How I discovered the problem

In 2003 I injured my left thumb. Before the thumb healed I quickly learned that typing caused pain at the site of the injury. Typing one handed was the obvious alternative that I relied on for a few weeks.

During those weeks I noticed that my thumb didn't hurt even after long gaming sessions, even though I used my left hand extensively while playing Quake 2. The difference appeared to be that all the keys I needed were sensibly grouped in one place.

In contrast, touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard layout caused my fingers need to thrash over the whole keyboard area.

Stopping the Pain

Google quickly led me to a possible solution.... The Dvorak keyboard layout is an alternative arrangement for the letter keys on a keyboard which was designed to maximise comfort. Specifically relevant to me at the time, the design reduces the amount of hand movement across the keyboad.

The difference is clearly visible. Typing on a Dvorak layout looks relaxed, because all the commonly used keys are in the places that are easiest to reach. All the common combinations of keys (such as th or ck) are arranged in patterns that are easy to follow.

Touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard might look more impressive to a non-touch-typist because of all that movement, but its no suprise that it made my arms hurt.

It is by design, not accident, that these keyboard layouts have these characteristics. The Dvorak layout was designed to minimise movement to improve comfort. The QWERTY layout was designed to maximise movement to prevent typists getting too fast for early mechanical typewriters.

How did I learn?

Touch-typing on the Dvorak keyboard layout has a much easier learning curve than the QWERTY layout. For a start the home row (the keys that you learn first) only contains keys that are useful and common: vowels, t, h, and n. Spend 5 minutes learning the position of these first 6 letters and you can start touch-typing real words!

I learned the rest of the letters by sticking a picture of the layout as a poster above the monitor. Within 4 days I was touch-typing most letters, and within 4 weeks had regained most of the my previous speed with the QWERTY layout (yes, even with the injured thumb).

I understand that some people benefit from putting stickers of the new letter positions on the keyboard keys (to cover up the old letter labels). I never found that necessary - just don't look down.

Isn't it confusing when I have to go back to a QWERTY keyboard?

I didn't find any problem.

I have other machines on my desk here using QWERTY, and I have other virtual terminals on my main workstation that use QWERTY. Sometimes I forget when I first sit down at a machine, and the first few letters come out wrong. Adapting after that initial reminder is instant.

I imagine I will always have a button on the task bar of both KDE and Windows so that I can switch between QWERTY and Dvorak with one mouse click. It doesn't feel like I have 'converted' to the Dvorak layout - I am equally capabable of using both layouts.

Typing Speed

Some Dvorak advocates quote typing speed as major advantage. It might be, but I hadn't really noticed. I'm just happy my arms stopped hurting.

So what does the layout look like?

This is the standard Dvorak layout. Naturally I felt the urge to tweak it further.

The original dvorak design included positions for common punctuation, but not symbols like @ that we have on a modern computer keyboard. The standard Dvorak layout provided by both Windows and XFree86 have these other punctuation keys in the same position as a standard US keyboard. That was counterproductive for me, so I moved them back to standard UK positions.

I have these instructions for installing this UK Dvorak layout on Windows, and XFree86 on linux.

Other links

www.mwbrooks.com - My main source of Dvorak information

The Curse of Qwerty

www.worldofstuff.com - More links

My instructions for using Dvorak with UK punctuation positions