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From: duncan@dduck.ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Dvorak keys vs. QWERT
Message-ID: <26797@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 13 Sep 90 13:26:33 GMT
References: <7657@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> <1990Sep7.055025.16732@nmt.edu> <MEISSNER.90Sep7122958@osf.osf.org>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: duncan@ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan)
Organization: Computer Technology Transfer Division
Lines: 31

It's been noted that

>Many of the Dvorak proponents seem to be computer jocks, rather than
>your classic secretary types.  Do people who claim to like Dvorak
>because qwerty slows you down, really type enough to get the
>advantages out of the higher speed?  I would imagine that if you were
>sitting, typing away all day transcribing material (ie, a 60-100wpm
>secretary) that you would get a gain.  I don't find myself powertyping
>that much at a time, I find I need to either compose what I'm writing,
>or rearrange things.

Which I think is a fair representation of things.  At SHARE (a large user group
of customers for IBM mainframes) meetings, I have heard human factors folks
from IBM state that they had, at least in the past, done most of their studies
of keyboards with data entry personnel.  This was because they were the ones
with the heaviest usage of keyboards.  Customers at SHARE (mostly from
programming shops rather than data entry departments) thought that profiles of
other keyboard use needed to be more heavily examined.  (Not picking on IBM on
this point as it's just an example that probably all manufacturers of keyboards
probably follow.)

In any event, my inclination would be to avoid the whole issue of speed and
advocate investing more resource into better scanning mechanisms to avoid heavy
transcription tasks in the first place.  At one time the keyboard layout debate
may have been very important, but technology is probably going to (if it has
not really already) make this irrelevant.

Speaking only for myself, of course, I am...
Scott P. Duncan (duncan@ctt.bellcore.com OR ...!bellcore!ctt!duncan)
                (Bellcore, 444 Hoes Lane  RRC 1H-210, Piscataway, NJ  08854)
                (908-699-3910 (w)   609-737-2945 (h))