What is the Dvorak Keyboard?

Dvorak keyboard is a keyboard layout that groups commonly used letters together to improve typing speed. Designed by American August Dvorak in 1936. The keyboard layout is shown in the figure. The current universal QWERTY keyboard is named after the six letters to the left of the first row of letters on the keyboard. This keyboard was patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and later dominated the world.

Dvorak keyboard

Dvorak keyboard is a keyboard layout that groups commonly used letters together to improve typing speed. Designed by American August Dvorak in 1936.

History of Dvorak keyboard

Now universal

With the development of technology, the tangling of the connecting rod is no longer a problem. Therefore, in August 1936, the American August Dvorak designed another keyboard, which was called the Dvorak keyboard.

Some experts have suggested that for optimal typing speed, the keyboard should be designed as:

(1) The load of the right and left hands should be equal.

(2) Maximize the load of the home row.

(3) The frequency of alternating two hands in sequence is maximized, and the frequency of the same finger is minimized.

In these respects, the Dvorak keyboard does a very good job: 67% of the typing takes place in the middle row, and the left and right hand balance is 47%: 53%. The typing of QWERTY keyboard is mostly in the top row, and the left and right hand balance is 57%: 43%. However, the QWERTY keyboard puts continuously hitting keys as far as possible, so it is dominant in (3), which is helpful to improve typing speed.

Currently, the fastest English typing speed in the world is created on the Dvorak keyboard. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Barbara Blackburn is currently the fastest typist in the world. In 2005, she typed continuously on the Dvorak keyboard for 50 minutes, with an average of 150 words per minute and a peak speed of 212 words per minute.

However, the Dvorak keyboard has not become popular, and the most common keyboard in the world is the QWERTY keyboard.

Academia has disputed this incident. Some people think that this shows that the market is flawed, and because of user inertia, it is impossible to promote more efficient technologies. But others disagree, saying that Dvorak's faster typing speed is purely a myth, and there is no evidence that the Dvorak keyboard is significantly faster than the QWERTY keyboard.

In fact, technically, Dvorak also has some disadvantages. For example: the letter I is used much more frequently than U, but the position is worse than U (adjusting this does not affect other indicators). The letter R is used more often than NS, but it's not well positioned. Also CH, TR, ST, WH and other combinations are not too smooth.

I guess the reason for these shortcomings was mainly because the statistics and calculation conditions at that time were not very good. Now that the Internet provides statistics and computers do optimization, some better ones have been produced.

Setting method using Dvorak keyboard scheme in Windows:

1. Right-click the input method status bar in the lower right corner of the screen, select "Settings", and click "Add" in the pop-up window. You can find "American English-Dvorak" in the "Keyboard Layout / Input Method" in the dialog box.

Such a setting cannot change the keyboard layout of the Chinese input method. To use Dvorak layout when inputting Chinese, you need to modify the registry directly. Take smart ABC as an example.

First click "Start / Run" on the lower left side of the system desktop, enter "regedit", and press Enter. Then find the following primary key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Keyboard Layouts \ E0040804]

You can see inside

"Layout File" = "kbdus.dll"

"Layout Text" = "Chinese (Simplified)-Smart ABC"

"IME File" = "winabc.ime"

Change kbdus.dll to KBDDV.DLL. Save and restart the system.

2. Because different Chinese input methods handle keyboard layouts differently, different Windows programs treat keyboard layouts differently, and the solution once and for all is to change the keyboard's ScanCode Map. specific method:

1.) Create a new binary item called ScanCode Map in \ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ ControlSet001 \ Control \ Keyboard Layout, and set the content to Dvorak related items.

2.) Copy the following to the clipboard and save it as dvorak.reg, then restart / logout after running the import:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Keyboard Layout]
"ScanCode Map" = hex: 00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,22,00,00,00,2d, 00,30,00,24,00,2e, 00, \
11,00,33,00,33,00,11,00,12,00,20,00,34,00,12,00,1b, 00,0d, 00,0d, 00,1b, 00,16, \
00,21,00,17,00,22,00,20,00,23,00,1a, 00,0c, 00,2e, 00,17,00,23,00,24,00,14,00, \
25,00,31,00,26,00,35,00,1a, 00,30,00,31,00,13,00,18,00,26,00,19,00,2f, 00,34, \
00,28,00,10,00,0c, 00,28,00,19,00,13,00,18,00,1f, 00,1f, 00,27,00,2c, 00,35,00, \
15,00,14,00,22,00,16,00,25,00,2f, 00,10,00,2d, 00,21,00,15,00,27,00,2c, 00,00, \
00,00,00

3.) To restore the qwerty keyboard, copy the following to the clipboard and save it as qwerty.reg, then restart / logout after running the import:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Keyboard Layout]
"ScanCode Map" = hex: 00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

^[1]