Comment by jerf
2 years ago
"The entire point of the layout is to keep your fingers on the home row."
No, that is how you're told to type. You have to be told to type that way precisely because QWERTY is not designed to keep your fingers on the home row. If you type in a layout that is designed to do that, you don't need to be told to keep your fingers on the home row, because you naturally will.
Nobody really knows what the designers were thinking, which I do not mean as sarcasm, I mean it straight. History lost that information. But whatever they were thinking that is clearly not it because it is plainly obvious just by looking at it how bad it is at that. Nobody trying to design a layout for "keeping your fingers on the home row" would leave hjkl(semicolon) under the resting position of the dominant hand for ~90% of the people.
This, perhaps in one of technical history's great ironies, makes it a fairly good keyboard for swype-like technologies! A keyboard layout like Dvorak that has "aoeui" all right next to each other and "dhtns" on the other would be constantly having trouble figuring out which one you meant between "hat" and "ten" to name just one example. "uio" on qwerty could probably stand a bit more separation, but "a" and "e" are generally far enough apart that at least for me they don't end up confused, and pushing the most common consonants towards the outer part of the keyboard rather than clustering them next to each other in the center (on the home row) helps them be distinguishable too. "fghjkl" is almost a probability dead zone, and the "asd" on the left are generally reasonably distinct even if you kinda miss one of them badly.
I don't know what an optimal swype keyboard would be, and there's probably still a good 10% gain to be made if someone tried to make one, but it wouldn't be enough to justify learning a new layout.
Hold up young one. The reason for QWERTYs design has absolutely not been lost to history yet.
The design was to spread out the hammers of the most frequently used letters to reduce the frequency of hammer jamming back when people actually used typewriters and not computers.
The problem it attempted to improve upon, and which is was pretty effective at, is just a problem that no longer exists.
Also apocryphal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#Contemporaneous_alterna...
And it does a bad job at it, which is further evidence that it was not the design consideration. People may not have been able to run a quick perl script over a few gigabytes of English text, but they would have gotten much closer if that was the desire. I don't believe that was their goal but they were just too stupid to get it even close to right.
> The design was to spread out the hammers of the most frequently used letters to reduce the frequency of hammer jamming
That's a folk myth that's mostly debunked.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-...
I’m curious how this works because all the common letters seem to be next to each other on the left side of the keyboard
The original intent I do believe was not separating the hammers per se, but also helping the hands alternate, so they would naturally not jam as much.
However, I use a Dvorak layout and my hands feel like they alternate better on that due to the vowels being all on one hand. The letters are also in more sensical locations, at least for English writing.
It can get annoying when G and C are next to each other, and M and W, but most of the time I type faster on Dvorak than I ever did on Qwerty. It helps that I learned during a time where I used qwerty at work and Dvorak at home, so the mental switch only takes a few seconds now.
You have to be taught to use the home row because the natural inclination for most people is to peck and hunt with their two index fingers. Watch how old people or young kids type. That being said staying on the home row is how you type fast and make the most of the layout. Everything is comfortably reachable for the most part unless you are a windows user ime.
If you learn a keyboard layout where the home row is actually the most common keys you use, you will not have to be encouraged to use the home row. You just will. I know, because I have, and I never "tried" to use the home row.
People don't hunt and peck after years of keyboard use because of the keyboard; they do it because of the keyboard layout.
If you want to prove I'm wrong, go learn Dvorak or Colemak and show me that once you're comfortable you still hunt and peck. You won't be, because it wouldn't even make sense. Or, less effort, find a hunt & peck Dvorak or Colemak user who is definitely at the "comfortable" phase.
People will actually avoid using their nondominant fingers like their ring or pinky. Its an issue with typing irrespective of layout. Its an issue with guitarplaying even. I am no pianist but I wouldn’t be surprised if new players have an aversion towards using those fingers as well.
I understand how dvorak is designed. I am still not convinced people will be using all their fingers especially their pinkys in a consistent manner that without learning that this is what you should work towards.
1 reply →
> Nobody really knows what the designers were thinking, which I do not mean as sarcasm, I mean it straight. History lost that information.
My understanding of QWERTY layout is that it was designed so that characters frequently used in succession should not be able to be typed in rapid succession, so that typewriter hammers had less chance of colliding. Or is this an urban myth?
My understanding (which is my recollections of a dive into typewriter history decades ago) is that avoiding typebar collisions was a real concern, but that the general consensus was that the exact final layout was strongly influenced by allowing salesmen to quickly type out 'typewriter' on the top row of letters.
I love this explanation.