Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!iuvax!news!cartan!ndmath!nstar!freewill From: freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Efficient Keyboards Message-ID: Date: 14 Oct 90 19:26:32 GMT References: <1990Oct13.231527.6887@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: bbs@nstar.uucp (BBS User) Organization: Northern Star Communications, Ltd. Lines: 41 tpmg0848@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Magliery) writes: > In article freewill@nstar.UUCP (Bill Williston) writ > >Could one of you who lives in an area where efficient keyboards are the > >standard put the keys on the screen? I teach wordprocessing and would be > >interested in trying a more effiecient letter-layout. Thank you in advance. > > are keyboards in other countries (that use the same alphabet) really differen > than ours (except for, i would expect, having keys for all the letters that > come with diacritical marks)? i would think not. > The layout of letters on the keyboard is different. The kbd you type 100wpm on was designed to make it HARDER to type. Why? Typists jammed manual typewriters by typing too fast. Most of the world uses a more efficient layout than QUERTY. Worperfect, Wordstar, Works, etc. ahve the capability to work with these more efficient boards. Students who know about the more efficient layout could switch the letters around (at work) and maybe get a raise for increased productivity. > i hope you're not going to try to market a keyboard with a non-QWERTY layout. > it'll never sell. also, if your students are beginning typists, what will > they do once they get out of your class and try to type somewhere else? > > and if your students are *not* beginning typists, are they going to want to > learn a different layout? i don't think i would. i'm happy enough with the > speed i can manage (~100wpm on text) on (electronic) QWERTY keyboards. it > was probably 3 or 4 years after i learned to type before i got to my current > level. i wouldn't want to go back to zero. perhaps the improvement would > be faster on a different layout, such as the critically-acclaimed (and i > believe research-proven-better) dvorak layout. but i think apathy would > prevent me from ever bothering. (in fact, i *know* it would, because i've > known about dvorak for several years, and never bothered with it.) > > think about how long americans have gone without switching over to the > metric system. yow. they'll *never* switch keyboard layouts. > > mag > -- > ____._._...___.....__.__.._..__ > Tom Magliery > mag@cs.uiuc.edu OR mag@uiuc.edu