Once there was a chap called August Dvorak. He created a splendid keyboard layout. Sadly this was only localised in the US, and thus annoyed anyone in the UK who had to type alt 156 to get a pound sign.
An aside : yes, this is the chap who was on Radio 4 with Stephen Fry, and yes, he's friendly, well informed and puts you at your ease
When I originally wrote this page, I decided that I wouldn't cover anything other than a slightly modified UK layout, in part because sites like MW Brook's Dvorak information page exist. Following the Radio 4 interview, I've revisited this decision slightly as it can only help the adoption of Dvorak
Feel and keystroke minimisation. Some facts about Dvorak can be debated, but the reduction in finger travel is not one of them. The majority of commonly used keys are moved to the home (centre) row, and the favoured hand becomes the right instead of the left.
August Dvorak was an expert in time and motion studies, and this reflects itself in the typing rhythm of the Dvorak keyboard - it is simply more pleasant to type upon a Dvorak keyboard, particularly a decently constructed one, in my opinion.
Speed is not a particular aim of mine; whilst the world typing record is held by a Dvorak typist, and I'm possibly a little faster on Dvorak than QWERTY, I would not use that as a reason to switch keyboard layout
There are several options for using Dvorak. The easiest and cheapest of these is selecting the software re-mapping function within your operating system (Windows, OS X, Unix etc). Mildly confusingly on Windows 7 and several earlier versions of Windows, a change in keyboard layout is actually labelled in Control panel as 'Region and Language', and not in Keyboard
Software re-definition of the keyboard layout is a good, inexpensive method of seeing if Dvorak is a layout you enjoy typing upon. In the longer term, I recommend a specific Dvorak keyboard as it solves a couple of more obscure technical issues.
The MW Brooks page links to a few suppliers, but I use one that's not listed. Unicomp produce a remarkable number of keyboard layouts, some of which may be customised. They used to manufacture keyboards for IBM, including the fabled Model M.
Not only am I a fan of the Dvorak layout, but I am also a long term fan of buckling spring keyboards, as used in the Model M amongst others. Each key has a small spring underneath it that buckles to contact a membrane and thus generate a keypress. The effect is much greater tactile feedback and an immediately recognisable clicky typing sound. Unicomp produce several keyboards of this type, although they also provide the more commonly used rubber dome technology.
I use an Endura Pro and a Spacesaver, both reprogrammed to a hardwired Dvorak layout . Pricing for the keyboards is very reasonable considering the quality but shipping outside the US is expensive due to the keyboard weight.
There is a small hurdle to use Unicomp Dvorak keyboards on some computers. Modern computers may only accept a keyboard with a (flat and rectangular) USB connector rather than a (small and round) PS/2 connector. Unicomp only provide the facility to reprogram PS/2 keyboards as USB is considerably more complex, thus a convertor to let USB systems use PS/2 keyboards is required.
The workaround is to use a PS/2 to USB converter. For this I would recommend only two products : for Windows systems, Unix systems (except OS X and Solaris) and quite possibly various set top boxes/consoles/etc that use keyboards purchase an Aten UC10KM. For an Apple Mac or Solaris box buy an Aten UC100KMA. These are both quality products and work with both my Unicomp products, and all Model M products (as far as I am aware). There are far too many USB to PS/2 converters that are of a very low quality and either translate keys incorrectly, stop working after a while, or fail to operate with both a mouse and a keyboard that draws a little more power than average. Don't buy a cheap alternative - it will end in tears.
If your tastes do run to a keyboard that's not from Unicomp, please be certain to ensure it's a proper hard wired keyboard. That is to say it should allow Windows/OS X/Unix to be set to a keyboard layout of US or UK english, so that when the letter three to the right of the left tab key is pressed it produces a period (.) and not 'E'. Keyboards that merely have different letters printed on the top and no change to the electronics are a waste of money
Dvorak is a wonderful layout, but nothing is perfect.
The key layout in Dvorak's original design was targetted at a right handed US English typist. Obviously this penalises the 10% of typists that are left handed.
As the layout is based on the letter distribution of typing US English, the default Dvorak layout is not ideal for typing non English languages. Just as the French have their AZERTY to the English's QWERTY, there are various foreign language variants of Dvorak. Likewise, layouts to help create accents have sprung up, as this is absent from the original US English layout of any keyboard, let alone Dvorak.
One feature that differs from Dvorak's original design in almost all Dvorak keyboards is the numeric layout. Dvorak initially proposed laying out the numbers in the number row in a different order than 1 to 0. This has not been taken up by the vast majority of Dvorak layouts - whether software re-mapping or hardware oriented.
The dominance of QWERTY in the marketplace has led to a small number of products that are designed strongly around it. Older computer users will be familiar with Wordstar, a word processor that used a 'star' of keys on the QWERTY keyboard. Likewise, the vi editor from Unix uses hjkl to navigate by default, and games commonly use WASD for movement. On a dvorak keyboard, the 'star' of keys, WASD and hjkl are spread around the keyboard.
Only the excessively fortunate or isolated will be able to exclusively use Dvorak. Few people will learn to use Dvorak before QWERTY, and only a minority have the opportunity to attempt a swap to Dvorak whilst learning without being expected to use QWERTY on occasion. I always use Dvorak at home and 95%+ of the time at work, but not everyone is so lucky. You will need to be fluent in both.
Guests will not be able to use your computers easily if required. The solution to this is a cheap, plug in QWERTY USB keyboard.
Certain low level software - particularly games and remote control applications, tends to ignore any software remapping that's been applied to the physical keyboard, sometimes leading to some very odd results. The solution to this is a hardwired keyboard.
Games are a particular issue, even with a hardwired keyboard. It's necessary to change the key bindings in games away from layouts such as WASD, as this is an incredibly uncomfortable configuration to use on a Dvorak keyboard. Fortunately, there is a cheap solution - the Wolf King Warrior keyboard. I do recommend a Dvorak keyboard for typing, but for games it is sometimes considerably easier to plug in a keyboard custom designed for the task - all commonly used game keys fall in an arc under your left hand leaving the right hand free for the mouse. True, the tactile feedback is nowhere near as pleasant or accurate as the buckling spring keyboards I use for everything else, but it's a reasonable compromise for games.
This is a little historic. Originally the purpose of this webpage was to offer a revised Dvorak UK layout where Shift 2 produced @ instead of ". At the time I found this much easier to use. However, the order from Unicomp shipped with a double quote over 2, so in the end I adjusted to that. In any case, the revised layout is still here if you need it
Microsoft created the Keyboard Layout Creator and an enterprising person used it to create A UK British Dvorak keyboard layout
So I fetched the UK Dvorak KLC file, and swapped the at sign and the double quote, and all was splendid again. Grab the zip file here (Windows x86, x86-64 and ia64 (itanium)).
If you want to contact me email me at peter@syllopsium.com