Moxie said:
Putting a Dvorak layout on the *inator would be an excellent way to make sure only three people in the world bought it. It's as good an idea as making the firmware text be in Lojban - "Come on, it's a prefectly logical langue! Very effective! You'll learn the basics in, say, 2 weeks!".
You've got a pretty low opinion of the human race.
Nope, I've got a realistic opinion of the human race. How long has the Dvorak layout been around? For about 70 year now, right? Go into an ordinary computer store. See any Dvorak keyboards? Go into an ordinary office. See any Dvorak keyboards? Nope. Apart from us nerds, nobody even knows what a Dvorak keyboard is. You asked earlier, in what I suppose was meant as a rethorical question: "Wouldn't people want a machine with a more efficient keyboard layout", or something to that effect. And the answer, even though I
know one shouldn't answer rethorical questions, is a resounding NO! People don't want that. They havent wanted that for the last 70 years, at least.
You can't want something you don't know about, it's not that people prefer QWERTY, it's just that it's the only thing they know. It's similar to comparing an original GameBoy to the GP2X or DS. The gameboy made sacrifices in graphics capabilities in order to have good battery life, QWERTY makes sacrifices in efficiency in order to avoid keys jamming. Now we have high capacity batteries making the compromises less necessary, and we no longer use typewriters so a layout that avoids jamming is no longer necessary. The GameBoy is comparatively much more widely used, with over 100,000,000 sales, compared to newer generation systems, but you don't see people prefering the GameBoy over the DS - that's on account of the fact that they know what the DS is.
QUOTE
It will, of course, be a no-brainer to redefine the keyboard in software so you can have any layout you want, and maybe it will even be possible to move keycaps around if one likes, but a Dvorak layout as a standard? Nope, the people has already spoken on that one.
That was the original question; "can it have the layout switched
or come with a better one by default" - the debate started when people thought having Dvorak was ridiculous in itself and there shouldn't be the option to even switch it.
Squidge said:
I've just noticed that some places are selling "Simplified Dvorak" keyboards. Is that another layout? So we have "Traditional Dvorak" and "Simplified Dvorak" ? Whats the difference?
Sounds like even if the 'nator was Dvorak (which it's not going to be), it could still be wrong, as it could be simplified instead of traditional (and vice versa).
Traditional and Simplified are the same. Just different names. It was originally called simplified, because the layout was less complex than QWERTY. The traditional distinction came in when right and left handed Dvorak layouts were made for people with only one hand.
) don't confirm anything, it's just that we want them to see something before everybody else does.
