What is the Dvorak Keyboard Layout?
The Dvorak keyboard is a key layout that was designed over half-a-century after the QWERTY key layout that most keyboards still use in the US and Western Europe. It was designed to make typing more comfortable by reducing the amount of hand-gymnastics required to reach common letters and letter combinations. This document is not really about the whys and whos of Dvorak, it’s about getting the Dvorak layout to work for you in FreeBSD. Suffice to say that I changed from QWERTY to the Dvorak layout. It took me about three days to memorize the key locations of the new layout; about a fortnight to touch-type with it at better-than-frustrating speed; about a month to get up to my previous typing speed. I’m happy with the Dvorak layout. I have no intention of voluntarily returning to the QWERTY layout. If you would like to find out more about the Dvorak keyboard, its reasons, its history, and its naysayers, then try visiting Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard, and The Dvorak Keyboard. Also, some
by Michael Paul Johnson The Dvorak keyboard layout is a keyboard layout designed by Mr. Dvorak for efficiency. This is much different than the standard “QWERTY” layout (named after the first 6 keys on the upper row of letters), which was designed to intentionally slow people down Since the original reason for wanting to slow people down died with the old manual typewriters with strike-bars that jammed when you type too fast, why use an inefficient keyboard? The answer, of course, is because (1) everyone makes keyboards with QWERTY layouts, because that is how people are trained to type, and (2) people learning to type want to learn the QWERTY layout, because that is how almost all keyboards are made. Fortunately, there is a really easy way out of this vicious cycle. All good computer operating systems have the capability to remap your keyboard from QWERTY to Dvorak built in (or at least easily added on). Microsoft ships this ability with all of its Windows operating systems. (Start, Se
