I don’t see why its such a necessity to talk speed when comparing the two… that’s not what the simplified keyboard was designed for.
They can obtain comparable speeds, and its really only limited by the typist.
The Dvorak, however, is designed to be easier on your hands. There’s less moving the fingers about and many words can be typed out on the home row.

Full sentences like “The idea that nineteen studious Dadaists assisted Einstein is asinine” can be typed out using only the home row… which says something about its design.
Obviously the QWERTY could never pull that off since it only has the vowel a situated on the home row.

I tried the Dvorak keyboard once but like you went back to qwerty; though perhaps it was my impatience. Also, it is a pain to change the keyboard format on each new computer you use. I often travel to several machines throughout a workday, so it would be far from convenient to change keyboard layouts to Dvorak for me and then back before I leave for my coworkers. Especially if I’m at a computer for only a few minutes at a time!

Granted, there aren’t too many English words that can be typed by rolling of the fingers on a QWERTY keyboard, but I can’t even find one that can be on a Dvorak.

In English, every word has at least one vowel. Putting all the vowels under the left hand in the home row in the Dvorak layout is, IMHO, a huge mistake – it guarantees that every word must be typed with the left hand at some point. In contrast, the QWERTY layout puts “ae” on the left and “iou” on the right – a better balance, IMHO.

In the end, it’s really not really important: I’m very satisfied with my 120+ WPM typing on QWERTY. I don’t see much benefit in unlearning all that muscle memory in order to learn Dvorak in the hopes that I might be able to gain another 10 or 20 WPM in typing speed, eventually.

And, shy of the “famous” Barbara Blackburn, I haven’t heard of any other notably fast Dvorak typists. Are there any? Is there anyone out there highly proficient with the Dvorak layout who can do better than 120-130 WPM at 99% accuracy?

I also believe that Dvorak is the much better choice for modern keyboards because we don’t have to deal with jamming; the issue now is how far your fingers have to travel, hand alternation, and other ergonomic concerns, and Dvorak defeats QWERTY in all of these categories. See this comparison applet for details: http://www.siteuri.ro/dvorak/

Of course, these comparisons assume that you rest your fingers on the home row, so results will obviously be different if you rest your keys with the middle and ring fingers on a higher row, like you do. As for me, I rest my fingers on ASDF and JKL;, so Dvorak seems more natural to me. By the way, you mentioned hand alternation. Dvorak was designed with hand alternation (and several other ergonomic concerns) in mind, and has more hand alternation than QWERTY. For example, typing out Wikipedia’s article on the Tiger, 18.8% of the keypresses use the same hand as the previous keypress in Dvorak, while in QWERTY, 30.6% of the keypresses use the same hand as the last keypress. http://www.siteuri.ro/dvorak/SampleTextsResults/MarkTwain.html

Ah well, to each his own.

Thought you would find this of value. I personally have purchased it for myself. I guess Dr. Strong did not destroy everything.

When it comes to documented proof. Dr. Earl Strong destroyed all the documents from the U.S. Naval study because he hated Dr. August Dvorak.

However, there is new documented unbiased proof of many thousands of individuals that have learned Qwerty and Dvorak (as well as one hand disabled people that have learned the Dvorak left and right handed versions). As stated in my prior post, KEYTIME IN SEATTLE HAS ALL THE DOCUMENTED PROOF YOU NEED! You just have to request it.

As far as books go, Randy Cassingham’s book “The Dvorak Keyboard” and Dr. Dvorak’s “Typewriting Behavior” are really written well.

Still ignorant individuals still like to refer to the REASON Magazine article and also “The Fable of the Keys”… “Fable of the Fable” as I call it. Both of those publications aren’t worth the paper they are written on because they were Dr. Strong supporters that were shooting from the hip.

As far as those that attempt to convert to Dvorak… you have to give it a minimum of 6 months before it gives you bragging rights to bash it.

Q. So where’s the proof?
A. Contact Keytime in Seattle, WA.

I came across this page trying to decide if I should continue learning, and I have to say I did find your finger positioning an interesting point when read it. But I know it doesn’t apply to my own fingers. They fit quite comfortable in a line on the home row, and having a few cross a row vertically just feels awkward. Perhaps that the secret to mastering qwerty, I don’t know. But for myself it’s not at all natural, and would have to be learnt. Although that might just be my keyboard and/or fingers.

Furthermore, if it is true that most fast qwerty typists are similar, then the layout is far from optimal. Keeping v, m and b on the bottom row is a large oversight, as no one is ever going to argue that a row jump is efficient (I hope). If this is the finger norm, then the top row should most definitely have letters in the middle.

Finally, I don’t believe you’ll be able to find -anyone- that says it’s simply a coincidence we use qwerty. It’s really not that complicated. It was used on the first popularised typewriters. What corporation is going to buy more typewriters that have different layouts to their existing ones; any staff using the new typewriters would have to relearn, and for what reason? Remembering that dvorak, the first real alternative layout wasn’t designed til 75 years later gives qwerty a massive market penetration.

And then it goes on. The designers of the first computers and word processors are hardly going to consider it their job to design a better keyboard, or cut off their market by pushing an alternative layout. I mean, no one is going to make money out of that. If the public wants to learn a different layout, they will. But no organization/government in its right mind would push people to change when what they’re using is fully functional. And now think to average joe. Or any computer illiterate friends or family you may have. If dvorak was -proven- that anyone using it will see exactly a 15% increase in speed and comfort, do you think that anyone that uses their computer once a week to send an email is going to be interested? I know my mother wouldn’t be, she dreaded every minute learning 2 finger typing on qwerty the first time through. To change the layout on her would be cruel.

And realistically, I doubt the gains will be that high. Definitely not worth the push.

Anyway, it happens all the time. Many great inventions and innovations never make it, simply because they’re not -that- much better. Sure, they might get a group of followers that’ll love the improvements, and preach about them to their friends. But it takes more then that to convince the majority of casual users who’s day job is not typing at a keyboard.

Just to emphasis that penetration is key, and whilst we’re on computers, consider x86-64, a 64 bit extension on a 32 bit extension on a 16 bit architecture based on an 8 bit cpu. Even modern quad core cpus still have to support archaic segmented memory addressing, string operations at the cpu level, etc. Yet the majority of computers by far run on it. And again, that’s not because they happened to hit it right in 1978 when it was designed. Just simple market penetration.

As for tests: how would you conduct a completely fair survey? It’s nearly impossible. You either need to take a qwerty typist, who’s likely been using it for years, and train them up on dvorak… or you find a group of dvorak typists and compare them to a group of qwerty typists. Both methods are inherently flawed. eg, Dvorak typists are self-selected as dedicated typists, as they at some point decided to change layouts to attempt to improve (whether or not they did is irrelevant). Again, most people wouldn’t bother. Considering that to do a proper statistical survey, particularly when double blind etc is impossible, you’d need thousands of people to draw any kind of conclusion. No one’s going to fund that.

Oh well, sorry for the novel there. All good practice typing at least , consider that my 4c.

- Alex