The
Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is a
keyboard layoutA keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
patented in 1936 by
August DvorakAugust Dvorak was an educational psychologist and professor of education at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. He and his brother-in-law, William Dealey, are best known for creating the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout in the 1930s as a replacement for the QWERTY keyboard layout...
, an educational psychologist and professor of education at the
University of WashingtonUniversity of Washington, founded in 1861, is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. UW is the largest university in the northwestern United States and one of the oldest public universities on the west coast. The university has three campuses, with its flagship campus...
in
SeattleSeattle is located in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Situated in the western part of Washington State on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, about south of the Canada – United States border, it is named after Chief Sealth, of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes...
, and William Dealey. It has also been called the
Simplified Keyboard or
American Simplified Keyboard but is commonly known as the
Dvorak keyboard or
Dvorak layout.
Although the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard ("DSK") has failed to displace the
QWERTYQWERTY is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters...
keyboard, it has become easier to access in the computer age, being included with all major
operating systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
s (such as
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces...
,
Mac OS XMac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
,
LinuxLinux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed,...
and
BSDBerkeley Software Distribution is the UNIX operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995....
) in addition to the standard
QWERTYQWERTY is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters...
layout. It is also supported at the hardware level by some high-end
ergonomic keyboardAn ergonomic keyboard is a computer keyboard designed with ergonomic considerations to minimize muscle strain and a host of related problems.-Keyboard types:...
s.
Overview
The Dvorak layout was designed to address the problems of inefficiency and fatigue which characterized the QWERTY keyboard layout. The QWERTY layout was introduced in the 1860s, being used on the first commercially-successful typewriter, the machine invented by
Christopher SholesChristopher Latham Sholes was an American inventor who invented the first practical typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard still in use today.- Youth and political career :...
.
Dvorak studied
letter frequenciesThe frequency of letters in text has often been studied for use in cryptography, and frequency analysis in particular. No exact letter frequency distribution underlies a given language, since all writers write slightly differently. Linotype machines sorted the letters' frequencies as etaoin shrdlu...
and the
physiologyPhysiology is the science of the functioning of living systems. It is a subcategory of biology...
of people's hands and created a layout to adhere to these principles:
- Letters should be typed by alternating between hands.
- For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters
ETAOIN SHRDLU is the approximate order of frequency of the twelve most commonly used letters in the English language, best known as a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print in the days of "hot type" publishing due to a custom of Linotype machine operators.-Linotype history:The letters on...
and digraphA digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest, and under the strongest fingers.
- The least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach.
- The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.
- Digraph
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s should not be typed with adjacent fingers.
- Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that, for many people, when tapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.
The Dvorak layout was intended for the English language. In other European languages, letter frequencies, letter sequences, and digraphs differ from English. Also, many languages have letters that do not occur in English. For non-English use, these differences lessen the supposed advantages of the original Dvorak keyboard. However, the Dvorak principles have been applied to the design of keyboards for these other languages.
The layout was completed in 1932 and was granted in 1936. The
American National Standards InstituteThe American National Standards Institute or ANSI is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international...
(ANSI) designated the Dvorak keyboard as an alternative standard keyboard layout in 1982; the standard is X3.207:1991 (previously X4.22-1983), "Alternate Keyboard Arrangement for Alphanumeric Machines". The original ANSI Dvorak layout was available as a factory-supplied option on the original
IBM Selectric typewriterThe IBM Selectric typewriter is an influential electric typewriter design. It was introduced in 1961....
.
In 1984, the Dvorak layout had an estimated 100,000 users.
Original Dvorak layout
The layout standardized by the ANSI differs from the original or "classic" layout devised by Dvorak. Today’s keyboards have more keys than the original typewriter did, and other significant differences existed:
- The numeric keys of the classic Dvorak layout are as follows:
{|
|
7 5 3 1 9 0 2 4 6 8
|}
- In the classic Dvorak layout, the question mark key [?] is in the leftmost position of the upper row, while the slash mark key [/] is in the rightmost position of the upper row.
- The following symbols share keys (the second symbol being printed when the SHIFT key is pressed):
- colon [:] and question mark [?]
- ampersand [&] and slash [/]
- comma [,] and semicolon [;]
Modern U.S. keyboard layouts almost always place semicolon and colon together on a single key and slash and question mark together on a single key. Thus, if the keycaps of a modern keyboard are rearranged so that the unshifted symbol characters match the classic Dvorak layout then, sensibly, the result is the ANSI layout.
Early PCs
Although some
word processorA word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
s could simulate alternative
keyboard layoutA keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
s through software, this was application-specific; if more than one program was commonly used (
e.g., a
word processorA word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
and a
spreadsheetA spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper worksheet. It displays multiple cells that together make up a grid consisting of rows and columns, each cell containing either alphanumeric text or numeric values...
), the user could be forced to switch layouts depending on the application. Occasionally, stickers were provided to place over the keys for these layouts.
However, IBM-compatible PCs used an active, "smart" keyboard, where the keyboard was actually a peripheral device (powered by the keyboard
portIn computer hardware, a 'port' serves as an interface between the computer and other computers or peripheral devices. Physically, a port is a specialized outlet on a piece of equipment to which a plug or cable connects...
). Striking a key generated a key "code", which was sent to the computer. Thus, changing to an alternative keyboard layout was most easily accomplished by simply buying a keyboard with the new layout. Because the key codes were generated by the keyboard itself, all software would respond accordingly. In the mid- to late-1980s, a small cottage industry for replacement PC keyboards arose; although most of these were concerned with keyboard "feel" and/or programmable macros, there were several with alternative layouts, such as Dvorak.
Windows
According to
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices...
, versions of the
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces...
operating system including
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
,
Windows NT 3.51Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was originally designed to be a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was...
and higher have shipped with support for the U.S. Dvorak layout. Free updates to use the layout on earlier Windows versions are available for download from Microsoft.
Earlier versions, such as DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1, included four keyboard layouts: QWERTY, two-handed Dvorak, right-hand Dvorak, and left-hand Dvorak.
In May 2004 Microsoft has published an improved version of its Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC version 1.3 — current version is 1.4) that allows anyone to easily create any keyboard layout desired, thus allowing to create and install any international Dvorak keyboard layout such as Dvorak Type II (for German), Svorak (for Swedish) etc.
Another advantage of the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator over third-party tools for installing an international Dvorak layout is that it allows to create a keyboard layout that automatically switches to standard (QWERTY) when pressing the control or the windows key. This feature makes physical changes on the keyboard obsolete because when touch-typing (in Dvorak mode) there is no need to look at the keyboard and when using keyboard shortcuts (such as CTRL+C, CTRL+X, CTRL+V etc. that actually require the user to look at the keyboard) the keys remain at their standard place.
Unix-based systems
Many operating systems based on
UNIXUnix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, including
OpenBSDOpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
,
FreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution . It has been characterized as "the unknown giant among free operating systems". It is not a clone of UNIX, but works like UNIX, with UNIX-compliant internals and system APIs. FreeBSD is...
,
NetBSDNetBSD is a freely redistributable, open source version of the Unix-derivative Berkeley Software Distribution computer operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed...
,
Plan 9Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system, primarily used for research. It was developed as the research successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002...
, and most
Linux distributionA Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications...
s, can be configured to use either the U.S. Dvorak layout or the UK/British Dvorak Layout. However, all current
Unix-likeA Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
systems with Xorg and appropriate keymaps installed (and virtually all systems meant for desktop use include them) are able to use any QWERTY layout as a Dvorak one without any problems or additional configuration. This removes the burden of producing additional keymaps for every variant of QWERTY provided.
UNIX
ShellA shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users. Typically, the term refers to an operating system shell which provides access to the services of a kernel...
scripts are available for switching keymaps without restarting the machine or relaunching applications.
Apple computers
AppleApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
had Dvorak advocates since the company’s early (pre-IPO) days. Several engineers devised hardware and software to remap the keyboard, which were used inside the company and even sold commercially.
Apple II
The Apple II had a keyboard ROM that translated keystrokes into characters. The ROM contained both QWERTY and Dvorak layouts, but the QWERTY layout was enabled by default. A modification could be made by pulling out the ROM, bending up four pins, soldering a resistor between two pins, soldering two others to a pair of wires connected to a
micro switchA micro switch is a generic term used to refer to an electric switch that is able to be actuated by very little physical force, through the use of a tipping-point mechanism. They are very common due to their low cost and extreme durability, typically greater than 1 million cycles and up to 10...
, which was installed in a pre-existing hole in the back of the machine, then plugging the modified ROM back in its socket. The "hack" was reversible and did no damage. By flipping a switch on the machine’s back panel, the user could switch from one layout to the other. This modification was entirely unofficial but was inadvertently demonstrated at the 1984
ComdexCOMDEX was a computer expo held in Las Vegas, Nevada, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually second only to the German CeBIT, and by many accounts one of the largest trade shows in any industry sector...
show, in
Las VegasLas Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada, the seat of Clark County, and an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, fine dining, and entertainment. Las Vegas, which bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, is famous for the number of...
, by an Apple employee whose mission was to demonstrate Apple
LogoLOGO is a computer programming language used for functional programming. It is an adaptation and dialect of the Lisp language; some have called it Lisp without the parentheses...
II. The employee had become accustomed to the Dvorak layout and brought the necessary parts to the show, installed them in a demo machine, then did his Logo demo. Viewers, curious that he always reached behind the machine before and after allowing other people to type, asked him about the modification. He spent as much time explaining the Dvorak keyboard as explaining Logo.
Apple brought new interest to the Dvorak layout with the
Apple IIcThe Apple IIc, the fourth model in the Apple II series of personal computers, was Apple Computer’s first endeavor to produce a portable computer. The end result was a luggable 7½ pound notebook-sized version of the Apple II that could easily be transported from place to place...
, which had a mechanical switch above the keyboard whereby the user could switch back and forth between the QWERTY layout and the ANSI Dvorak layout: this was the most official version of the IIe Dvorak mod. Late-model Apple II computers added a switch inside the computer for switching to Dvorak, and the Dvorak layout was also selectable using the built-in control panel applet on the
Apple IIGSThe Apple IIGS, the fifth model inception of the Apple II, is the most powerful member of the Apple II series of personal computers made by Apple Computer...
.
Apple III
The
Apple IIIThe Apple III is a personal computer that was manufactured and sold by Apple. Intended as a computer for the business user market, design work on the Apple III started in late 1978 under the guidance of Dr. Wendell Sander...
used a keyboard-layout file loaded from a floppy disk: the standard system-software package included QWERTY and Dvorak layout files. Changing layouts required restarting the machine.
Apple Lisa
The technical documentation available to third-party developers does not mention keyboard mapping, though it was purportedly available through undocumented interfaces..
Apple iPhone OS
Unlike Mac Os X, the first model of the Apple iPhone did not include support for a virtual Dvorak keyboard. It was not until after the release of the iPhone 3GS that a virtual Dvorak keyboard was introduced to the jailbreak community.
Mac OS
In its early days, the Macintosh could be converted to the Dvorak layout by making changes to the "System" file: this was not easily reversible and required restarting the machine. This modification was highly unofficial, but it was comparable to many other user-modifications and customizations that Mac users made. Using the "resource editor",
ResEditResEdit was a developer tool application for the Apple Macintosh, used to create and edit resources directly in the Mac's resource fork architecture. It was an alternative to tools such as the resource compiler Rez, and for the average user was generally easier to use, because it used a graphical...
, users could create keyboard layouts, icons, and other useful items. Many wonders appeared at user-group meetings. A few years later, a third-party developer offered a utility program called MacKeymeleon, which put a menu on the menu bar that allowed on-the-fly switching of keyboard layouts. Eventually, Apple Macintosh engineers built the functionality of this utility into the standard System Software, along with a few layouts: QWERTY, Dvorak, French (
AZERTYThe AZERTY layout is a keyboard layout used in several French-speaking countries, including France and Belgium. The French language uses several accented letters, such as é, à and ô, as well as a few other symbols such as œ that do not occur in English...
), and other foreign-language layouts.
Since about 1998, beginning with
Mac OS 8.6Mac OS is the trademarked name for a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, Apple has included the Dvorak layout. Apple also includes a Dvorak variant they call “Dvorak — Qwerty Command”. With this layout, the keyboard becomes QWERTY when the Command (Apple) key is held down. By keeping familiar keyboard shortcuts like "close" or "copy" on the same keys as ordinary QWERTY, this lets some people use their well-practiced muscle memory and may make the transition easier. Mac OS and subsequently Mac OS X allows "on-the-fly" switching between layouts: a menu-bar icon (by default, a national flag that matches the current language, a `DV' represents Dvorak and a `DQ' represents Dvorak — Qwerty Command) brings up a drop down menu, allowing the user to choose the desired layout. Subsequent keystrokes will reflect the choice, which can be reversed the same way.
Mobile phones and PDAs
A number of mobile phones today are built with either full QWERTY keyboards or software implementations of them on a touch screen. Sometimes the keyboard layout can be changed by means of a freeware third-party utility, such as
AE Keyboard Mapper for
Windows MobileWindows Mobile is a compact operating system developed by Microsoft, and designed for use in smartphones and mobile devices.It is based on Windows CE, and features a suite of basic applications developed using the Microsoft Win32 API. It is designed to be somewhat similar to desktop versions of...
, or KeybLayout for
Symbian OSSymbian is an operating system designed for mobile devices and smartphones, with associated libraries, user interface, frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, developed by Symbian Ltd...
.
As of version 2.1, the iPhone OS only provides a QWERTY layout; however it has been changed with newer versions of the firmware, now the iPhone provides QWERTY as well as
AZERTYThe AZERTY layout is a keyboard layout used in several French-speaking countries, including France and Belgium. The French language uses several accented letters, such as é, à and ô, as well as a few other symbols such as œ that do not occur in English...
and
QWERTZThe QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a widely used computer and typewriter keyboard layout that is mostly used in German-speaking regions and in Eastern and Central Europe...
. A dvorak layout is available to jailbroken iPhones that have the iKeyEx extension installed. As of version 4.3, the Blackberry OS only provides a QWERTY (or AZERTY, if purchased in France) layout.
Resistance to adoption
Although the Dvorak layout is the only other keyboard layout registered with ANSI and is provided with all major operating systems, attempts to convert universally to the Dvorak layout have not succeeded. The failure of the Dvorak layout to displace the QWERTY layout has been the subject of some studies and of considerable debate.
In 1956, a
General Services AdministrationThe General Services Administration is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. The GSA supplies products and communications for U.S...
study by Earle Strong, which included an experiment involving ten experienced government typists, concluded that Dvorak training would never be able to amortize its costs. The study was a large obstacle for the wide adoption of Dvorak for many firms and government agencies. One criticism of the experiment is that it did not involve any beginning typists; however, Liebowitz notes that it parallels the decision that a real firm or government agency would need to make: Is it worthwhile to retrain its present typists? However, there were other arguably fatal flaws. One criticism of the study points out that the Dvorak typists were not given adequate time to reach their potential competence, and what promise had been demonstrated by the Dvorak typists was ignored by the researchers. In addition to this flaw in the study, Strong's objectivity with regard to the Dvorak keyboard was questionable at best. Seven years before the study Strong wrote "I have developed a great deal of material on how to get this increased production on the part of typists on the standard keyboard. Consequently, I am not in favor of purchasing new keyboards and retraining typists on the new keyboard. ... I strongly feel that the present keyboard has not been fully exploited, and I am out to exploit it to its utmost in opposition to the change to new keyboards." In addition, there is other evidence that Strong and Dr. Dvorak had a strained business relationship. It is also notable that when researchers had asked Strong for the data to his study, Strong had destroyed the data.
However, in considering resistance to the adoption of the Dvorak layout, different segments of the market (non-typists, typists, corporations and manufacturers) differ in the extent, nature, and motivation of their resistance. Furthermore, the influence of these factors on the different segments of the market has changed over time, following changes in technology and awareness of Dvorak as an alternative keyboard layout. Factors against adoption of the Dvorak layout have included the following:
- Failure to demonstrate superiority in speed, economy of effort, and accuracy--noting that the significant issue here is the demonstrability. Few studies have been done on the relative efficiency of the two keyboard layouts, and those studies have been criticised for failing to adhere to rigorous academic standards.
- Failure to achieve the general population's awareness that the Dvorak layout existed. This improved somewhat following the Guinness Book of Records 1985 publication of Barbara Blackburn’s achievement of 212 wpm
Words per minute, commonly abbreviated wpm, is a measure of input or output speed.For the purposes of WPM measurement a word is standardized to five characters or keystrokes. So, "eliot" counts as one word, but "rhinoceros" counts as two...
using a Dvorak keyboard, and again in the mid-1990s when computer operating systems began to incorporate the Dvorak layout as an option.
- Failure to overcome an investment in competence in the QWERTY layout made by a large number of typists and typist trainers prior to the general availability of the Dvorak layout. This investment has proved the most powerful influence up until the 1990s. Typing training in schools and secretarial colleges is almost always done on the QWERTY layout both because it conforms with the expectation of industry and because it is the layout with which most teachers or trainers are already familiar.
- A reduction in efficiency while learning the Dvorak layout further impedes its adoption by typists already competent with QWERTY, and the organizations that employ them.
- Failure to persuade large typewriter manufacturers to produce significant volumes of typewriters equipped with Dvorak layouts. It would be sufficient to argue that the manufacturers were responding to the large QWERTY user base, rather than considering the plausible but unproven assertion that manufacturers had a vested interest in ensuring that typists could not type faster than the machines could respond mechanically.
- Converting standard mechanical typewriters to Dvorak (or any alternative, e.g. international, layout) was often impractical, and at best expensive, so switching to Dvorak usually required a new, dedicated machine. A notable exception was the popular IBM Selectric typewriter
The IBM Selectric typewriter is an influential electric typewriter design. It was introduced in 1961....
, which used a single spherical typing element rather than individual character hammers; it could easily be converted by replacing the QWERTY typing element with an available Dvorak equivalent.
This problem is somewhat reduced with the advent of PCs, which created the opportunity to use computer programs to change the character that was produced when a particular key was pressed. This capacity benefited not only Dvorak typists, but those who typed in languages other than English. With early computers, this required the contents of the character-generator ROM to be changed; but with subsequent designs, only a table in memory or the disk file storing this table needed to be changed. By the mid 1990s the Dvorak layout was a standard option on most computer systems. With most modern operating systems, it is possible to switch keyboard layouts "on the fly" without additional software or reconfiguration. This makes it very easy for users of different key layouts to share a PC.
- Incompatibility between the two keyboard layouts on computers, where keys are assigned additional functions within software programs. In some cases related additional functions are assigned to keys that are physically proximate on the QWERTY layout, but not so in the Dvorak layout; for example, the Unix
Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
text editor vivi is a family of screen-oriented text editors which share common characteristics, such as methods of invocation from the operating system command interpreter, and characteristic user interface features...
uses the keys H, J, K and L to cause movement to the left, down, up, and right, respectively. With a QWERTY layout, these keys are all together under the right-hand home row, but with the Dvorak layout they are no longer neatly together. In many video games, keys W, A, S and D are used for arrow movements (their inverse-T arrangement on a QWERTY layout mirrors the arrangement of the cursor keys). In the Dvorak layout, this is no longer true. Keyboard shortcuts in GUIsA graphical user interface is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than...
for undoUndo is a command in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs such as graphic processing, undo will negate the last command done to the file being edited....
, cut, copy and paste operations are Ctrl (or Command) + Z, X, C, and V respectively; conveniently located in the same row in the QWERTY layout, but not on a Dvorak layout. While some applications do compensate for this, these issues do add a layer of complexity to using the many computer applications that do not.
- Some confusion regarding which of the keyboard layouts designed by August Dvorak is the "real" Dvorak layout. This arose in part due to the existence of, in addition to the standard layout, layouts for left-handed (only) and right-handed (only) use. Also, while Dvorak specified a particular layout for the number sequence at the top of the keyboard, most implementations of the Dvorak layout retain the ‘1,2,3...9,0’ arrangement; most people who want to type numbers quickly will use the numeric keypad rather than the top row.
An appreciation of the strength of the resistance factors (particularly the investment in typewriter manufacturing) suggests that the Dvorak layout would need to have been significantly superior to the QWERTY layout in order for the former to displace the latter in widespread use in the past. If the Dvorak layout is inherently at least as efficient as, or more efficient than, the QWERTY layout, then one might expect to see an increasing rate of use as resistance factors (such as lack of awareness, non-programmable machines, and one-style formal training) become less powerful. There are no surveys or studies looking at the rate of use of the Dvorak layout over time.
A discussion of the Dvorak layout is sometimes used as an exercise by management consultants to illustrate the difficulties of
changeChange management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state...
. The Dvorak layout is often used as a standard example of
network effectIn economics and business, a network effect is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people....
s, particularly in
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
textbookA textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the demand of educational institutions...
s, the other standard example being the competition between
BetamaxBetamax is a home videocassette tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain 1/2-inch -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional 3/4-inch U-matic format...
and
VHSVideo Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it...
. These examples are used to demonstrate that inferior technologies sometimes succeed simply because they become customary.
Alternatives
Because of the radical differences between QWERTY and Dvorak, existing typists find that it takes considerable time and effort to make the change. As a consequence, some hobbyists have attempted to design alternative layouts which follow the principles involved in the Dvorak keyboard layout but preserve many of the QWERTY key positions, thereby making it easier for users to make the transition. Programs such as the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator and KbdEdit allow this to be done very easily. The most prominent example to date is
Colemak, estimated by its designer to have approximately 3000 users.
One-handed versions
There are also Dvorak arrangements designed for one-handed typing, which can provide increased accessibility to single-handed users who struggle with typical keyboards. Other users enjoy the ability to simultaneously type and control a mouse. Separate arrangements have been designed for each hand. Note that the hand is intended to rest near the center of the keyboard, making these layouts impractical to use with split
ergonomic keyboardAn ergonomic keyboard is a computer keyboard designed with ergonomic considerations to minimize muscle strain and a host of related problems.-Keyboard types:...
s.
|
|
|
Some left-handed Dvorak keyboards have ")(" instead of "". |
Programmer Dvorak
Programmer Dvorak is a keyboard layout developed by electronics engineer Roland Kaufmann and targeted towards people writing
source codeIn computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language...
for
CC is a general-purpose computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
,
JavaJava is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
,
PascalPascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
,
LISPA lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Stereotypically, people with a lisp are unable to pronounce sibilants , and replace them with interdentals , though there are actually several kinds of lisps...
,
CSSCascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
and
XMLXML is a set of rules for encoding documents electronically. It is defined in the produced by the W3C and several other related specifications; all are fee-free open standards....
.
The layout is based on the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, with several enhancements intended to make typing easier for programmers.
While the alphabetic keys are placed as on the original Dvorak layout, most of the others are changed. The most noticeable difference is that the top row is devoted to brackets and other operational characters, and the numbers must be accessed using the
shift keyThe shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row...
. Also, differing from most Dvorak implementations but following August Dvorak’s original design, the numbers are not placed in ascending order.
Other languages
Although DSK is implemented in many languages other than
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
, there are still potential issues. Every Dvorak implementation in other languages leaves the
Roman charactersThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
in the same position as the English DSK. However, other (occidental) language
orthographiesThe orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós and γράφειν...
can clearly have other typing needs for optimization (many are very different from English). This raises a point which questions Dvorak Simplified Keyboard’s typing optimizations as language agnostic, and can be another possible reason for Dvorak's failure to replace QWERTY worldwide.
An implementation for
SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish...
, known as
SvorakSvorak is a Swedish version of the Dvorak keyboard layout.The Svorak layout places the three extra Swedish vowels on the leftmost three keys of the upper row, which correspond to punctuation symbols on the English Dvorak layout...
, places the three extra Swedish vowels (å, ä and ö) on the leftmost three keys of the upper row, which correspond to punctuation symbols on the English Dvorak layout. These punctuation symbols are then juggled with other keys, and the Alt-Gr key is required to access some of them.
Another Swedish version,
Svdvorak by Gunnar Parment, keeps the punctuation symbols as they were in the English version; the first extra vowel (å) is placed in the far left of the top row while the other two (ä and ö) are placed at the far left of the bottom row.
The Swedish variant that most closely resembles the American Dvorak layout is Thomas Lundqvist’s
sv_dvorak, which places å, ä and ö like Parment’s layout, but keeps the American placement of most special characters.
The
NorwegianNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants ...
implementation (known as "
Norsk Dvorak") is similar to Parment’s layout, with "æ" and "ø" replacing "ä" and "ö".
The Danish layout DanskDvorak is similar to the Norwegian.
A
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
DAS keyboard layout follows many of Dvorak’s design principles, but the layout is an original design based on the most common letters and letter combinations in the Finnish language. Matti Airas has also made another layout for Finnish. Finnish can also be typed reasonably well with the English Dvorak layout if the letters ä and ö are added. The Finnish
ArkkuDvorak keyboard layout adds both on a single key and keeps the American placement for each other character. As with
DAS, the
SuoRak keyboard is designed by the same principles as the Dvorak keyboard, but with the most common letters of the Finnish language taken into account. Contrary to
DAS, it keeps the vowels on the left side of the keyboard and most consonants on the right hand side.
The Turkish F keyboard layout (link) is also an original design with Dvorak's design principles, however it's not clear if it is inspired by Dvorak or not. Turkish F keyboard was standardized in 1955 and the layout has been a requirement for imported typewriters since 1963.
There are some non standard
Brazilian Dvorak keyboard layouts currently in development. The simpler design (also called
BRDK) is just a Dvorak layout plus some keys from the Brazilian ABNT2 keyboard layout. Another design, however, was specifically designed for writing
Brazilian PortugueseBrazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by virtually all the almost 200 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay.Roughly speaking, the differences...
, by means of a study that optimized typing statistics, like frequent letters, trigraphs and words.
The most common German Dvorak layout is the German
Type II layout. It is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. There is also the
Neo layout and the
de ergo layout, both original layouts that also follow many of Dvorak’s design principles. Germans may also use a standard Dvorak layout with ß at the shift+W position (on QWERTY) and the umlaut dots as a dead key accessible via shift+E.
There are also two
French and a
Spanish layouts, and also
a proposed Esperanto version.
A
Greek version of the Dvorak layout was released on Valentine’s Day 2007. This layout, unlike other Greek Dvorak layouts, preserves the spirit of Dvorak wherein the vowel keys are all placed on the left side of the keyboard. Currently this version is for Mac OS X.
An
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
MacThe Macintosh, or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a...
layout, optimized for this language and with all the accented vowels on the left, is being developed by Paolo Tramannoni. Several
PCA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator...
versions, consisting in the original layout with accented vowels added, are also being developed.
A
Romanian version of the Dvorak layout was released in October 2008. It is available for both Windows and Linux.
United Kingdom (British) layouts
Whether Dvorak or QWERTY, a United Kingdom (British) keyboard differs from the US equivalent in these ways: the " and @ are swapped; the backslash/pipe [\ |] key is in an extra position (to the right of the lower left shift key); there is a taller return/enter key which places the hash/tilde [# ~] key to its lower left corner (see picture).
The most notable difference between the US and UK Dvorak classic layout pictured is because the [2 "] key remains on the top row, whereas the US [' "] key moves. This means that the query [/ ?] key retains its classic Dvorak location, top left, albeit shifted.
Interchanging the [/ ?] and [' @] keys more closely matches the US layout, and the use of "@" has increased in the information technology age. These variations, plus keeping the numerals in ascending order, appear in the preferred Simplified Dvorak and Dvorak for the Left Hand and Right Hand varieties.
Notable users
- Barbara Blackburn, world typing speed record holder
- Bram Cohen
Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent...
, inventor of BitTorrent
- Matt Mullenweg
Matthew Charles Mullenweg is an entrepreneur living in San Francisco, California.He is the founding developer of the popular open-source blogging software WordPress and writes a popular blog , a domain hack...
, lead developer of WordPressWordPress is a blog publishing application and content management system. It was first released in May 2003 by its co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as the successor to b2/cafelog. It is powered by PHP and a SQL data backend...
- Terry Goodkind
Terry Goodkind is a contemporary American writer and author of the best-selling epic fantasy series The Sword of Truth, which, according to his publisher Tor Books in an August 2006 press release, has more than 10 million copies in print and has been translated into 20 different languages...
, authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
of The Sword of Truth
- Piers Anthony
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob is an English American writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. He is most famous for his long-running novel series set in the fictional realm of Xanth.Many of his books have appeared on the New York Times Best...
, author of the Xanth-History:The name Xanth is in itself an unintentional pun, which matches the playful tone of the books. Anthony has said that the coincidence of the word Xanth sounding like a portion of his name was unintentional, and in fact he only realized this years after the series was first created.Anthony...
novels, often wrote in the 1980s author's notes in the books about how his Dvorak use prevented him from converting to a word processor. This was made even more difficult because he uses an alternative Dvorak layout (swapping the hyphen and apostrophe keys — the apostrophe key on his keyboard is where the hyphen key is on a standard US keyboard (and vice-versa)).
- Nathan Myhrvold
Nathan Myhrvold , formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, which is seeking to build a large invention portfolio. He personally holds more than 18 U.S. patents and has applied for more than 100. His company is accumulating patents in software.Myhrvold...
, former CTO of MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices...
- Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer who founded Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs. His inventions and machines are credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II computers in...
, co-founder Apple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
See also
- Keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
- QWERTY
QWERTY is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters...
- Touch typing
Touch typing is typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys. Specifically, a touch typist will know their location through muscle memory. Touch typing involves placing the eight fingers in a horizontal row along the middle of the keyboard and having them reach for other keys...
- Velotype
Velotype is the old trademark for a type of keyboard for typing text known as a syllabic chord keyboard, an invention of the Dutchmen Nico Berkelmans and Marius den Outer. The current tradename is Veyboard...
- Kinesis contoured keyboard
The Kinesis line of ergonomic computer keyboards are an alternative to the traditional keyboard design. Most widely known among these are the contoured Advantage line, which feature recessed keys in two bucket-like hollows which allow the fingers to reach keys with less effort as well as a central...
- TypeMatrix
TypeMatrix is a company in Santa Barbara, California which designs and sells ergonomic TCO99-compliant keyboards.Current models include the EZReach 2020 and EZReach 2030 keyboards.The keyboards can switch between hardwired QWERTY and Dvorak layouts...
keyboard
- USB hardware 'qwerty' -> 'dvorak' converter
- Maltron keyboard
The Maltron keyboard is an ergonomically designed computer keyboard that was invented by Lilian Malt and Stephen Hobday in the 1970s. It is designed to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive strain injuries...
- Repetitive strain injury
Repetitive strain injury , also known as Cumulative Trauma Disorder , occupational overuse syndrome, non-specific arm pain or work related upper limb disorder , is a diagnosis used for hand and arm pain that is believed to be caused by chronic misuse of these body parts, for instance, while using a...
- Path dependence
Path dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant....
External links
- DvZine.org - A print and webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website, often exclusively, providing easy access to an audience, though some are published in books and newspapers but maintain a web archive....
zineA zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images...
advocating the Dvorak Keyboard and teaching its history.
- A Basic Course in Dvorak - by Dan Wood
- Dvorak vs QWERTY Tool - Comparison site that allows to calculate statistics of the different layout.
- LinkedIn group of Dvorak users
- QIDO - Hardware device to convert any USB Qwerty keyboard to Dvorak. Note Dvorak links at the end of the page.
- iKeyEx - Jailbreak software that supports Dvorak and other language layouts.