Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

The Dvorak keyboard layout, Dvorak Simplified Keyboard ( DSK ) or American Simplified Keyboard ( "Simplified American keyboard " ) called, is the name of an ergonomic keyboard layout which was designed by August Dvorak in the 1930s as an alternative to the QWERTY keyboard layout.

Formation

The developed in 1932 by a commission under August Dvorak and William Dealey Dvorak keyboard layout had the requirement to be easy as possible to learn and quickly applicable. The design of the keyboard layout went ahead while investigations of the letter frequency and the physiology of the hands.

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

  • On a mechanical keyboard is easier to type letters when doing switch hands.
  • The most common letters and letter combinations should be located where the fingers rest.
  • The rarer a letter should be on the bottom ( of the worst -to-reach ) series.
  • The right hand should, since most people are right handed, do more typing.
  • Digraphs should not be written with adjacent fingers.
  • The finger movement is advantageous from the outside inwards.

However, the Dvorak keyboard layout could never prevail because few people were willing to retrain, the industry, the QWERTY keyboard layout used as a standard word processing and train teachers only on the conventional keyboard. In 1984, the U.S. had about 100,000 users of this keyboard layout. She has lost nothing of its meaning, now it is ISO certified.

The technique sociologist Paul David makes sure the path dependency responsible. Once an established technology, such as the QWERTY keyboard is mutually supported by many components such as industrial infrastructure, professions, consumers, producers, markets,. Thus, technical alternatives, such as the Dvorak keyboard, the blocks increases the further path of the art is trod.

Special

The keyboard layout uses a different key arrangement to allow less fatigue and faster writing. Thus, there are ( for English Tipper ) 70 % of the attacks on the middle row of letters, the basic number is called. With the QWERTY keyboard layout figures are only 32 %. In addition, there are 22 % instead of 52% of the attacks on the top row, and only 8 % instead of 16 % on the hard to reach lower row. Also, by alternating both hands as possible, the write speed is increased. Finally, strong fingers with Dvorak more used as with the QWERTY occupancy, which, for example, the weakest finger (left, Pinky ) almost as often used as the second strongest (right middle finger).

According to Dvorak users the finger of a QWERTY tip ends hike on any working about 30 km, with Dvorak, it would be only 1.8 km. Also, you make twice as many mistakes on QWERTY keyboards to Dvorak, easier to learn whether the system does: to 40 words per minute to achieve, need to average 56 hours learning time, but only 18 hours by Dvorak. For people who want to learn typing with ten fingers, but write for a long time with their own system, has also the same as the switch the keyboard layout to because then the bad habits are hard to be transmitted.

Criticism

However, there are doubts as to the advantages of the Dvorak system. Some studies ( in 1952 by the Australian postal authority in 1973 by Western Electric, 1978 by Oregon State University ) showed only very low or no speed improvements. Among the allegations, the Dvorak keyboard was better also ergonomically - medical aspects and prevent for example RSI, or tenosynovitis as well as long-term damage, there are no reliable data. The non-uniform occurrence of these diseases suggests that other factors are more important than the keyboard layout.

A study by the U.S. Navy from 1944, which shows great advantages of Dvorak, was criticized by economists SJ Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis in a published essay in 1990, especially as it was conducted under the direction of August Dvorak himself. On the other hand, this article by Dvorak writers was repeatedly attacked as flawed and biased.

For German relations one can also argue that the Dvorak layout is very designed for English language peculiarities. So if you wanted to achieve the same goals for German texts, you would have to change the assignment again, more or less, see Neo keyboard layout or newer German -language approaches.

Today's applicability

Thanks to the PC technology today it is very easy to use Dvorak. Almost every operating system can change the keyboard layout. For all versions of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, most Unix derivatives and some versions of DOS Dvorak is supported by default ( see links). In addition, there are special for DOS extended keyboard driver with support for several Dvorak variants third party. With this switch it is possible to use multiple keyboard layouts and does not affect, for example, non- Dvorak - users on the PC. Thanks to the USB port technology, it is easily possible to connect more than one keyboard to a computer, thus a conventional keyboard also remain.

In most of today's keyboards can be removed with a screwdriver, remove the key caps for cleaning. These can then be converted into a Dvorak keyboard. For other keyboards, the key caps of different batches but have partly slightly different forms.

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