Dvorak's own studies here, for the sake of argument.)

But the claims that Dvorak has _no_ advantages over QWERTY really don't pass
the smell test. It's almost certainly more a matter of whether it's _worth_ it
for someone to switch, on which I'm very ambivalent.

There's also the interesting question of whether it would be better to start
on Dvorak, which I'll have to ponder here in the future now that I have a
baby. Personal experience would suggest that someone raised on Dvorak is much
more likely to learn actual touch typing.

(I was on QWERTY for over a decade and still doing the same wandering-hands
thing everybody else does, because QWERTY doesn't reward touch typing. Touch
typing on QWERTY is like the official way to swing a baseball bat; everybody
has to learn it, but hardly anybody does it and even at the pro level
everybody does their own thing. Dvorak and most of the other alternate layouts
reward it very strongly. You don't even have to _teach_ it, it just
_happens_.)

~~~
silentbicycle
> It's almost certainly more a matter of whether it's worth it for someone to
> switch[.]

Agreed. For programmers, I would say the odds are good - you'll be doing _a
lot_ of typing, and RSI is a real concern. For people who do a lot of typing
on other peoples' computers, planning around what's widely available (qwerty &
vi on Unix, for example) is probably a better choice.

> QWERTY doesn't reward touch typing.

Good observation! Dvorak seems more clearly designed with touch-typing in
mind, I think.

(As a data point: I type "wandering-hands" on Qwerty at 95-105 wpm, and about
same on Dvorak. The typing isn't the bottleneck.)

------
silentbicycle
I use Dvorak, and have for about two and a half years. At this point, the
benefits seem sufficiently obvious that I wouldn't go back to Qwerty. It took
me maybe two or three weeks to get reasonably proficient with it, and after a
month or so it was a non-issue. (It's a completely different matter if your
primary keyboard layout is German or something, though.)

FWIW, I use Emacs (heavily), and Dvorak works quite well with it -- all the
C-x C-v C-c C-s etc. stuff isn't all clustered on the left hand, which is
usually also the hand pressing Control.

Also, as a data point: I don't have any problem switching between Qwerty and
Dvorak as necessary, though now the former feels like a parody of a good
keyboard layout. (Seriously. Semicolon, home row. J, home row. Why?)

------
gommm
I've been using colemak for the last 3 months and the result has been very
positive: \- The wrist pains I used to have disappeared (since that was the
main reason to switch, the switch is a definite succes) \- It took me about 1
month and an half to regain my normal speed (my biggest problem was the
inversion of 'r' and 's')

I never really managed to type in a proper way (though I did touch type with 7
fingers, I didn't have my fingers in the proper row and the proper position),
since starting colemak I started having a correct finger position since it
just feels more natural to keep your finger in the home row when so many
letters are there.

------
Eliezer
Dvorak. It's not faster but your fingers get a _lot_ less tired. Cured my
carpal tunnel syndrome.

------
xmilestegx
I switched over to the Dvorak layout about 2 months ago and I'm getting pretty
good with it, but still am not up to speed mostly because when trying to
'think' type I end up making alot of mistakes. I'll do really well with a
little concentration on typing but as I focus on the thinking I tend to make
what I'll call mistake streaks where I'll get the same letter wrong 3-5 times
before getting it right.

My Qwerty fingers are completely gone and I find it a pain to use since I
learned to touch type in the early 90s and now have to lift my hands and look
at the keyboard all the time when using that layout on someone elses computer.

Keyboard shortcuts and punctuation have been my least favorite parts of the
switch. I still get them wrong all the time and not having the shortcut keys
on the left hand is a bit of a pain.

I'm going to stick with Dvorak in the hopes that I things get better as I move
forward. I switched mostly as a preventative measure to avoid the RSI issues I
see in this industry alot, but I can't yet recommend switching to others.

~~~
zcrar70
I switched just over a year ago - it didn't take me too long to get up to an
acceptable speed (45wpm), but it's taken quite a lot longer to get up much
higher than that. I'm currently between 60 and 70 wpm, and I still find I need
to think about the typing to get up to that type of speed.

The 'mistake streaks' do get better as you go along though - I find that I
just switch between thinking about what I'm typing and the keyboard layout
when I make a mistake, which helps avoid repeated mistakes. The context switch
is annoying though, ideally I'd like to do around 90wpm with 100% accuracy,
which is why I've started practicing with a typing program again.

------
3pt14159
I really tried using DVORAK layout in 2003. The short cut keys and the
punctuation were bad, but the worst part was that I would lose about a month's
worth of progress if I took a week to two weeks vacation from DVORAK (when
stuff we due in University). Also, I hated having to remap FPS games all the
time, so I eventually just decided 60 wpm with QWERTY was good enough.

~~~
eru
I also learned dvorak, but it did not impair my quert(y|z) abilities. In fps
games I either go with querty or I'll remap the keys anyway.

------
jerf
I've been using Dvorak for about three years (+ Caps Lock -> Backspace for
about six months).

I find complaints about keystrokes in emacs to be overrated. I think the
problem people have is that even though the keystroke for, say, "go to
beginning of the line" may be "CTRL-a", in your brain it manifests as a
separate keystroke and will require distinct time to re-learn, even after
you've mastered a. Not a lot of time, but time.

I play Angband sometimes (in the laptop keyboard configuration), and for that
I always go back to QWERTY, because I don't "press the letter p to pray", I
"press the Pray key", and having that remapped and trying to relearn
everything is just silly.

Personally, I'm not sure I recommend switching. But if you do switch, I do
recommend keeping it. The anecdotal wrist pain mitigation evidence is
anecdotal, but since nobody's done a study, it's all we have to go on.

------
euccastro
I've been using a modified Dvorak for about 5 years.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=351137>

I had never been a great typist with QWERTY, so while I noticed obvious
performance gains after some time, I can't attribute them to the layout
switch. I got proficiency faster, but if you are already good at QWERTY this
is irrelevant to you.

It did feel more comfortable from very early on, and this I do attribute to
intrinsic advantages of Dvorak.

My error rate with parens/brackets/braces used to be high until I put them in
matching fingers of the opposite hand, in the numbers row, unshifted. Even
though this makes numbers harder to type, it's a net gain since I don't type
in many numbers when programming. And I make less mistakes with them too.

------
awfabian
I switched to Dvorak about 10 years ago. I never regained my full QWERTY speed
(which was 100+ WPM--from what I hear, the faster you type, the harder it is
to regain your full speed. I type fast enough that I don't care that much, but
it's still annoying), and always find it annoying when I have to use a QWERTY
keyboard. I found no particular demonstrable benefit (more ergonomic, better
speed), except that it's more aesthetically pleasing... your fingers don't fly
around as much. If you type QWERTY after typing Dvorak, you feel like you're
trying to make your fingers fly around some computer for a 1950s science
fiction movie (exaggerated, pointless).

Overall, I don't really regret it or think it was a good decision. If I had it
to do over again, I wouldn't bother, but I'll be using Dvorak for life.

------
macco
I used a different layout based on dvorak optimized for the german language.
You get very, but it sucks if you have to use a different computer, then you
hack with two fingers. I switched back. If you only use your own computer go
for it. Otherwise I wouldn't do it.

Rockin Regards, Marco

~~~
eru
I never had a problem switching between layouts I know. Perhaps because I do
it often enough?

------
nihilocrat
One of the main reasons I stick with QWERTY is because it is not uncommon that
I will switch to a German keyboard layout when talking with German friends.
Dvorak and Colemak are English-optimized and so switching to or from them has
a much higher mental cost than switching from English QWERTY to German, which
closely resembles QWERTY.

I think I'll try it out, anyways. There's already a bit of re-learning that
has to be done when switching from English to German, so maybe in practice it
will be easy. I already notice that I sort of context-switch, so maybe my
brain will seperate the layouts sufficiently so that it's no harder than
switching like I already do.

~~~
eru
I do switch between US Dvorak and German Quertz --- everytime I have to type
an Umlaut. (It's just one keypress.)

Works good enough for me and I have been to lazy to get a German Dvorak or try
the NEO layout that was designed for German.

------
sh1mmer
I used Dvorak for a while but I wasn't really happy with it and went back to
QUERTY because it was different enough that I found it annoying switching a
lot. That was when I had to use a number of different desktop machines though.

Now I mostly use a primary laptop and I've been playing with Colemak which
I've found surprisingly easy to get into. I would advice doing a typing tutor
for a while though before you take the jump to use it for work related stuff.
This means you can train your hands to a decent speed in "game" mode.

------
level2
I use a DataHand keyboard where the layout you use would not make a big
difference because every key is easy to hit. Unfortunately they just stopped
producing these things...

~~~
rjprins
yeah, I looked in to buying the DataHand. It looks like the future of human-
computer IO (right before cybernetics). It's an amazing product, but sadly in
the hands of a totally inadequate company.

------
sctb
I could possibly be inclined to be interested in an alternate keyboard layout,
but the prospect of adapting my Emacs keybindings makes me curl into the fetal
position.

------
patrickg-zill
They are great if you only use a few systems. However if you are working on
other people's systems or some other case where you are not the sole user of
the machine, it is difficult to deal with switching between QWERTY and Dvorak;
which is the main reason I do not use Dvorak. A friend uses Dvorak exclusively
and it works well for him - he only touches his own systems.

------
icey
For the people who have made the switch: Is there a real benefit to be had for
people who are currently fast to very fast typists in QWERTY (say.. 80wpm+)?

Mostly I'm curious about typing performance more than RSI type issues.

------
jballanc
Well, let's see here, I've been using Dvorak fooooorrrrrr... 12 years now. I
think I've got everyone else beat! ;-)

I even remember having to write my own custom key layout files for Unix and
DOS...those were the days!

------
anthony_barker
An interesting post comparing piano playing and typing

[http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=35481&cid=3832754](http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=35481&cid=3832754)

------
nixy
Sounds interesting... How do I change to the Colemak layout on Windows XP?

~~~
trickjarrett
If you want to create a keyboard layout or use a new layout, this is the tool:
<http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx>

------
pavelludiq
I love dvorak, cant live without it. When i switched i bought the cheapest
keyboard i could find and i rearranged the keys. I still have a spare qwerty
keyboard if someone wants to use my pc.

------
ambition
I switched to Dvorak until I was good at it, and then switched back to QWERTY.
It was just too difficult to mentally switch to QWERTY when using keyboards
not under my control.

------
snowstorm
This is off topic. But I use Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. My hands are
positioned much more naturally when I type.

------
quellhorst
I have been using dvorak since 2005 and wouldn't go back. I had trouble with
my hands with qwerty but don't now.

------
cooldude127
i've been using colemak for about a year and a half, and i'm very happy with
it. the few times i'm forced to go without it, i can feel how much more my
fingers are moving. emacs is quite usable with it, but vim requires some
remapping (i'm an emacs guy so i haven't put too much effort it).

------
jules
I use colemak and it feels a lot better.

------
axiom
Check out <http://www.datahand.com>

