Dvorak keyboard layout

An IBM Model M keyboard repositioned to a Dvorak layout , easy to use thanks to the removable keycaps.

Variant "Dvorak Type II German" (colors mark finger areas of the ten-finger system )

A keyboard "Dvorak Type II German" commercially available from 2010-2018

The Dvorak keyboard layout , also called Dvorak Simplified Keyboard ( DSK ) or American Simplified Keyboard ( "[US] American Simplified Keyboard" ), is an ergonomic keyboard layout developed by August Dvorak in the 1930s as an alternative to the US QWERTY keyboard . Keyboard layout was developed.

Emergence

The Dvorak keyboard layout, developed in 1932 by a commission under August Dvorak and William Dealey, was designed to be as easy to learn as possible and to be quick to use. The design of the keyboard layout was preceded by studies of the frequency of letters and the physiology of the hands.

This ergonomic keyboard layout was designed based on the following principles:

On a mechanical keyboard, it is easier to type letters if you alternate hands.
The most common letters and combinations of letters should be where your fingers are.
The rarer letters should be on the bottom (hardest to reach) row.
The right hand, since most people are right-handed , should do more typing.
Digraphs should not be written with adjacent fingers.
The cheapest finger movement is from the outside in.

The Dvorak keyboard layout never caught on, however, as only a part of the users are willing to relearn, the industry considers the QWERTY layout variants as the standard and word processing teachers primarily train them on these. The art sociologist Paul David blames the path dependency responsible. Once a technology has been established, such as QWERTY allocation, it is mutually supported by many components, such as industrial infrastructure, professions, consumers, producers, markets. Technical alternatives, such as the Dvorak keyboard, are blocked the further the technology path is trodden.

particularities

Play media file

10-finger touch typing on the French Dvorak keyboard, here with about 570 keystrokes per minute .

Frequency of letters for English texts with the QWERTY (above) and Dvorak keyboard layout (below); the darker the color, the more often the key is used. Characters and special characters are not shown here.

The keyboard layout uses a different key arrangement to allow less fatigue and faster typing. So (for English typists) 70% of the keystrokes are on the middle row of letters, called the base row. With the QWERTY keyboard layout, this is only 32%. In addition, 22% instead of 52% of the attacks are on the top row and only 8% instead of 16% on the poorly accessible bottom row. The fact that both hands alternate as much as possible also increases the writing speed. And finally, strong fingers are used more with Dvorak than with the QWERTY assignment, which, for example, uses the weakest finger (left, little finger) almost as often as the second strongest (right middle finger).

According to Dvorak users, a QWERTY tipper's fingers travel approximately 30 km on a typical work day, compared to only 1.8 km with Dvorak. You also make twice as many mistakes on QWERTY keyboards as on Dvorak, and this system is also easier to learn: to achieve 40 words per minute, you need an average of 56 hours of learning time, but only 18 hours with Dvorak. For people who want to learn to write with ten fingers, but have been writing with their own system for a long time, switching the keyboard layout is a good idea, as this means that bad habits are hardly transferred.

criticism

However, there are also doubts about the benefits of the Dvorak system. Some studies (1952 from the Australian Postal Administration, 1973 from Western Electric, 1978 from Oregon State University) showed very little or no speed improvements. Regarding the claims that the Dvorak keyboard is also better from an ergonomic- medical point of view and prevents e.g. B. RSI syndrome or tendinitis as well as long-term damage, there are no reliable data. The inconsistent occurrence of these clinical pictures suggests that factors other than keyboard layout are more important.

A 1944 study by the US Navy showing great benefits of Dvorak was criticized by economists SJ Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis in an essay published in 1990, especially since it was conducted under the direction of August Dvorak himself. On the other hand, this article has been repeatedly attacked by Dvorak scribes as flawed and biased.

German-language variant

To support the German spelling, the addition of the umlauts Ää / Öö / Üü and the ß is necessary, so that some key assignments have to give way to the original assignment and the question arises as to how far the resulting assignment can still be called a Dvorak assignment.

From 2010 to February 2018, a "Dvorak Type II German" keyboard was commercially available, with some other letters being swapped over from the original assignment.

Since the Dvorak assignment is designed for English language peculiarities, it cannot be assumed that such a variant optimally takes into account all of the goals mentioned above under “Origin” for German-speaking users.

Applicability today

Thanks to PC technology, it is very easy to use Dvorak today. Almost every operating system can switch the keyboard layout. Dvorak is supported by default on all versions of Windows , macOS , Linux , most Unix derivatives and some versions of DOS (see links). In addition, there are special extended keyboard drivers for DOS with support for various Dvorak variants from third-party providers. This switching makes it possible to use several keyboard assignments and not to affect, for example, non-Dvorak users on the PC. Thanks to the USB connection technology, it is easily possible to connect more than one keyboard to a computer, so a conventional keyboard can also remain.

Most keyboards today have keycaps that can be removed for cleaning. This allows them to be converted into a Dvorak keyboard. With other keyboards, the keycaps of the different rows have slightly different shapes.

literature

Paul A. David: Economic History and the Modern Economist . Ed .: William Nelson Parker. B. Blackwell Publishers, 1986, ISBN 0-631-14799-3 , pp. 105 (English).

Web links

General

Commons : Dvorak keyboard layouts - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Learn to type for free with Typing Study (Dvorak, Qwerty, ..)

Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard (English)

DVZine.org The story of its origins is told in the form of a comic and initial help is given. (English)

criticism

The article by SJ Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis
Zeit online article about the doubtfulness of the oft-cited 1944 Navy study

Keyboard driver

Individual evidence

↑ Tim McDonald: Why we can't give up this odd way of typing. BBC , May 25, 2018, accessed October 20, 2019 .
^ Paul A. David: Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: The Necessity of History in Economic History and the Modern Economist , 1986, pp. 30-49 ISBN 978-0-631-14799-2
↑ German Dvorak type 1. In: From the Neo-Welt. Retrieved October 20, 2019 .
↑ Dvorak keyboard with USB connection - Layout Dvorak Type II German. Archived from the original on February 14, 2018 ; Retrieved on October 20, 2019 (archive copy of a commercial website that was no longer active in March 2018).

[1] Tim McDonald: Why we can't give up this odd way of typing. BBC , May 25, 2018, accessed October 20, 2019 .

[2] Paul A. David: Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: The Necessity of History in Economic History and the Modern Economist , 1986, pp. 30-49 ISBN 978-0-631-14799-2

[3] German Dvorak type 1. In: From the Neo-Welt. Retrieved October 20, 2019 .

[4] Dvorak keyboard with USB connection - Layout Dvorak Type II German. Archived from the original on February 14, 2018 ; Retrieved on October 20, 2019 (archive copy of a commercial website that was no longer active in March 2018).