Keyboards

Layout and typing speed

QWERTY is the standard in the English-speaking world
Dvorak does seem more efficient, but not worth the effort needed for adoption
- Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world - Engineer Guy
For truly high speed typing, workers like court typists use stenography, which can type over 2-3x the speed of QWERTY
- Plover: Thought to Text at 230 WPM
  - Plover - Open Steno Project
- Programming with steno
  - Is typing really the bottleneck for programming?
  - "SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing." - Phillip Greenspun
Over 90% of Japanese typists use QWERTY-based Romaji input
- Kana input theoretically uses half the keystrokes (generally 1 kana = 2 romaji)
- You often need to switch back to Romaji for typing English letters, so switching typing modes physically and mentally negates the speed benefits for small amounts of text
- Is modern kana input ergonomic? Keys are spread across four rows
- Thumb shift is an improvement on kana based keyboards

Created 2024-05-03.