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Should I finally switch to a Dvorak layout?
@freemo depends. There are certain times it can be an obstacle. For example, the undo/cut/copy/paste commands are now scattered across the keyboard. Some software that uses keys based on position rather than letter value (e.g. WASD keys if you're a gamer) works automatically, some needs to be configured, and some just leaves you stuck with unusable keybinds. Importantly, early in your boot process (BIOS password, disk encryption) you'll still have to type in QWERTY because the computer doesn't know anything about your keyboard settings until after you've decrypted that information.
It will restrict your options for customising your keyboard, because many keycap sets have different profiles on a per-row basis, so keys that are in a different row between QWERTY and Dvorak will stick out. Obviously you'll touch-type most of the time, but sometimes you run into situations where you have one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse, and you'll need to find a key with your left hand for which only your right hand has muscle memory.
Also, if you swipe-type on your phone, some of Dvorak's strengths become weaknesses. Alternating fingers turns into a lot of back-and-forth. Concentrating heavily used keys onto the homerow means you have to be very precise, and even then there are a lot of ambiguous words. For example, swiping S-O-T could be:
- soot
- snot
- snout
- stout
- shot
- shoot
- shout
and that's if you aim perfectly. If you miss by one key and type S-E-T there's a whole different set of words. The poor autocorrect can only do so much for you.
@freemo that's actually not often an issue unless you're in a tech-support role or something where you're working on lots of different people's computers every day. If it's a computer you use enough to have your own account on, you can save your preference for Dvorak there. Then it's just a case of building the muscle memory so you can touch type properly - the physical keys will say QWERTY but you'll type on them as if they were Dvorak.
For background, I've typed exclusively Dvorak for essentially my entire adult life, but I never learned QWERTY properly to begin with - at my school, the accelerated program taught slideshow/spreadsheet skills instead of typing. I guess they assumed that we'd be bigshots and all have secretaries or something, but that was no longer true when I got to college, and, being the nerd I am, I decided to teach myself to touch-type Dvorak. My method was to have the keymap overlaid on the screen and not switch around my keycaps, so I wouldn't develop hunt-and-peck habits the way I had with QWERTY. First week I relied on the overlay, second week I used my memory and trial-and-error when I forgot, and then my third week was on this horrible ancient system where backspace cleared the whole damn line instead of the most recent character, so it was really punishing to make a mistake.
@khird also thanks for the well thought out and helpful response. Much appreciated.
@khird yea i figured some of these concerns,.. the bigger issue for me is once you learn dvorak anytime you are away from your home keyboard youll have to use qwerty and now likely going to make a lot of mistakes as you fight muscle memory... to me thats the biggest deterrant.
I did see a cool keyboard once where the keys were little LCD screens so the key mappings would show up dynamically as the kayboard switches... cool idea but doesnt really fix the problem.