Re: OT: Spelling "truely atrosious," says academic...

ChattyCathy said...

Jean B. wrote:


Oh my! I suddenly had a vision of messages written phonetically.
That would be too ?funny?. Or maybe only the thought would be
funny.


Something like this?

O my! I sudinly had a vizzon ov mesages ritten fonetickaly. That wud b
2 ?funee?. Or maybee ownli the thort wud b funee.


Jumping in, sorry!

Having missed the most of this thread, does anyone remember the Dvorak
keyboard?

QWERTY was devised in the day of old fashioned typewriters with the arms
that would jump forward on a keypress and hammer through a ribbon onto
typewriter paper. It was determined that QWERTY's keyboard layout put the
most common characters out of the way of each other to prevent double
letter jams, if two letters traveled to the ribbon in close proximity.

THEN a wonderful thing happened. IBM created the "golfball." A typeface on
a moving golfball looking thing. A servo-driven alphabet delivery system
that could rotate and hammer characters into the ribbon into the typewriter
paper. What was so wonderful? No more arm jams of the old typewriters.

What didn't happen was they didn't redesign the keyboard layout to put the
most common letters on the same row, sticking with QWERTY out of
familiarity.

John Dvorak came along in the 1980s after personal computers came out and
created such a layout when a keyboard could be changed in a control panel
or startup program. He released his layout named "The Dvorak Keyboard"
(after himself, rightfully) for free for the world.

For those people who learned to begin typing using the Dvorak layout, they
got up to 120 wpm speed in such short order. Brilliant? Yep!

But it didn't stick. Corporate America didn't like Macs anyway for business
and the whole thing fell into oblivion after a year or so.

So, look at your QWERTY keyboard and know in your heart of hearts that for
a brief moment in time, there was a better way!

You don't need phonetics to communicate faster, just a better keyboard
layout.

Best,

Andy
Atrocious
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Keyboard mapping
    ... I type with Dvorak for the right hand in English. ... > available Chinese input methods use Qwerty as there standard keyboard layout. ... typing in English and Spanish. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.registry)
  • Re: OT...but perhaps of interest
    ... American Simplified Keyboard - Simplified Keyboard or the Dvorak keyboard ... An alternate keyboard layout designed in the 1930s by August Dvorak, ... fingers of a qwerty typist ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Swedish Dvorak as standard keyboard layout.
    ... Anybody can purchase a Dvorak keyboard if they want to and use it. ... and not Dvorak and thus not manufacturer a device with that layout. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: OT...but perhaps of interest
    ... > Ah Dvorak, ... >> Aset keyboard ... >> the home keys. ... >> transposition layout. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: RosAsm?[OT#2]
    ... >> accent marks on some of the word ommitted because of ASCII and UK ... because it has the keyboard layout as a nice little ASCII ... _ONE ADDITION_ that is not on the keyboard diagram but I ... that many UK typists simply "get used" to typing with a UK keyboard ...
    (alt.lang.asm)