Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!texbell!texsun!newstop!sun!concertina!fiddler
From: fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: UnMacLike Keyboard
Message-ID: <135362@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 8 May 90 17:34:58 GMT
References: <13932@cgl.ucsf.EDU> <3212@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 34

In article <3212@rodan.acs.syr.edu>, isr@rodan.acs.syr.edu ( ISR group account) writes:
> 
> about Dvoraks, one of my users who can't type is insisting one lerning to
> type on a Dvorak. (after taking 5 years to switch to a Mac instead of an
> IBM, and not even knowing how to use that, just out of stubbornness). I 
> looked hi and low, but no dvorak keyboards are to be found, but there is
> a nice little FKEY at sumex called Electric Dvorak that switches you to
> and from Dvorak mode. So now he's got two keyboards, one normal, and
> one Dvora-cised by pulling the key caps off and moving them. (And believe
> me it makes a h*ll of a mess with the key-sculpting, but if thats
> what they want, dat's what dey get........

DON'T SWITCH THE KEYCAPS!!!

It's not going to help the person typing, what with all the strange slopes.

I'd advise using the FKEY, printing a screen shot of the Keycaps DA, and
taping the little picture just below the Mac's screen.  After a couple of
weeks, the new typist should be comfortable with the Dvorak layout, and
also won't be tempted to look at the keyboard except for some of the more
rarely-used keys...like maybe the top row of numbers/punctuation.

If the user learns to touch-type, without the crutch of looking at the 
keyboard, things will probably be much better.  (That's how I did it years
ago on an Apple///.  Even at Apple, you couldn't get Dvorak keycaps...although
they made up a hundred or so prototype sets once.  I got three of them.  Still
have two of the sets.  Won't work on the ADB keyboards, though.)

Good luck to your user.

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  The only drawback with morning is that it comes 
    at such an inconvenient time of day.
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